Vassar College Aikido Club

A key point I’ve learned on this trip is that uke must provide a certain amount of realism in his use of tegatana (hand sword). In particular, if you are attacking with it, it should be stiff. If you attack with a limp arm, your “strike” would be ineffective. So to mimic a real attack, your arm should be stiff when you strike (or thrust) with it.

This ends up creating a lot of great kuzushi opportunities for torii. In particular, if uke’s tegatana arm is stiff, it can be used as a lever to break uke’s balance.

Indeed, this is true throughout the atemi waza. For instance, in shomen ate, after being attacked and stepping to the side you should push firmly down on uke’s attacking tegatana arm. If uke is properly keeping a stiff tegatana, it will serve as a lever that will push him off balance (forward and to the right, from his perspective, if he is attacking with his right tegatana). Indeed, your right arm as you push down on uke’s wrist should cut pretty low—nearly down to the level of your own belly button. That gets great kuzushi.

Also, the downward motion is a kiri-kaeshi cut (a diagonal sword cut). It starts from your top right and cuts down at a 45 degree angle towards your left hip. Your tegatana blade should cut right into the thumb-side of uke’s tegatana wrist. That way, the fact that his hand flairs out from the wrist at that point on uke’s arm give you nice little place to apply pressure so that things don’t slide. By coming down at a 45-degree angle, you actually push (from uke’s perspective) forward on the arm as well as pushing it down. Thus, uke is (from his perspective) pulled both forward as well as pushed off to the right. You may even get his torso to rotate.

In ai-gamae ate, your first motion is to push up several inches with your own tegatana. This will raise uke’s tegatana, and make getting to the underside of his arm (to rotate it and pull on it) much easier. This is only possible if uke is keeping a stiff tegatana arm.

In gyaku-gamae ate, if uke has a stiff tegatana arm, you will be able to unbalance him a bit as you push down on it while entering. This helps to set up the ensuing throw which is made by the other arm.

In gedan-ate, the same is true. If uke’s arm is stiff, then you can both pull and push on it at various times in the technique to unbalance uke.

Finally, in ushiro-ate, the first thing you do is cut down with your own tegatana, driving uke’s lower. You can then push on his elbow to turn his torso. But again, here, a stiff tegatana on uke’s part is essential. If uke’s arm is limp when you push on the elbow, only his arm will move (articulating at the shoulder joint). But if his tegatana arm is stiff, you’ll be able to use it as a lever to twist the torso.

I’ve now got the correct handle on what is meant by the word tsukuri. It means everything up to but not including the final throw or pin of an aikido technique. That is, it includes the taisabaki (avoidance) and whatever part of the technique happens to get kuzushi (breaking of balance). All of that is tsukuri.

And that makes sense since the word tsukuri means “making.” All that stuff is the making—the preparation—for the final throw or pin.

At Shodokan, they practice the tsukuri drills in a very good way. Let me tell you about it.

They do them in pairs. Take the shomen ate tsukuri drill for instance. Uke and torii stand at proper distance (ma-ai) or a little more. Uke’s legs are shoulder width apart. And then uke counts out the number one (ichi!).

At that point, torii scoots forward, leading with the same foot and hand, and slides until his tegatana (hand sword) is just below uke’s throat (or, alternatively, you can aim for the chin, so that your palm fits over the chin). Torii comes to a stop, and uke leans back just a little. That way torii can push maybe a couple of inches into the space that uke had been occupying before leaning back. (Doing this much entering means that kuzushi, breaking of balance, was achieved.)

Torii then returns to proper distance and uke shouts out two (ni!) Torii responds by performing the same initial movement to get in and break uke’s balance, but then takes another sliding step forward to throw uke.

So the deal is that on the first count, torii does the tsukuri drill making sure to cover the distance with good form. And then on the second count, torii also does the throw. In this way you never get sloppy like you do if you do ten reps where you only throw uke on the last one.

You also get much better biofeedback doing the drill in pairs in the sense that if you only throw on the tenth, you tend to concentrate on quickly covering the distance rather than preparing to throw. In particular, you get bad at getting kuzushi.

Since the whole purpose of a tsukuri drill is to get you to the point where you can throw, you should be focusing on that. And doing pairs forces you to think about it because on every other iteration you are throwing.

That being said, you don’t have to throw hard. The purpose of the drill is the tsukuri of the technique, the preparation for the throw. So don’t pound away at uke. Indeed, if you get good at the tsukuri, uke will be so off balance by the time that you get to the throw that you won’t have to push very hard at all to get him/her to fall.

You should do the same sort of practice for all the other five atemi-waza tsukuri drills. Uke counts, and then torii moves. On the first count, just to (a slight) kuzushi. On the second count, everything including the throw (but lightly).

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