Mirror hand grab Junanahon is still the weakest link

Thursday night's practice was led by Branch sensei. After the warm up and routine exercise, sensei decided to tackle our weakest form of junanahon, the mirror hand grab, which is also called gyakugamae katatedori. We start backward from the last technique to the first. After each waza, we paused, sensei would point out the common mistakes that he saw, then we did the waza again with the instruction. After we have finished all 5 waza, there was only 15 minutes left, which were spent on randori practice. It is the same the tegatana attack from the uke, tori will attempt to do same technique 5 times, then switch tori and uke. I liked the repetition idea, that you get 5 times to make technique better.

Takeaways from mirror hand grab junanahon.

1. Tenkai kotegaeshi: use free hand to "pat the kitty", the purpose of it is to make sure uke's elbow doesn't bend. While turning, don't need to extend uke's arm to the sky, which I found some of my partners tend to do it, my arm almost felt like pulled out of socket.

2. Hikiotoshi: free hand should come up as gyakutedori, thumb pointing to the uke's palm.

3. Tenkai kotehineri: hineri needs to be there the whole time, especially true when you change the locking hand, one trick the sensei showed was you can try to do atemi while exchanging the hands.

4. Kotehineri: hineri needs to be established at the beginning, only when you get a hold of the hineri, then the uke will be able to turn in any direction that you want him to. I asked a question at that time because I felt my uke was bending forward from initial kuzushi, he bent so much that I felt like I had to use my power to fight against his weight in order to get him backward for the rest of technique. Sensei immediately asked where is the hineri, then I realized i should have a good establishment of the hineri kuzushi, then uke would retract back automatically.

5.Wakigatame: sensei emphasized that the grip should be about at the tegatana, that is best place to turn the hand over, which is even more true for small hand person like me.

6. Aigamaeate: keep both hand in center, tori should not step in a parallel-to-uke position, but rather hip facing uke, a more diagonal position.


Terminology:

Dori	Grab 捕,取
Katate	One hand 片手
Gyakugamae katate dori	Cross single-hand Grab
Aigamae katate dori	Mirror single-hand Grab
Junte dori	Normal Grab 順手捕
Gyakute dori	Reverse Grab 逆手捕
Atemi	Strik 手击