Another rule: When Uke grabs your jo for jodori you should never let go of your jo. Principle: try to gain decent leverage.

Shirakawa Sensei was the second person to blow my mind away with something simple in jo causing me to ask myself, “Can we do that?”. When I did jodori with T a few weeks back he slid one hand further down his jo causing himself to have more leverage so he did less work to move me. Shirakawa Sensei wanted to use even less energy so he created more leverage by sliding his hand over Uke‘s hand and re-grabbed the jo between Uke‘s hands.

Was that leagal?? Then I asked myself, “How come I am still asking myself if some move is legal or not?” Trying to free my mind here by abandoning rules and adopting principles.

Shirakawa Sensei then made a point above leverage, and that if Uke has more jo than I do, how can I move him?

A principle I noticed by three shihans was to create a pivot about just one axis before pivoting. If an axis of rotation is bent then it is like trying to move in two axes at the same time when it is more efficient to move about one axis only. On the kaiten, Tori does not push the jo upward, rather he readjusts his leverage to cause the jo to go perfectly vertical so there is only the Z-axis to rotate about. He then enters deeply through a window he has created, turns, then throws Uke with his leverage.

This can also be shihonage depending on the turn.

Again, Shirakawa Sensei’s point was to not struggle with Uke‘s power. I starred this a few times in my notes – one star for every time he mentioned it in his session.