Tomiki Aikido Blog

I’ve now got the correct handle on what is meant by the word tsukuri. It means everything up to but not including the final throw or pin of an aikido technique. That is, it includes the taisabaki (avoidance) and whatever part of the technique happens to get kuzushi (breaking of balance). All of that is tsukuri.

And that makes sense since the word tsukuri means “making.” All that stuff is the making—the preparation—for the final throw or pin.

At Shodokan, they practice the tsukuri drills in a very good way. Let me tell you about it.

They do them in pairs. Take the shomen ate tsukuri drill for instance. Uke and torii stand at proper distance (ma-ai) or a little more. Uke’s legs are shoulder width apart. And then uke counts out the number one (ichi!).

At that point, torii scoots forward, leading with the same foot and hand, and slides until his tegatana (hand sword) is just below uke’s throat (or, alternatively, you can aim for the chin, so that your palm fits over the chin). Torii comes to a stop, and uke leans back just a little. That way torii can push maybe a couple of inches into the space that uke had been occupying before leaning back. (Doing this much entering means that kuzushi, breaking of balance, was achieved.)

Torii then returns to proper distance and uke shouts out two (ni!) Torii responds by performing the same initial movement to get in and break uke’s balance, but then takes another sliding step forward to throw uke.

So the deal is that on the first count, torii does the tsukuri drill making sure to cover the distance with good form. And then on the second count, torii also does the throw. In this way you never get sloppy like you do if you do ten reps where you only throw uke on the last one.

You also get much better biofeedback doing the drill in pairs in the sense that if you only throw on the tenth, you tend to concentrate on quickly covering the distance rather than preparing to throw. In particular, you get bad at getting kuzushi.

Since the whole purpose of a tsukuri drill is to get you to the point where you can throw, you should be focusing on that. And doing pairs forces you to think about it because on every other iteration you are throwing.

That being said, you don’t have to throw hard. The purpose of the drill is the tsukuri of the technique, the preparation for the throw. So don’t pound away at uke. Indeed, if you get good at the tsukuri, uke will be so off balance by the time that you get to the throw that you won’t have to push very hard at all to get him/her to fall.

You should do the same sort of practice for all the other five atemi-waza tsukuri drills. Uke counts, and then torii moves. On the first count, just to (a slight) kuzushi. On the second count, everything including the throw (but lightly).