A JUJITSU LESSON

[Dave McNeill]

I watched a jujitsu class last night taught by an amazing, high ranking, high caliber instructor.

He worked on blending, entering, uprooting and some of the release arts. He stressed the importance of body speed because it adds power to the counter attacks, whether they are strikes, takedowns or throws.

Master Tourin is quite tall and in the 200 pound range, but he moves like a cat. His counter attacks were executed with no effort but with such power that the ukes were overwhelmed.

His releases from grabs, mixed with body movement, put the attacker in a position where any counter against Master Tourin was impossible.

The impressive thing to me was how gentle Master Tourin was to his ukes when doing throws, takedowns, hits or joint attacks. The sign of a true Master is displaying that kind of control.

Equally impressive was how he took some Goju-Shorei Karate techniques and perfectly blended jujitsu into them. Which is a great argument for learning jujitsu no matter what the foundation art is.

I was amazed at how many times I saw kata bunkai (applications) in what Master Tourin was teaching. Reinforcing my belief that there are hundreds of self defense techniques buried within all katas, if you know and understand them.

As an aside, Master Tourin drove 40 miles out of his way to teach this class to 2 students.

[Alex Mann]

Excellent!  

This is a theme that has become more and more intriguing to me in recent years.  Grappling within the Kata does exist!  All systems can complement each other!  

Thanks for the post, Soke!  And, well done, Master Tourin!