What Your Ukemi Tells Your Training Partner

The way you take ukemi tells your training partner about your natural temperament, your trust in them, and whether you are actually present on the mat that day. If your partner is truly paying attention, and quieting their own mind, all of that comes through.

I learned this the hard way.

"We figured you'd get some back trouble"

When I was living in Japan and training intensively, around nidan, my back went out. I hadn't been at the dojo in a couple of months. Out at the pub with a few of my sempai, I told them about it: sciatica, radiating down my legs, really bad.

One of them said, well, someone with ukemi like that, that's going to go straight to the back. We figured you'd get some back trouble the way you took ukemi.

I loved taking ukemi for ikkyo. My Japanese sempai had such good ikkyo, and I would run at them full blast and ricochet off, center to center. My back took so much of that shock that I overloaded it.

So I asked: if you figured I'd get back trouble, why didn't you warn me?

He said, and I'll never forget it: a person who takes ukemi like that is the type of person who won't listen to advice.

They got all of that from my ukemi.

Can you believe that? Telling that story still makes me tear up. They weren't being unkind. They were right. They had read my temperament, not just my mechanics, from nothing more than the way I took their technique.

Your partner can read more than you think

My teacher, Takeda Shihan, used to do something similar. In the middle of class, while we were doing something like shomenuchi iriminage, he would walk over and say, "Okay, Lia, ryotemochi," and throw me with a sharp, spiraling kokyunage, the kind where you don't go outward at all, you just flip right where you are. It was my emotional reset button. How did he know?

Now I notice it from the other side. Sometimes I can tell from someone's ukemi that they've had a bad day. Sometimes I get the sense that someone is catching a cold, because they're moving slower or the sweat feels different. A person's basic nature, their character, and their mood that day all come through, especially to a partner who has been training a long time and has worked at quieting their own mind.

Don't fall early

So why does this matter? I think we all want to be the favorite training partner of everybody in the dojo. Not because training with us is easy, but because people come away feeling, I am spent, and I had fun. What I'm looking for in myself is good, honest connection, at the intensity that's appropriate for that person.

If you train like that, one thing you'll do is give tori the chance to experience the full technique. That means not falling early. Stay connected, keep pushing, and don't fall until tori actually follows through.

A lot of people fall so early that tori never gets to refine the last 10% of the technique, which is often the most important part.

Work on being flexible yet heavy, and on maintaining the connection to the very end. If you think you already do, check. Can you hold it half a second longer? Another half second? You may be letting go sooner than you think.

Chase down the sempai

If you want your ukemi to get really good, you have to be proactive. In the US, and in Western countries generally, I see a lot of kohai who hesitate to go to a sempai and say "onegaishimasu." You have to.

In Japan we used to race each other to the senior teachers, the big guns. Sometimes I got there first. Sometimes my friend did, and then you find the next person.

Be selfish, with one caveat. At a recent seminar, a woman walked away from her partner in the middle of practice to grab my wrist because she wanted to feel it from me. I threw her and went back to my own partner, but don't do it that way. Wait until the teacher shows the next technique and says go. Then hightail it to the person you want to train with.

You can't answer a question that hasn't been asked

One more thing: keep listening, with your body. Don't anticipate. Don't think, "this is the ukemi for iriminage." Your job is to go in with the attack and connect. That's your job until something else happens.

If someone says, "Hi, Lia," and I answer, "Tuesday at 7:30," that's ridiculous. I answer the question once it's been asked. Ukemi is the same. Attack, connect, see how your partner moves, let your body follow, and maintain the connection.

Your partner is reading you the whole time, whether you know it or not. Give them something honest to read: full attention, full connection, all the way to the end of the technique.

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