Doesn’t it drive you crazy when you watch Japanese champions demonstrate what is supposed to be uchimata and they end up doing what is clearly hane-goshi instead?
We’ve all seen top uchimata specialists like Shohei Ono and Joshiro Maruyama do this. There’s even a video of them doing this side by side – and both are clearly doing hane-goshi.
Why are they hitting the far leg instead of going up the middle?
It doesn’t matter, says 2015 World Champion Ryunosuke Haga, who is an uchimata specialist himself. When demonstrating uchimata at the Mihael Zgank Academy masterclass over the weekend, Haga said if he were to post on social media a video of him demonstrating uchimata, he would get tons of comments saying that’s not uchimata but hane-goshi!
He says it’s true that it’s hane-goshi but ultimately it doesn’t matter when it comes to learning uchimata because the kuzushi and the leg movement for uchimata, hane-goshi and harai-goshi are the same. What’s different is just where the leg makes contact.
Haga's advice for young players learning uchimata is to not think so much about where the leg makes contact. If they focus too much on making sure the lead leg goes up the middle, they might end up not rotating enough. Instead, they should focus on doing the entry correctly, and not worry about whether it’s uchimata or hane-goshi or harai-goshi.
