A helpful handful: 5 ways to improve your ude hineri

A.K.A. kaitennage in aikikai, A.K.A. udegarame in judo. A.K.A. hammerlock in wrestling. A.K.A. Kimura in BJJ. This is a pretty universal arm-twisting technique found in most all martial arts. Here are a handful of hints that have helped me in my practice.

• Put the free hand on his back and coil the moving arm around it. This is the simplest way of getting this lock when you're in motion without twisting and fighting and snaking your arm around his.


• You might slip out of the way as uke comes at you and throw it as kaitennage. I like to do this one pushing forward through uke in an otoshi motion instead of rotating the shoulder toward the head. This prevents those pesky double-jointed people from screwing up your kaitennage.


• This technique is nice and safe when the locked arm is bound to uke’s side, but as you get uke’s arm away from his body tori gets more and more mechanical advantage on the rotator cuff. Be extra careful when practicing this one – uke, don’t think you can resist in this position - go with it and take the roll/fall.


• An interesting variation is to set the udehineri, then sit on uke’s near foot, hooking his thigh and throwing with a wrong-side sumigaeshi or elevator-like technique. Roll with uke and end up on top with a Kimura. Again – scary and dangerous – but a good backup if the attacker runs over you and you can’t get out of the way for kaitennage.


• Hikitaoshi gone bad tends to lead to udehineri, which often ends up in kotegaeshi if it goes bad.