Goofy-foot parry, hikitaoshi, and tekubiosae

We had another small class last night. Jill and I warmed up, did some ukemi, and got a little farther into tegatana no kata. We've been adding 1-2 new motions to the kata each night and last night we got into the first goofy-foot turn, sometimes called the "helicopter pivot." One possible application for this is to build on our reflex to partly sidestep an attack and block/parry with the opposite arm. Well this is not always a great position - particularly if you happened to sidestep inside, so the helicopter pivot fixes the position by swinging uke's parried arm between uke and tori, placing tori behind.

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We worked on hanasu no kata (wrist releases) getting through 6 of the 8. Jill was doing much better last night of creating mechanically sound ground-paths during the releases (especially #1). For some reason release #3 is uncomfortable for her but she naturally does #5 just right.

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For the technique of the night we worked on hikitaoshi from the point of view of offbalancing, switching hands, and continuing your motion away from uke. We got into the idea of how the technique changes for reluctant vs. aggressive ukes. Aggressive ukes tend to get smeared onto their face, while reluctant ukes getbrushed off into shomenate. Ukes that become too aggressive to deal with get kaiten nage or udehineri.

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At the end we worked on suwari shomenuchi yonkyo (seated head-konk forearm press), also known as tekubi osae. This builds on the idea of the goofy-foot parry from tegatana, a blending loopty into an awkward posture for uke, followed by an immobilization of the arm/shoulder on the ground.