Bushi No Te – The Subsidiary Drills – Beginning Wazza

Bushi No Te – The Subsidiary Drills – the Te Wazza

I had trained with many friends in many styles, all of them had developed different ways of teaching their students. Many of them had specific self defense drills at each student level of training. Some of them used very extensive drills. Many of those styles followed a use it then lose it approach to those drills, moving past them as the student progressed.

 

That was not the method I had learned for my Isshinryu.

 

I originally taught Isshinryu, to my youth students, identical to the way I was taught. But the more I saw the more I considered very specific self defense drills could be utilized.

 

I was not changing the Isshinryu content, for I still would teach everything I was taught. But there were other ideas I wanted to develop for my students. For those ideas I developed my subsidiary drills,

 

I developed the Te Wazza to first be taught at yellow belt. Students were of course just given simple reason for the practice. But there was much more behind their design.

 

They were actually black belt candidate requirements. By that time I expected sharp, smooth focused execution. That of course is not an unusual idea. But their main purpose was to teach the student unto adept to enter the space around an attack, control that attack then move through that space and eliminate the attacker. That was the most important purpose for me.

 

Additionally the 4 technique was for an additional purpose, the development of the brain right hemisphere/ left hemisphere integration. Where you move forward outside the line of attack using the left stepping, defend with the right then counter/disrupt with the right to then end the attack with the left across the body. That is much more complicated to do without training. I have shared just that technique in a variety of different schools when asked for a clinic and found at times even the black belt students and even the instructor had great difficulty doing just that. Of course that was because it was not a part of their studies.

 

I had several reasons for including this. One many of the techniques I had studied used just this principle. Two I had come to realize one must work both the interior line of defense as well as the exterior line of defense against an attack. The key is integrating both hemispheres of the brain (in normal times the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body and the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body.) when practiced becomes skilled. And practice is what I wanted.

 

The final technique had a variety of different executions. For the beginner one stepped back from the kick, and blocked with a parry slap (to avoid injuring their partner). When more skill developed it changed to moving into the attack and striking with the knuckles of a low block into the leg.

 

All of them at more advanced execution involved striking into the attack, creating a pain shock to redirect the opponents mind to that strike.

 

Te Wazza

 

A simple drill. One with no so simple purpose, development of black belt skills for other uses.

Bushi No Te – The Subsidiary Drills – the Jutsu Wazza

 

Also studied from the beginning were the Jutsu Wazza. After the Te Wazza. 

These were not a specified series of techniques, for many possible releases were taught.

Simpler ones for the beginner. Stronger skilled ones as the student advanced. The goal was by black belt they could obtain release from a random order grab attack.

 Because there were not specific grab defenses, we never filmed them

The Attacks used were:

 

            Single wrist grab

            Double wrist grab

            Single arm grab from the side

            Double chest grab

            Double neck grab from the front

            Double neck grab from the rear