Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Magic of Tokui Waza

Last night we discovered my student's tokui waza. Tokui waza isn't necessarily your favorite technique (it can be), but it is your best technique. The one that for some reason your body type, size, and subconscious just gets and you can do it consistently. Marina's is kote hineri. She's the only person I know who has trouble with kote gaeshi but can hit kote hineri almost anywhere. My wrists are sore for the first time in a while. At the end of class we did a little free form movement exercise and she got a beautiful kote hineri like motion from just above my wrist on the forearm. It always surprises me exactly what techniques turn out to be people's tokui waza. For me, it was the one I had the MOST trouble with at first, Gedan ate, until Bryce did it to me at random a hundred times a day. Rob had a really good off balance which almost always resulted in ushiro ate. I don't get a chance to practice with Andy enough to know his tokui waza, and I think every move Pat does is his tokui waza. Anyone feel like sharing their best technique here?

3 comments:

Patrick Parker said...

"I think every move Pat does is his tokui waza."

Interesting analysis ;-)

Lately, some of my favorites have been gedanate (an evil variant), oshitaoshi, and kotegaeshi.

Sorta reminds me of the line from Monty Python's Inquisition skit...
"Our chief weapon is surprise...

surprise and fear...
fear and surprise....
Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency....
Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...
and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope....

Our *four*...
no...

*Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... "

Bryce Lumpkin said...

i would say steak... what were we talking about?

Unknown said...

Hey, John. My name Sean Ashby, I'm over at Windsong Dojo in Oklahoma City. Kyle Sloan pointed out a few few bloggers on the forum so I'm just cruising around checking out other folks' sites.

As for tokui waza, for me, it actually changes over time. I may snag one technique right and left for a while, but then it's something else.

But I know gyakugamae ate is a favorite with a lot of folks. Lately, I've started to find a bunch of variations of kote gaeshi pretty easily (converging/diverging, different hand positions, tenkai kote gaeshi, etc.) And I've been exploring some of the ways traditional Ueshiba guys do aiki nage (irimi nage to most of them) with some nice results.