Josh Gold“What Saito Sensei has done is to keep his arm relaxed and push using hip power to place the two attackers in an unstable position. They can be clearly seen in the process of losing their balance and colliding into one another.”
Take a look at these two photos. Both involve a seemingly impossible throw against two strong opponents grasping one’s arm. To be clear, two opponents use both their hands to strongly grab your wrist and forearm in an effort to block you from doing a movement.
Believe me, if you resort to physical force in an attempt to power through this four-handed grip, you will feel impotent as though trapped in a vise. It is not rational to think you can overcome such strong opposition using force, especially if you’re skinny like I am!
The second photo shows of course the famous Morihiro Saito, 9th dan, demonstrating an earlier stage of the same technique. I can’t say with any certainty what was going through Saito Sensei’s mind as he easily threw these two men, but I will call your attention to a couple of points visible in the photo that may not be obvious.
First of all, notice that Saito Sensei has maneuvered his left arm into a vertical position. Think of how you would normally grab someone’s wrist, and then try to imagine grasping an arm positioned vertically. Notice how awkward Saito Sensei’s two opponents appear, and how the mere fact of grabbing in this uncomfortable manner has totally compromised their balance.
What Saito Sensei has done is to keep his arm relaxed and push using hip power to place the two attackers in an unstable position. They can be clearly seen in the process of losing their balance and colliding into one another. Saito Sensei has subtly repositioned them in such a way that their power is neutralized and they are working against one another. From there, the throw is trivial.
One other point that many not be obvious is that Saito Sensei has positioned himself side by side his opponents. Stated differently, he is in his opponents’ blind spot where they are the most unstable from a balance standpoint.
My approach to this same situation was to focus all my energy on the hand grabbing my arm highest up. As I mentioned while describing Saito Sensei’s solution, you must keep your arm absolutely relaxed and let your hips power your movement. By isolating my first opponent’s top hand, I was able to collapse his grip entirely. This took him off balance and he literally crashed into the second opponent resulting in both of them falling as can be seen in the photo.
To summarize, it seems virtually impossible to effectivey deal with two strong opponents doing their best to immobilize you. If you care to ever try this, I recommend you first use power and see how far you get. Probably, you will barely be able to move and find yourself totally helpless. From there the challenge is to teach yourself to relax your arm and let it become an extension and expression of your hip power. If you can achieve this mental and physical state you will immediately notice a difference and start to be able to disturb their balance. Morihiro Saito was a true master of doing such seemingly impossible feats.
We all know where we’re strong. We’ve been working on it since birth. We know less about where and how we’re weak. As a general rule the stronger you are in one place and direction, the weaker you are in others. There are some really subtle intermuscular connections often clumped up in the term “ki”. I find demystifying that to be useful because without invoking the kami you can look at and for repeatable performance.