BONE LOCKING

Aihanmi katate dori irimi tenkan is generalized to the R/R, L/L relationship: a cross hand grab. The grab starts from the premise of an opponent approaching with the same dominate hand. Think weapons – this is a quick flow entry, with a cut over lead then passing to the outside line (kiri kaeshi).

The kihon exercise is your key to understanding the concept.

From the cross-hand index – the grasped hand cuts over uke’s grabbing hand with a circular dissolve that targets uke’s forward leg. Put a weapon in your grasped hand to understand the budo. Freeing your grasped hand will simultaneously put uke’s forward hand back toward their center line. You have passed to the outside line. This is the higher concept – see the lines of entry. The irimi entry gains position and the snap turn of the feet allows the replacement of nage’s back hand to control uke. With the tenkan, nage now controls uke in a gyaku hanmi relationship (R/L, L/R indexing).

Understand this as a concept and its potential expands.

Kihon level – as typically taught, from contact, one learns the escape from a grasp. Nage learns the bio-mechanics of the release: present the palm angled up – providing uke the thicker part of the wrist to grasp. Then employ rokyu-kokyu action to begin the cut-over:  Pull your thumb toward your center which pushes the base of your palm forward, allowing the shyuto (lead by the little finger) to lift vertical, then over and down to execute the cut-over. The action is limited to the hand at this level with the elbow and shoulder relaxed to avoid the temptation to use strength or greater range of motion to effect the release.

Circular dissolve – from motion, the action of the release must still happen but the conical action that starts at your fingers now continues to articulate the forearm. In a sword action this is a dissolve into a thrust. With this understanding uke is advancing with a mid-level (chudan) attack – not simply trying to grab your wrist. This is now a dynamic rather than static encounter. Uke attacks and nage executes a circular parry-riposte and then a passing turn. Find the cognates in Maistre Selberg’s fencing as well as Master Keating’s djurus.

Replacement – after effecting the escape, dissolve, to then make the turning pass (tenkan) a controlling contact, then nage must change hands at the point of contact – changing the relationship from ai-hanmi to gyaku-hanmi. To make this change deftly nage needs have a clear point of contact (the axis of the encounter) and must know how to break plane to transfer weight down without using shoulder strength. Tanren geiko – train to deploy weight, breath and balance: keep yours to disrupt your opponent’s. Hand replacement is a two-beat entry and therefore requires greater skill than our opponent: nage must execute two moves in a given time span to uke’s one action. This can only be accomplished by (1) being faster – i.e., executing moves quicker (2) using atemi – a hit that effectively buys you time (3) having a superior understanding of time and tempo: in short being more skilled because nage is either ahead of or breaks uke’s OODA loop.

While in this development sequence hand replacement is used to keep contact and gain positional advantage (nage has moved parallel to but slightly behind uke’s flank), a direct entry will use hand replacement to climb to uke’s line. Think chain boxing or limb destruction to reach uke’s highline. Techniques that could employ this direct replacement – aihanmi irimi nage (direct) and kokyuho (direct).

Belaboring the basic exercise is important because all subsequent actions are predicated on nage having achieved the entry. By being parallel and outside uke’s original line, nage now has two hand available to uke’s one. Therefore, exploit the advantage through bone-locking.

Bone-locking is intentionally dramatic label for the joint control that must happen once nage achieves position at uke’s flank. Given an original RvR contact, nage extracts, dissolves, enters and passes to achieve a RvL replacement at the axis. At a very high level, controlling the axis (the point connection) is the goal. For this lesson, we are focused on the bio-mechanics of control. By momentarily controlling the axis with the left hand, nage uses his right hand to regain control of uke’s right hand. Grasping uke’s hand from the top, nage envelopes uke’s thumb and with rotational force starts a twisting lock that should compress the small bones of the hand, then the wrist which will compel uke’s elbow to rotate parallel to the ground pointing toward uke’s centerline. This will cause uke’s hip to cant toward nage. Small bones leading to large bones in sequential locking control. At the higher levels of blending, nage achieves this enhanced positional advantage through ‘invitation’ which is a leading action that causes uke to move past their intended position: truly superior time.

From the lock any number of techniques or options present themselves. With nage in the R/R or L/L position, the opposite hand is free to execute kokyu-ho. The geometry of the entry is a strike – the free hand executes a punch to the jaw to snap uke’s head to the side (along the opposite vector of uke’s locked arm). Nage then enters for the throw by following the strike which is delivered along the tangent of the circle. Furthermore, as a breath-throw, kokyu-ho requires that the breath be pressed low into the abdomen so that the abdominals are muscularly engaged during the throw. Nage remains on the exterior line for this option.

Decrease the levers and locks by making this a sword technique and the blade capture, passing raise to a flowing jodan cut and the power of kokyu-ho becomes dramatic.

But the compelling action to focus on for this investigation is the bone-lock where uke’s arm is at chudan level. Kokyu-ho is outside line, high gate (nage’s arm goes over the trapped arm). Udekimi-nage is outside line, low gate (nage’s arm goes under the trapped arm). Shihonage is outside line to inside line, low gate. Irimi-nage can be done on either the outside line or as a split entry. Moving both hands under the low gate, one can slip to grasp the back of uke’s head (kubishimi) for a gravity throw – this can be done as a split entry or a double inside. Another alternate is to slide the lower body in simultaneously as koshinage. Many possible responses from a simple entry.

From one thing, know ten thousand things, M.M.