Irimi Nage - Entering the World of Entering

 

So I'm lying in bed, supposed to be sleeping, but instead I'm running through all these techniques in my head, one at a time, and looking at what I'm doing wrong (or, less frequently, what I'm doing right). Naturally, one of the techniques that pops up most often is this one. It's called irimi nage, or entering throw, and it's the technique that put Steven Seagal on the map. I thought I was pretty good at it, until recently.

Of course, we all have our own different versions of it, so that Seagal's irimi nage isn't going to look like Tissier's irimi nage, which also isn't going to look like Kato sensei's irimi nage. Unfortunately, my irimi nage looks like none of the above.

Mine looks like a one-legged man trying to dance with a bewildered stranger.

No one does it quite like me: slow and sloppy. But I'm progressing, mostly through the hard work and patience of my sensei and fellow deshi. The trick is to find someone who's willing to let you throw them over and over and over, until you're confident that you can get it right consistently - and then over and over again.

If you read my blog with any regularity, you know that I like to look back at my Tomiki training when I dig into these techniques. Except that, there's a hitch with irimi nage: Those of us with a background in what I'm calling Texas Tomiki (the Kogure/Miyake/Geis line of Tomiki Aikido) have a terminology issue. If you know it from the Aikikai, you call it "tachi-waza shomen-uchi irimi nage, ura" - but Texas Tomiki calls it "aiki nage". To address the terminology issue, according to the Aikikai lexicon, "aiki nage" is any throw wherein nage (tori, if you prefer) and uke never touch each other. The correct term for the technique we're discussing here is "irimi nage". No one seems to know where the discrepancy came from; I once asked a well-respected fifth dan in the Tomiki system what the difference was between an irimi nage and an aiki nage, and he said, "Yes."

Really, I like the Aikikai version much better - and within the many versions of the Aikikai style, I'd have to say that I like Kato Sensei's over-the-hip version best. Tissier sensei's irimi nage is similar. Watch one of the many clips of his irimi-nage on YouTube, and you'll see him throw uke over his leg, in almost a koshi nage kind of motion. Kato sensei's irimi nage is also like this, but more pronounced.

Recently I was explaining this to a friend of mine from the Tomiki school, and I decided to try it without the hip double-rotation that Kato sensei's aikido is famous for. Needless to say, it didn't work. If uke isn't super-compliant, my irimi nage isn't super-effective.

So I threw the hip in, the way I've been taught in class. It doesn't feel right. It isn't pretty. Well, it's pretty when some people do it - you know, the people in the dojo who know what they're doing. But it ain't pretty when I do it. But it works, and provided I'm doing everything else right, it sends even a non-compliant uke to the mat.

See, in order to do it Kato sensei's way, you have to create this reverse triangle in your stance, and use that to throw your hip into the technique. You end up standing there with your feet all goofy, your posture kinda bent, and your hip stuck out like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. It's counterintuitive, at first, because people aren't generally taught to stand like that in the practice of the martial arts. In ballet, maybe...

But while you're standing there feeling all wierd, uke is recovering from a particularly awkward fall. Even in the Tomiki style, wherein the throws are done with the hips as straight to the shoulders as possible, the fall is pretty hard to get used to. As in all aikido techniques, it works best when uke has overcommitted his momentum and is attacking in a full-on cavalry charge - but it can be done from a standstill.

My point here is that everyone should try to study this particular technique from as many different teachers as possible. Your techniques won't look exactly like your teacher's techniques, and of no technique is this more true than irimi nage. You have to develop it for yourself, and in order to do that, you have to steal as much as you can from as many sources as you can. The style I learned in the Tomiki system never really worked right for me; my turn was all wrong, my back and hips were out of alignment with the line of the throw - I had lots of little problems with it. But when I stopped trying to do my sensei's irimi nage and started studying the throw itself, I started to develop it. Somewhat.

I still have a long way to go, of course, but I feel like, with this technique at least, I'm on the right road.

Comments

[nick lowry]

nice-- i'd just add that for me its as much taking the ukemi for a given waza--ideally from someone with very clean principles-- over and over and over again an over and over again that really stimulates the interanlization of the more subtle aspects of a throw-- i dont think any ammount of being tori/nage and thowning a throw will ever result in good timing -- the sensitivity to timing comes from what your body an mind absorb in clean ukemi

[Leon]

Hello,

A nice article about your experience. I really don't understand why Irimi nage should be so hard to understand and why it would take years to learn it... It may take years to refine it but you should be told the essential in your first year, especially when one considers how central Irimi nage was in O sensei's practice.

If anyone, he should be the technical reference here and not the people after him - for throwing on the hip has never been in the curriculum he taught before or after the war. The very essence of the technique can be easily spotted in Aikibudo movie (1935) and a few one shot in Iwama.

Since the origin of the movement is a sword awaze, the hip throw is at best a variation (henka) and should not be taken as the primary form. I can't remember any movie where O sensei does it this way nor any of his best direct students (Saito, Shioda, Tohei senseis, etc). I agree that form is spectacular but its construction is extremely long, dangerous and subject to many requirements. Simpler and therefore somehow more effective solutions do exist.

In other words let's keep it simple. Experience tells us that only simple gestures are useful.

That post may sound a bit arrogant but be sure there's nothing of the sort here. I am not talking here, I have invented nothing.....;-)

Best
L

[scruffysmileyface]

Leon, you are exactly right! Irimi nage is one of those techniques that were central to O Sensei's practice, and can be taught in one class. However, that doesn't mean you'll get it right after one class. It also doesn't mean you'll be able to do it consistently after one class. To get it consistently right takes years of practice, just as it did for O Sensei.

You're also right that Kato Sensei's hip involvement is more of a derivative than a fundamental. But let's not split hairs. If your shihan says to do the throw with a particular hip movement, you do the throw with the hip movement. Kato Sensei is an 8th dan in the Aikikai and was a personal student of O Sensei. He has told people that O Sensei personally showed him that hip movement. So whether you've seen it in film clips or not, we (students of Kato Sensei) believe it to have come from O Sensei. Besides, for anyone to suggest that a student simply disregard the teachings of his sensei in favor of what said student believes to understand from a few seconds (or even hours) of film footage from 1935, is wrong thinking.

Further, I would point out that aikido as practiced today within the Aikikai is NOT the same as the movements demonsrated in the 1935 film "Aikibudo" (Actually I think it was just called "Budo", wasn't it?). O Sensei, and then Kisshomaru Doshu and today Moriteru Doshu have, let's say...evolved the art a great deal since 1935, and I certainly wouldn't want to try to emulate everything I see on that film while on the mat at the Hombu. Would you?

[אומנויות לחימה]

Kato Sensei to do, have to create this inverted triangle in place, and use it to launch the hip in the art.

[scruff]

Absolutely correct. An inverted triangle is Kato Sensei's pattern for footwork while executing the irimi nage, and he uses it to great effect in setting up the hip movement.

Thanks for the comment! :)