A couple of weeks ago we were working on our Tai Otoshi in class, and I just didn’t feel like I was hitting it as well as I used to (an opinion not shared by by Uke… the fact that we’re all perhaps a bit hard on ourselves sometimes is the topic for a whole different post soon though.)  So, I went home and started looking at different videos of this move, just to try to pick up tidbits from other people’s styles.

I stumbled across this video (including the video as well as the link, in case anyone has trouble viewing it)

Link to Video

What struck me about this video is the way that David Loshelder uses him elbow in the chest to get his uke moving.

A week or so later we work working on a bit of a non-traditional Osoto Gari… Not so much of a backward Kuzushi, but more at a 45 degree angle, or even straight off to the side (hope you can envision that.)  Normally, my right hand, holding the collar, would have moved up, almost like I was going to punch into the neck of my uke.  Sensei Hermosillo (at Hidden Valley) showed us how to really slam the elbow into the chest while holding the collar to get the kizushi moving.  I was shocked how well this worked.

I plan on playing a bit more with the use of the elbow in coming weeks, as I found it added a lot of additional power to my osoto gari.

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