Erick Mead

See, this is an example of the misleading nature of your terminology -- specifically, "ground." (I don't mean you personally, but the conceptual image is disconnected from the reality.)

Mifune can in no way be using "ground" when he is literally disconnected from it. It is not just gravity, either. He is plainly using active control of his momentum and the moment of his body, in one case curling the leg under to allow a counter-moment on the top of the throw, and in another arcing his legs actively back and up to increase counter moment in the throw, and create shear at the connection.

Ain't no ground. What you mean as "ground" is defining a moment or angular momentum in relation to it -- but that is merely a convenient reference -- not the active principle in the action. It's like saying that lift is generated by a speed with a certain angle with respect to the plane of the "ground." In many cases it is so, but that reference is violated when updrafts or downdrafts are present, and if using a pure ground reference you can easily stall and fall out of the sky. Attitude with respect to the ground may be convenient in most cases, but it is a phlogiston theory, and leads to errors of its own -- the image of "planting" being one of them.