Kaze Uta Budo Kai Forum Archive

There's been a little bit of discussion regarding uchi mata lately.

Here's what Bob Rea posted on the Karl Geis forums. Bob was the captain of Karl's Judo team for many years and is an incredible technician.

I've studied uchi-mata for many years. There are many ways to set up, enter, and execute the throw. Most require a tremendous amount of strength and power. My favorite recollection was when one of my beginning instructors, Hideo Sugita, was standing between myself and one of my friends of youth John Campbell and Mr. Sugita wanted to show a no handed uchi-mata. Fortunatly for me he chose John for the demo. Poor John landed so hard and was not real comfortable with what happened that he did not want a repeat of the throw.

Uchi-mata is the sister throw of Okuri ashi harai just as ashi guruma is the sister throw of hiza guruma. Uke's motion for uchi-mata is the same as stepping for the double foot sweep in a circular motion. ie. the kata version of uchi-mata. The timing of uchi-mata happens when uke steps with the left foot to the side or in a circle. As uke crosses the plane of body rise into body fall is when tori must have entered to be in position for the throw to occur. If tori enters at that time then the throw will not allow uke to step onto the floor with the left step. The foot of uke will float into the air bringing uke's right foot with the throw. The circular fall will then ensue and uke will land flat slightly behind tori since uke's motion is moving in that direction. (throw uke in the direction they are moving.) At body rise uke is weightless and since uke is stepping in that direction then tori should be throwing uke in that direction. I prefer to attack uke on my entry with the front corner of my thigh. As uke continues their step toward the left then my entry allows uke to rotate on my thigh and around to the real as in an O-uchi. If this is getting complicated that's because it is. It is a one legged throw that happens on the move with a specific time and place for body position and entry.

I plan to be and the clinic in OKcity and if time permits will present to you this version of uchimata. There are also other versions that I like and teach. One I learned from the Venezualan olympic wrestling coach who was a yodan in judo (japanese kodokan) which is an o-uchi-mata and another I learned from Hachiro Oishi (another wrestler/judo player who was an all japan high school judo champion). Hachiro threw a ko-uchi-mata that worked really well since he was only 136 pounds and quite short in body size.

Timing is almost everything. You still have to be in the right place at the right time with the right body position. When your moving in randori and your brain says that would have been good uchi-mata and your body says oops...too late. You know you're on the right track.

I hope the helps.

Bob is talking like he will be in town for clinic, so there is a good possibility he will be discussing the above with folks.

I wasn't around when Bob showed folks how to do what he was talking about, but I wish I was. For me (being a visual person, I guess), it's hard to make sense of it all based on words alone. It would've been nice to see Bob actually do it, but alas. And it would be nice see someone do it who saw Bob do it, but I can't seem to ever make any other judo classes. Every video I can find online looks to me like people are actually doing a version of hani goshi.

I don't suppose anyone knows of a decent video example out there I could check out?

Here's something I experimented with and pretty good success with.

Begin by setting up okuri-ashi-harai as you normally do. I typically use my left leg for the sweep. Go through all the phases of the throw like normal, just don't touch uke's foot. Rather, step with them like we're doing in some of the Aikido footsweep stuff.

Now, repeat on the other side. This gets me moving in the right timing with uke. I was a little more successful with this after drilling it on the other side, rather than jumping straight into doing a throw on the wrong side (for me anyway).

Now, after several tries with okuri-ashi-harai, make the same actions. I then used my hands to extend uke slightly, sort of like we would do with tai-otoshi. You can actually throw tai-otoshi here, but that's a different story. Use the hands only to extend and control uke. I stepped slightly into uke. You can add an intentional bump with his center, like Dr. Clif Norgaard does with his ouchi-gari. The right leg action was really icing on the cake.... there were several times it wasn't even necessary to affect the throw.

Hope this helps.