Glad you found success with it!

Secondly, at least where I am practicing at the moment we don`t have “kokyuhō”, “Aiki-Otoshi” and “maki-Otoshi”, even though I know the techniques. Regarding “maki-Otoshi”, I prefer “ippon seoi-nage” as an experience judoka myself and black belt. Regarding “Sumi-Otoshi”, I guess I’d put it under the Z tier, because it can also be used to introduce other techniques and I recently used it to land a powerful tai-otoshi. I agree with you about the “reverse seoi-nage” and associated it with “shihō-nage” right away.In Tomiki aikidō we train it differently than aikikai, but it is still a technique that`s difficult to pull off in randori. “Ude-garami nage”. Is what we call “ude-gaeshi” or “ude-hineri” in Tomiki aikido, but I think thet`re pretty difficult to pull off. I`d put them under the B tier. When I started doing Ukemi in aikido I realized they`re broader than judo and I like specially when we are thrown with “kote-gaeshi” and have to break fall literally by flying, which is something we also do during practice with the so-called “Tobi-Ikemi”. At Aikikai we also do the “Ushiro-Ikemi” without tapping the hands, which was the ukemi used when there was no tatami and I think is very safe. I’m blessed to be using 3 ukemi systems at the moment: Aikikai (but the “Ushiro-ukemi” is different at Osaka Aikikai and Honbu in Tokyo), Tomiki (pretty much like judo but with variations in Yoko-ukemi and ushiro-ukemi) and judo, which I had to do for 2 months when I got back to judo 2 years ago. Regarding “atemi”, I think you could take a deeper look at Tomiki aikido, because we have some practical “atemi” in contract to their counterparts used at “aikikai” for distraction such as when we do the “Yoko Uchi kara no irimi-nage”. In randori and tournaments “shōmen-ate”, “aigama-ate” and “Gyaku gamae-ate” and even “gedan-ate” are pretty used. Personally I learned to punch in gōjūryū karate, but see no reason to do it when I can use an atemi and not to use extreme force, Last but not least, I`d like to experiment your nikyō pin to see how flexible I have become, In my dojo nobody taps me out using it!!! LOL

That’s definitely an interesting take on it. I can’t really disagree, though.

The word dragon is not included in Hōzan-ryū 宝山流. Dragon is written with the following characters 龍 or 竜

It’s honestly a really weird blind-spot in the broader grappling community. Obviously a lot of grappling formats don’t award anything for them so I understand it from that perspective, but you’d think with how saturated the BJJ crowd is that it would have entered the discussion at some point. I can think of just a few spots in martial arts more generally that appear to be completely ignored and there doesn’t really seem to be any logical reason why. It isn’t even that anyone is necessarily out here lobbying against them-there just… isn’t a discussion at all.

Yeah, the lack of thought about it is surprising. When I bring it up, I get blank stares, or hand-wavy dismissals. It's reminiscent of the "how would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast?" test. Anyway, besides Catch, I come from a Chinese and western martial arts background, plus some amateur MMA when I was younger, and the idea of a pin only counting with both shoulders touching the mat is so apparently arbitrary. The entire purpose of pinning as a tactic is immobilization either for subdual/arrest or to make opportunity to get to the next tactic. In modern day, most arrests happen belly down (or against an object). In MMA, a significant portion of ground&pound happens belly down, or even side-down. It is clear that the tactical advantage of pins is not limited to shoulders-on-the-mat. And evem as a Catch guy, I am in favor of long pins, 30 secons+, and/or augmented pins that involve either striking or submission, and even deployment of restraints (I would love to see an arrest format in grappling)

It's commonly referred to as Sumi Otoshi in both the Yoshinkan and Tomiki systems. I'm aware of the "behind the back and in-between the legs" method, but in sparring this basically never pans out. In terms of timing, the idea of getting a fully-outstretched arm to a person's back and in-between their legs before they either turn into the technique, sprawl/lower their stance, or just retract aforementioned out-stretched arm is extremely unlikely. That is, in essence, the beauty of the Judo version of the technique. It cuts out the needless fat. Mifune doesn't drop completely to a knee nor does his version rely on the arm being outstretched. While the method you describe certainly pans out on paper, I've yet to see it ever being pulled off on film--of which there is much in the Tomiki world. Even if such film exists, I'm confident in saying it is, on a good day, exceptionally rare and inconsistent.

@@TenguMartialArts Then it's an extremely rare variation because I have never seen it anywhere before. Not between the legs, behind the back, into the blind spot, under a let's say 45 degree angle, "cutting" behind uke. The whole "tripod" thing is something I only ever saw on youtube and I don't like it because it doesn't make sense. Yeah you need good timing but also momentum and explosivity with the whole body to move in behind uke. To many people just push with their hands and expect uke to magically fall over. That's not how and why it works and you don't need to fully extend the arm to break somebody's balance to use sumiotoshi but yeah it's easier that way. Here's a video, starting at 1:48, notice the way the guy cuts behind uke, that's how you should enter for sumiotoshi (at least for the variations that go behind the back). kzbin.info/www/bejne/nJ69XpuVbqqEa7s&ab_channel=SenseiSeth Sure the guy isn't very explosive but the whole video is pretty light sparring.

Looks like something between tenshinage and sumiotoshi.

That’s kind of hilarious but definitely some accuracy there. I think Japanese can be a very precise language, but in my experience, you kind of have to twist it to a point where it becomes unnatural to do so. Sort of like if we, as English speakers, randomly wanted to start speaking in rhyme all the time… like… we could, but it’d be weird. There is just so much ambiguity in Japanese.

I think you might be thinking of Uki Otoshi! Although don’t feel too bad about it, you’re maybe the third person on this video to get those wires crossed and I’ve done it plenty of times myself. If you look up Mongolian Uki Otoshi, you should find a Fighting Films promotional video

It’s works alright. I have had several Japanese instructors over the years. Some certainly do pronounce it with every syllable, but others pronounce it with a soft し. Just like any other language, there is a degree of dialect and personal preference at place there.

@@TenguMartialArts perhaps it's a microphone issue, because it sounds like you're saying it as [otosh] every time 😅