Seoinage is certainly not my tokuiwaza (best, favorite throw), but here is a handful of good pointers that I work on to try to get better...
Make sure that when you turn in, your knees are well bent, placing your center way under theirs. You will often want to make sure your feet are closer than hip-width apart and between his feet. Watch the efficiency of the master’s footwork in the first video above.
To make a good time to enter, bump uke when he puts a foot down then use the recoil off the bump to turn in. Watch the bump and turn-in on the second video above.
You might try thinking about that bump as pushing yourself backward off of uke, as if to disengage. Then, when uke does not allow you to disengage (that is an attack on his part), turn in and throw. You just tricked him into attacking you so that your throw is easier.
Try the same trick from an outside cross grip, as if uke reached for a grip and tori executed aikido release #1 or #3, ending up holding the near arm down and out and holding the back collar with the other hand. From here, bump and turn in.
Uke, if you can slide around this entry and crush tori onto his hands and knees you will be set for koshijime(A.K.A. clock choke), among other things.
Shihonage (lit. ‘four-directions throw’ or more loosely, ‘all-directions throw’) is the first of the ‘Six Pillars of Aikido' (shihonage, iriminage, kaitennage, kokyunage, osaekomi, ushirowaza). This technique is very common across most martial arts. Here are a handful of hints I’ve found helpful in working on shihonage.
Work your way through the name of the thing. Work on finding ways you can throw this thing in every direction.
Do it part of the time with only one hand and part of the time with only the other hand – like #6 and #8 in Hanasu no Kata. Practicing this with only one hand makes you move your body thru the right arc or you lose it. Don’t cheat by learning shihonage with the illusion of control afforded by using both hands.
If it goes bad toward the beginning, try flowing into maeotoshi or sumiotoshi. If it goes bad toward the end, try flowing into aikinage (A.K.A. iriminage) or ushiroate.
We use a crash pad when we practice binding the arm and throwing forward (i.e. hijikime) or when we set it up then step under the arm from the outside to the inside for a floating throw. These are severe falls and represent a severe risk to the shoulder if there is anything wrong with the ukemi.
Going back to the name, consider Beth Shibata’s article in which she suggests that it might be more appropriate for learning purposes to call the thing the 'all-directions release' instead of the 'all-directions throw'. How does what you call the thing affect your execution of it?
Called sokumen irimi in aikikai, or perhaps parting wild horse’s mane or slanted flying or single whip in Chinese (i.e. taichi) terminology, gyakugamae is one of the three fundamental forms of atemi taught early in Tomiki aikido. Here are a handful of hints I try to keep in mind in my practice.
If you do this technique as a strike, you may or may not do enough damage to end the fight but your hand will recoil off his face and you’ll have to find him again to push him down. This is what you see in the stick version of gyakugamaeate in goshinjitsu in judo – a strike, then reacquire the face, lay the hand on, and throw. Instead of striking and recoiling, lay your hand on him and push instead of hitting.
Drape a bent wrist around the bridge of his nose like a pair of sunglasses and push. This obstructs his vision, is disorienting, and is a good pushing position.
Be sure to push forward through uke by dropping your center forward onto him. Don’t throw by pushing sideways.
Try the gyakugamaeate that you see in Gokata – I have found this more generally useful lately. Enter to the inside, as if for shomenate but wrong-side forward, strike the face with the hand nearest uke, and push yourself off of uke to get back to maai.
Alternates might include pulling the hair backward instead of striking/pushing the face – or perhaps pushing the philtrum under the nose – but this is not as good because you don’t get the startle associated with attacking the eyes.
Over the past 23 or so years I have studied taekwando, karate, judo, aikido, hapkido, and jujitsu and I can honestly say that of the martial arts I have experienced, aikido appears to me to be the best self defense there is. The following are a handful of aspects of aikido that I think make it particularly suitable for self-protection purposes.
Ukemi – the art of falling safely – particularly the simple side fall and the forward roll. Proper reflexive falling skills will likely save you from many more hazards during your lifetime than any other martial arts technique or skill. Check here for a collection of good articles on proper falling.
Evasion and the aiki brush-off – the ability to efficiently get out of the way of an incoming force and push the opponent off of you or push yourself off of the opponent. This is the fundamental skill in aikido, practiced in every class as the foundation of every technique. To read more about the aiki brush-off, check out this article.
Shomenate and aigamaeate – the first two striking techniques taught. These make wonderful strikes, separators, and set-ups for other techniques. We have acid tested these two techniques in resistive, fast, relentless knife randori (free play) and found them to be the simplest, most effective techniques in the syllabus. Here are a couple of good articles about shomenate and aigamaeate.
Karl’s “Shirai system of defensive groundwork.” One of the common complaints about aikido is that there is no groundwork (See Rafeh’s comment here). This is not true. In all aikido there is suwariwaza, which is a limited form of groundwork, but in Fugakukai aikido, Karl has given us a wonderful defensive groundwork system for aikidoka which I have personally seen proven outstandingly effective in combat in the street with a single aikidoka against multiple attackers.
Re-calibrating hyperactive reflexes so that you don’t make your situation worse through spastic motion when you are surprised. This is sort of a surprise, or side effect of aikido training. The aikido learning method tends to make your reflexes less spastic so that your reflexive movement is much more efficient and effective. Here you can read about a practice that showed this aspect pretty well.
A couple of days ago, John asked about potential applications for the last movement (yoko o mawashi) in our first exercise (Tegatana no kata). Following are a handful of applications or things that this last movement teaches - but not before a disclaimer. I consider this exercise to be very general-purpose. This movement, or something similar could occur in many techniques.
As John pointed out, all the steps in this kata are very small, conservative motions, so, in contrast, this large, lunging motion teaches us what a large recovery is involved with a large step
You may also consider this as a withdrawing evasion (like a retreating tenkanashi) getting the hands up on the centerline. You may not step that deep, but in essence yoko o mawashi is a specific type of aiki brush-off.
You may also interpret this motion as pushing uke down: an evasion with some degree of turning motion, dropping, and pushing uke into offbalance - taking an incoming opponent and driving them into the ground.
As for specific techniques, you may see this type of motion as a kotegaeshi. As uke punches, tori evades with a retreating tenkanashi, grasps the arm, and returns back to the starting point, throwing with a gaeshi.
You could also call it aigamaeate or aikinage - retreating tenkanashi scooping the arm and head in an arc, then turning the other way attacking the face.
I have previously published a list of 100 terrific things to try when practicing our first footwork exercise, Tegatana no Kata. I have also published some video (I know it’s not very good video) of the exercise here and here. Following is some elaboration on a handful of helpful hints that we have been working on most recently.
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You want to be weight-bearing on the balls of the feet. Specifically the balls of the two most medial toes of each foot (the big toe and the second toe). The heel and the outside of the foot is slightly brushing the ground and helping you to balance on the two long, strong levers on the medial side of the foot. If you try weightbearing on the outside of the foot you will lose power and you will notice a tendency to roll the ankle outward, which is practically the only way that it is possible to sprain the ankle.
You are trying for a dynamic posture that is balanced around a central norm of shizentai, that is, a normal, upright posture. Your feet should be slightly closer than shoulder-width and heel-toe alignment, head over shoulders over hips over balls of feet. Notice that you cannot easily attain this natural upright posture if you stand on your heels – everything on up the chain gets out of whack. If you imagine some force drawing the crown of your head up, stretching your body out between your head and the balls of your feet then you will rock forward onto the balls of the feet and the rest of the body will tend to release into shizentai.
Take small, conservative steps – no greater than the width of your stance (width of your hips). This minimizes rocking and bobbling and reduces the amount of recovery needed after each step, making your motion faster and more efficient.
Your steps should be gravity-powered; falling instead of stepping. Concentrate on a feeling of your center dropping toward the center of the Earth during the first half of the step, then concentrate on pulling with the new weight-bearing leg and tightening the thighs together to recover from the step.
And one more hint, hopefully helpful, that I don’t think made my first list. Check out the following video and watch carefully the alignment of the hips, knee, and foot during the turns. I’ve been preaching this more explicitly for the past several classes and these ideas make a difference in strength and stability during the turns.
Consider the similarities between aigamaeate and aikinage (known in aikikai as iriminage). They are really the same technique - or perhaps you could say that aigamaeate is a form of iriminage. Here is a handful of helpful hints - some of the things I work with my students on.
Often in practice, aigamaeate is done as a more direct entry and abrupt atemi, whereas aikinage seems more flowing and roundabout, but either technique can be done either way. Try aigamaeate from a backing-around situation when uke interrupts your tenkan and tries to turn back in on you.
Because aigamaeate and aikinage are about the same thing, all the helpful handful for aikinage apply to aigamaeate too.
Where there two techniques really diverge is in the relative height of tori as compared to uke. A taller tori will often find it easier to strike over uke’s arm, while a shorter tori will strike under uke’s arm. Takng a palm to the chin from a short tori sliding upward along your body can be one of the worst experiences ever.
Aigamaeate happens abruptly and effectively when someone is trying tori out using snappy lead jabs and testing feints. If you see 1-2 testing jabs, get ready for another one and follow it back into uke with an atemi of your own.
Another fundamental version of aigamaeate is in response to a jo thrust – slip out of the way moving forward and outside the strike and clothesline or better yet, palm uke to the face while blocking and taking the jo with the other hand.
One of the characteristic things about aikido is the practice of working with techniques in which both partners are kneeling (suwariwaza) or with the defender kneeling and the attacker standing (hammi handachi). This makes movement more difficult and offers very direct examples of various principles with generally low-amplitude falls. It also makes your hips and legs stronger and more flexible. This handful of helpful hints is about the practice of suwariwaza as a whole rather than being about one particular technique.
Watch Doshu in the above video to understand the awesome potential for kneeling movement (starting at about 2 minutes). You usually think of kneeling as being less mobile, but this is a remarkable example of mobility and flow. This is also a good demo of suwari.
To get better at doing aikido on your knees, play with both structured techniques (suwariwaza) and freeform pushing (kokyuho). Play with throwing into a pin as opposed to continuous throwing (juntai).
Do groundwork randori (judo or BJJ rules) at different intensities all the way from scratching-and-scrambling anaerobic newaza randori to light-and-compliant flow. Skill in standing work (tachiwaza) and ground work (newaza) both carry over into skill in suwariwaza.
Suwariwaza is a good opportunity to play with the Kito principle. Define an acceptable level of effort in your mind and gauge every push against that standard. If you can’t effect the technique with less than that level of force then try something something else at 90 or 180 degrees to that initial force. I like to think of this as “pinging” uke and then using arms as “feelers” to gauge the resistance. A good example of this is kneeling shoulder-push sumiotoshi paired with a “Japanese pass” arm snapdown onto uke’s belly.
If you are doing your structured suwariwaza practice using the Tomiki kata set, don’t forget katamenokata and especially kimenokata from judo. These are different ways of doing the same things and the things in kimenokata back up the suwariwaza in Sankata (for instance) very well.
This is really the thing that aikikai guys call iriminage. Here are a handful of things that I've played with on this technique.
This technique contains two tenkan motions and sorta describes a yin-yang shape on the floor. Either of the tenkan motions might cause uke to fall. In fact, in aiki demos you often tori throw uke facefirst into the ground and uke pops back up as tori switches directions and clobbers uke.
Think of the hook around the head as a feeler instead of an end-effector. If you pull hard with the head-hand then you can spoil the technique and give uke stability.
Try throwing with a tenkan motion back into the front of uke's hips instead of a clothesline.
Try throwing with a palm to the face, like aigamaeate. This is a much better small-tori technique than the clothesline.
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.
The first of the 'black belt techniques' in our syllabus, kubiguruma exemplifies a new type of motion not seen in the previous fundamentals kata. Following are five faithful pointers that have helped me.
Anything named guruma in this system is done with a slightly later timing that things named otoshi. Otoshi happens right as uke steps down onto a foot but guruma happens an instant later as uke tries to rise from the preceding otoshi.
Guruma is also a spinning action whereas otoshi is a straight action. Define an axis from the crown of the head through the center of mass to the lead foot and turn uke around this vertical axis.
Try this as a followup to the second movement in yonkata – the inside gyakugamae release. Bump the wrist as uke steps down with the front foot then, holding the wrist and the neck, back around drawing uke down a line perpendicular to his stance line.
If you can only get a partial guruma action around that vertical axis, but can’t get uke to fall, osotogari makes a great backup technique. Do the guruma then pull in and clip the leg. Osotogari is roughly equivalent to aikikai’s tenchinage, so tenchinage also pops up in this situation a lot.
Guruma is a very versatile action. You can try this thing with uke leaping/punching at tori, with uke grabbing one wrist (gyakugamae posture) or from a two-wrist grab.
Here is a handful of thoughts about the fourth technique in the fundamentals kata, gedanate, which name means 'lower body strike.'
Musashi claimed to be able to throw people 10-20 feet and kill them with this technique. Are you to that point in your training yet? No? Keep practicing, Grasshopper!
Gedanate is the Tomiki aikido name for the judo technique called sukuinage. In normal practice in aikido you don’t grab his legs, but you can. If tori happens to fall with uke during gedanate then it resembles the judo throw called taniotoshi.
If you are throwing uke over your forward leg to land behind you then you are using your weak back rotator muscles. Try getting this technique to work lunging forward through uke with a dropping motion like an otoshi throw – and with no over-the-leg rotation.
Don’t hold uke up with the hand that is controlling his wrist. Sometimes it can make for a dramatically effective throw if you just carelessly toss uke’s arm over your shoulder behind you instead of hanging onto his wrist.
Your first thought is to attack the face (which you might call jodan ate) but if anything prevents that you can still attack the lower body (gedan ate). For the purposes of this technique, you can consider lower body anything below the face. So, try pushing him off with an elbow to the ribs. Or keep in mind that you can step on his near knee or foot for a dramatic offbalance. Attacking anything lower than jodan (essentially face) can be considered gedan.
Here are a few hints I hold in my hat when I'm teaching wakigatame. Hope they help y'all too.
Wakigatame is really the same thing as gokyo in aikikai – but the basic form that is commonly practiced looks different. In Tomiki and in Judo, the gokyo relationship is called wakigatame. This thing is superficially similar to ikkyo (oshitaoshi) but the hand grip is different (one hand over and one hand under).
The first version we were taught was a “look ma, no hands” version in which the wrist is trapped in the crook of the elbow and the upper arm trapped under the other armpit with the elbow turned backwards across tori’s chest. This gives tori a little less control but leaves both hands free to do other things.
When you try a variation more similar to the basic gokyo, try to get your hands on his arm (under the wrist and over the elbow) as if you were holding a jo, then maneuver your body in behind your hands and stab his arm forward in the direction his arm is pointing as if his arm were a jo.
Try it with both hands on the wrist and your top elbow controlling his elbow. This elbow-to elbow wakigatame is an abrupt submission.
If wakigatame goes bad, it tends to lead into kotegaeshi, gyakugamaeate, or gedanate.
Here are a handful of (hopefully helpful) hints for ushiroate. Five things I've noticed. Maybe you have too or maybe you can get something from them.
On the entry, I often get the feeling of crawling up uke’s arm to his shoulder. Right hand controls uke’s right wrist, left hand controls uke’s elbow, right hand switches to uke’s right shoulder, left hand switches to uke’s left shoulder.
If you put your right hand on the front of uke’s right shoulder as you pass him, your momentum and the connection will slingshot you around him into position for ushiroate. The feeling is similar to that of skating around a post holding on with one hand.
We talk about grabbing uke’s shoulders to throw him down but shoulders are too easy to slip off of. A better contact happens when you put the entire palm of the hand one uke’s upper chest near his neck.
If ushiroate does not throw uke down, let your momentum slingshot you around him and center on him with a push to the front of the shoulder to separate you and perhaps throw him backwards.
Try this technique as in the Sankata tantodori. As you pass on his right side, hook his far (left) shoulder and push off of it. This adds to your separation momentum and it may spin him into a backfall.
Everybody who does Tomiki aikido or one of the Tomiki derivatives knows shomenate. It’s one of the first things taught, and it can rightfully be considered the foundational basis of virtually everything that comes after it. Shomenate is the essence of irimi. Here is a handful of helpful hints to get a little bit of extra mileage out of your shomenate.
Get your distance right. You want this thing to be a mental shock to his system. You don’t get a good surprise reaction if he sees it coming from a couple of feet away. You want to be at arm’s length from his face at the end of the first step.
Play with this technique with the idea of pushing yourself off of uke instead of pushing uke down backwards. Think of uke as a sprinter’s starting block to push off of. This will shorten the energy transfer between tori and uke and will help tori to get back outside ma-ai more quickly, even if it doesn’t knock uke down.
It helps for tori to cultivate the attitude, “He is going to go backwards no matter what. Hit me, cut me, whatever… he’ll do in moving away from me.”
It is more effective to bump uke’s lead arm with a straight arm as you evade just shorter than arms-length than to step aside and chop uke’s arm. Let uke feel the entire weight of your body through your unbendable arm and let that bump him into offbalance.
Tomiki reportedly said of his aikido, “None of this stuff works unless you do shomenate first,” so, try shomenate as an entry to other techniques. For instance, enter, grasp the arm, push off the face and keep your momentum going until you hit the end of his reach. Then turn into shihonage or snap him past you into ushiroate.
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