Ian Upstone

I've seen folks who seem to take great delight in causing their uke as much pain as possible and conversly, demonstrating how much pain they can take with wrist locks. All, probably I'm guessing, to demonstrate how very 'martial' they are being.

My personal priority when applying these sort of techniques is that it is tactically sound - i.e. the lock or control buckles ukes structure - they can't get up and can't reach you with their free hand etc.

I'm all for strengthening as form of injury prevention, but strengthening in order to make your techniques more effective? I think it's counter-productive to learning efficient technique. If you want to get through a door, you open it rather than bash it down.