Stop talking about kuzushi. Just shut up about it, it's never productive. It's a concept that is really only descriptive in nature and there's been an absurd number of beginners misled by telling them they need "more kuzushi" when it's not something you can have more or less of. Your opponent is in a state of collapse/off balance or they aren't. It's a binary. For that matter SHUT UP with teaching people that to get kuzushi means to just pull the opponent or pull them harder. 99% of throws are positioning before anything else, a pull of your opponent is only just one single method of doing it and often not a very good one. I wasted so much time thinking I needed to just pull more to get my throws going instead of someone just telling me my positioning for the throw was off and it was never going to work from where I tried it. The example here being uchi mata RxR, not even getting into the nonsense version people get taught all the time attacking the opponents lead leg in that stance. Literal years of wasted effort trying to make a throw like that work when it would've been solved in 30 seconds by someone telling me "Yeah they either need to squared up with their hips back or in opposite stance for you to hit that" Instead I got told I needed to pull more, mind you pulling them into kenka yotsu would be solid advice. Was I told that? Nope, just generic advice of more kuzushi and harder pull.
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u/Bitter_Counter_2556 Jun 07 '25
Stop talking about kuzushi. Just shut up about it, it's never productive. It's a concept that is really only descriptive in nature and there's been an absurd number of beginners misled by telling them they need "more kuzushi" when it's not something you can have more or less of. Your opponent is in a state of collapse/off balance or they aren't. It's a binary. For that matter SHUT UP with teaching people that to get kuzushi means to just pull the opponent or pull them harder. 99% of throws are positioning before anything else, a pull of your opponent is only just one single method of doing it and often not a very good one. I wasted so much time thinking I needed to just pull more to get my throws going instead of someone just telling me my positioning for the throw was off and it was never going to work from where I tried it. The example here being uchi mata RxR, not even getting into the nonsense version people get taught all the time attacking the opponents lead leg in that stance. Literal years of wasted effort trying to make a throw like that work when it would've been solved in 30 seconds by someone telling me "Yeah they either need to squared up with their hips back or in opposite stance for you to hit that" Instead I got told I needed to pull more, mind you pulling them into kenka yotsu would be solid advice. Was I told that? Nope, just generic advice of more kuzushi and harder pull.