As soon as the shomen strike comes down, meet it at his elbow using your te-no-ko. Don’t cut his arm down yet. In the same motion as you are meeting his elbow, slide in and slightly beside him (irimi) and then step with your back leg to be completely behind beside and very close to him. You should even be out of his peripheral view. Just as you are behind him with some rotational momentum remaining, cut down on his arm at his elbow and capture his head into your shoulder. As you are behind Uke, coordination is important. One hand should be on his neck and the other hand should be on top of his elbow. All in one motion, push down on his neck 50%, cut down on his elbow 50%, and step back deeply so the whole effort helps Uke spin around and follow you back.

After experiments with just cutting down, or just pulling on the neck or shoulder, reports from Ukes are that it feels nicer and smoother with the coordination as above.

The main movement learned was that as you intercept the downward strike, you are to be in motion to get behind Uke already. You then cut down on his arm at the point when the distance needed to capture his head is the least. This is when you are almost fully behind him and you can snare his head on the way.

The ‘step through’ from the standing version is not needed here. This is because your groin is protected by the ground already, and it is difficult to generate momentum with a step-through from shikko.

Ben Sensei demonstrates that when being attacked by two or more attackers, do not even let them touch you; redirect them preemptively before they can do anything to you. If even one grabs you, it will slow you down when you throw him and the others can latch on.

Next, keep your arms out in front of you if you want them to grab them. Do not let them grab your biceps or upper body because the next step for them is a headlock which is fatal.

If you do get caught, protect your head and kaiten out and away as quick as you can.

Keep moving and don’t stop. Use one attacker as a shield against another attacker if you can, or throw him at the others.

Right as you do the mandatory atemi from the static grab, your outer leg should already be up and pointed to the side at 45 degrees as you will be sliding there right away. So, do both at the same time: atmei and raise outer knee up and leg pointing 45 degrees out and back.

Uke is holding your one wrist with two hands; hit him!

Of course that is what we should think, but we atemi instead. So, with your free hand (neglecting footwork for this discussion) atemi to his face. If he is a goof, he will hang on to your wrist and take the hit to the face. Why do we practice like this? It makes no sense. Sensei says that if the atemi hits Uke in the face, he will let go anyway. So, Uke should release one hand to protect his face and leave the other one attached.

If he lets go of his front hand, it becomes kosadori and a kotegaeshi or even a jujinage is tempting to do. If he lets go of his back hand (normal!) then you can work the technique just like a one-handed grab.

If Uke is stiff and refuses to let go, after the atemi you can slide your tegatana down his arm with moderate pressure. The idea is to scrape his radial nerve with your teganata and put constant pressure on it to weaken him on the way to capturing his hand. This is Aikijutsu, though.

This is analogous to the standing version. The initial movement is the same, except you are on your knees (tegatana to his striking wrist, the other hand atemi to his face, and he becomes off-balance).

Your atemi hand quickly darts over your first hand and under the wrist of Uke effectively capturing his dead wrist without grabbing it. This should look like an X block from karate.

You then pivot your body by raising your outer knee, pivoting so there is an instant when both knees are together, then your other knee comes up and you are facing the opposite direction (same direction as Uke is facing). Your inside hand – it should be under Uke‘s wrist now – comes up and grabs the top of his wrist, not hand.

Here is the magical part: instead of keeping Uke‘s hand at your eye level, grab it and pull it to the ground beside your closest leg. Uke should be off-balance quite a bit here. Because you are on your knees, Uke‘s hand should be touching or almost touching the floor(!).

There is no time or power to do another pivot (half tenkan) outside, so you put the kotegaeshi hold on his wrist while it is quite low, then you pivot toward the inside and throw.

Consider this instant in the technique: Nage has a proper grip on Nage’s wrist and elbow, and Uke‘s arm is slightly bent and rolled forward with Nage being slightly behind Uke and about to rotate Uke down.

For the test, the committee wants to see you extend Uke‘s arm a bit forward then draw a generous spiral to the ground behind Uke.

As a variation, if Uke has locked his elbow, or you are thinking to yourself “why not?”, you can simply extend Uke‘s arm and slightly behind him in the direction of his shikaku, or dead angle. He will naturally start to fall backwards and you can continue the ura technique from here as well.

Both start in hidari aihanmi and Nage has his toes up. As Uke comes into strike, Nage lifts his right knee and does an uchitenkan analogously to the tachi version. When Nage’s momentum has ceased (to change directions, for example), both of his knees must be together. There is no sloppy seiza or shikko. Next, just like when standing Nage catches the exhaustion point of the momentum of Uke‘s fist or tegatana, and uses the back of his own right hand (te-no-ko) (and a slight leftwards slide at the same time!) to guide Uke‘s strike hand toward the center between Uke and Nage. Nage can then engage a kotegaeshi lock and throw with a gentle shove in the direction Uke‘s fingers are pointing.

Recently I did a tsuki iriminage on my nikyu pretest that was not the basic version. I slid into and beside Uke with my hands protecting my core and one tegatana into Uke‘s elbow crease and the other on his neck, then cut down as I did a tenkan, then did the throw.

The basic version is stepping back and slightly off the line of attack, capturing the wrist of Uke, then doing kaiten and tenkan, then throwing.

The first version is good for when Uke pulls back his punches (or jabs), and the second version is for when he lunges or is thrusting with a knife to penetrate the midsection (even this is dangerous for Nage as Uke can pull back too and slice Nage’s hand). I just want to be clear that there are more than one version of this.