Most martial artists have seen the so-called “Wing Chun dummy,” which is actually called a muk yan jong in Cantonese, or mu ren zhuang in Mandarin, meaning “wooden man post.” This training tool was widely popularized by Bruce Lee and, more recently, the Ip Man series of movies, starting Donnie Yen. While these dummies were developed for Chinese martial arts, […]
While many joint locking techniques (kansetsu-waza) exist within karate, there are still karateka who are unaware of them and, frequently, people look at the joint locks of karate from the perspective of other arts. We know that such techniques exist within karate, not only because of karateka who kept them in their curricula into modern times, such as Uehara Seikichi […]
The grappling techniques of karate are classified as tuidi-waza (seizing hand techniques). This primarily refers to joint locks and grabbing/tearing techniques, but could technically include some types of chokes, throws and takedowns. We practice these in kata, in application drills, and in flow drills, but most people don’t work them in a randori (free grappling) scenario. Admittedly, free grappling with […]
Kote-Gaeshi (Wrist Reversal) as taught in Aikido The most commonly recognized example of a joint lock “throw” is kote-gaeshi (wrist reversal). It is a basic technique in Aikido, and several variations of it also exist in karate tuidi. You can see in the animated GIF, above, that the uke (person receiving the technique) drops his left knee to the floor […]
