During a recent practice we were doing katate ryotedori kokyu work. A new person asked me why she couldn’t move from the uke‘s strong grip. I told her what Ben Sensei  says, which is to do the ‘drink from a cup’ motion.

So she tried but it would not work.

The actual motion looks like bringing your hands to jyoudan kamae with a bokutou.  Though, if the uke is shorter than Nage then it is enough to bring the being-grabbed hand to the mouth area; when I work with taller partners I have to bring my hands to jyoudan kamae.

Thus she tried but still failed.

The next thing we discovered is that you can’t raise your hands straight up, especially in a morotedori grab. I find that if I advance or slightly lean into the area where my hand is being grabbed (from a 45-degree angle) at the same time as rotating my wrists upwards (going from chudan kamae to jyoudan kamae) and using my hip-rotation power, then I can unbalance a lot of people.