Menu of Resistance

It's very encouraging. I see that more and more Bujinkan practitioners are growing in their
understanding of the Tori-Uke method of training. It used to be that many people thought it meant
compliant training, basically being jelly so that your partner doesn't need to get the technique correct in
every aspect before it works. Cooperation does not necessarily mean compliance, and these days
teachers are encouraging their students to give each other increasing levels of resistance so that we
grow in our understanding of how to make things work.

And that is great!

However, we still have to give some thought and guidelines into this. The last thing we need is to have a
class descend into chaos, or students injuring each other (or themselves) because they don't actually
have a clue as to what they are doing. So for the reference of other teachers, here is a menu of options a
student can use to raise the level of resistance we train to deal with.

maintain kamae - if the partner does not deliberately disrupt our structure before attempting the
technique, then we just keep our kamae on. Many techniques will fail just at this point alone.

use the other arm - if the partner tries a technique on one arm but stays in range of the other, use the
other hand to tap him on the shoulder. This is a good reminder to get the distance and angling correct.

step - if you are pulled forward or pushed back too strongly, step to regain your balance. But please step
appropriately. Don't step into a position where you can get our arm broken within seconds.

Changing angles - sometimes it just takes a small change in angle to not only make the technique useless
but also begin your own counter.

Antagonistic force - if you pull on one arm, your partner tries to pull that arm back. If you push him
backward he steps forward. That's the general idea. Please don't try this one, or ANY of these ideas, for
that matter, unless you really know what you are doing or your teacher has instructed you to do so.

IMPORTANT - what keeps this from becoming a free-for-all? Providing for your training partner just ONE
type of resistance, just one move, just one factor, for him or her to deal with. And keep it the same until
the teacher tells you to move on or until your partner understands how to deal with things.

Be especially wary of stepping or changing angles. Do so only with the teacher's permission. Don't get
creative, you may just break your own arm, or you may just keep your partner from getting the whole
point of the teacher's teaching.

Example - Sometime back I attended a class that was working on Renyo, among other kata. One of the
key points was flipping the gyaku, going from ura gyaku to omote gyaku. The teacher isolated that
aspect and had us all working on it.

Tori ura gyaku, Uke steps to neutralize it;

Tori flips to omote gyaku, Uke steps a different way to neutralize it.

Tori then flips back to ura gyaku, and the whole cycle repeats.

I was paired up with a judoka who would rather do judo than what was taught (why did he turn up for
the class then? I don't really know). Instead of stepping to deal with the ura gyaku, he quickly retracted
the grabbing hand and grabbed with the other. He could step to deal with omote gyaku easily, but he
just kept changing his grabbing hand whenever I did ura gyaku.

To be honest, I was getting pissed off, almost to the point of using an ura shuto instead. I felt as if he was
just trying to embarrass me in front of someone else's class. I could have wrenched out his shoulder with
a vicious onikudaki (start the technique, let him step and twist the wrong way, and just when he thinks
he has escaped, I use a Shinden Fudo Ryu approach to destroy the shoulder), but that would have made
ME the aggressor, guilty of deliberately causing hurt. And it wasn't justified, yet. Thank God I managed
to keep my temper!

In the end I went for a big onikudaki to turn his elbow one direction, and when he twisted his elbow up
in a huge movement to escape my huge movement, I captured that into a Te Makura throw. It seems
that most judoka aren't really that familiar with that one. That ended that round, we swapped roles and
I kept my resistance to the gyaku to just stepping, as per the teacher's instructions.

Yes, I am fifth dan and STILL follow a teacher's instructions. Why? Because, maybe, just maybe, I don't
know everything there is to know? Or even if I did, I should be following instructions anyway to help my
partner train, right?

The important point - the teacher is in charge of introducing all these different forms of resistance. If
you want to try any of these out, check with your teacher first.

For us teachers, we need to always be aware that every one of our kihon waza leads to a number of
predictable responses, and has certain inherent vulnerabilities. If we want our students to be capable of
providing intelligent resistance, we have to look out for these ourselves and teach them to our students.
Sometimes resistance is about making use of mistakes, such as an ura shuto done at the wrong distance.
Sometimes resistance comes from countering, such as a cross punch when people step in with an omote
shuto.

The point is that we need to be aware of the core of each technique. For me, omote gyaku is about
moving the opponent's wrist away from the hip. Onikudaki and musha dori are about drawing a circle
with the opponent's elbow, and there are ways to both do that better and to counter it. When you take
this approach to everything you teach, you

https://shunketsu.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/digging-deep-into-ganseki-nage/

1) Going the opposite direction – when you pull back with your right arm (on his left), he pulls
back. If he is stronger than you, you can just step in with his pull and ganseki nage his right arm
(which will often be extended nicely for you).
2) Firming up – either his kamae is strong and you cannot pull him back, or he tenses up his
body and you are not able to move it. Doesn’t matter. If you can sense that his body coordination
isn’t on par with yours, you can hit him a few times and see if that whacks the tension out of
him. If you can sense that his coordination is there, that attempting to strike him will only get
you countered (painfully). In that case, you can only just wait for him to attack and try to seize
the opportunities that will come up.

When your opponent has decent kamae, you may not be able to move him to the ideal angle for
ganseki nage. You can either move yourself into the ideal angle for ganseki nage, since you
cannot move him into place quickly enough, or if his leg, the one nearer to you, is in the right
place, then go for uchi mata. My kamae is quite decent, so when my students attack my arm for
ganseki nage, they would move my rear leg (decent integration between my arm and leg). My
front leg would remain in place, and that makes it convenient for them to uchi mata.

3) Escape – the ganseki nage is not complete until the opponent is thrown over the leg. If
someone is trying to use ganseki nage on you, one of the easiest ways to escape is to go into
hicho no kamae to keep yourself from being thrown over the leg. And from there you can
proceed with a ura gyaku type of lock or throw.

4) Complementary Counter – ganseki nage and musha dori have a complementary relationship.
When you attempt to ganseki nage your opponent, you are moving your arm to where your
opponent can musha dori you. Who wins? The one who has better kamae and better
coordination, better integration.