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Old 04-07-2014, 09:21 AM   #16
Keith Larman
Dojo: AIA, Los Angeles, CA
Location: California
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 1,604
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Re: Ikkyo with Small Hands

FWIW as a guy who likes to visit other places. I keep my white belt in the front of my gear bag for those occasions.

My take over the years has been that there is some variation (surprise) in how ikkyo is done which results in some degree of difference in how the "grabbing" is done. Those styles which emphasize the kuzushi as the technique begins, especially leading out the arm, are more concerned with the connection through the arm to the center in which case the "grabbing" doesn't need to be particularly powerful, just "good enough" since so much is happening elsewhere. I've been to other places where the technique seems to initiate in the hand itself "winding up" through the arm (think a really static start with uke on balance) in which case a good grip is pretty much required. And everything in between.

Anyway, I guess my point is that these sorts of discussions reminds me of discussions about how things are done on a computer. How you do things depends to a great extent on the design and implementation of the operating system underneath the hood. So what works on this machine won't work on that machine. And you have to be careful not to confuse the two. The terminal on a UNIX box has similar but different commands to the DOS box on a windows machine. And how you do some stuff differs depending on whether you have a 1 button, 2 button or 3 button mouse.

The assumptions "under the hood" drive the way the technique is done.How you do it (comparing one to the other) is not an issue of "right" or "wrong", but a question of matching up the correct versions to the underlying assumptions.

fwiw.

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