RyuTe® Wheel

RyuTe® Wheel

A few months ago in class, a relatively new student asked the inevitable question about Tuite.  How do you use it when they don't grab or push?  I started to blog a bit about it but alas, life got crazy and the last few months have been quite chaotic for myself and others.  Today I started going back through some notes on blog topics and this was one of them.

As we start teaching new students basic fundamental techniques of tuite, kyusho, atemi...they typically don't see the correlation between the three.  As they start out, they learn what each of these tools are.  I liken it to shop class back in Junior High.  We would get shown a tool, explained how it worked, get some practice with it, and form a basic understanding.  We would do some little technique and make something, useless just by itself.  Later we would learn another tool, and go through the same process.  Eventually we'd have a series of tools (saw, sander, planer, drill), which led us to a series of pieces, which we put together with maybe another tool (glue) and now we had a candle holder. 

I sometimes use the RyuTe® Mon as an illustrating point to new students.  If you look at the Mon, which is our Gi Patch, and on many things from shirts to certificates, it has Tuite Jitsu and Kyusho Jitsu on the outside of the circle.  I tell my students it is like a wheel of techniques.  One tool flows into another.  What I mean by this is that, you may start with Tuite on a push, and then roll onto Kyusho.  So a person pushes and you catch their hand, as you tweak their wrist and they buckle to their knees, you switch to a neck strike.  They continue to the ground from this stun, then you pin them again with Tuite.  The reverse can also be applied.  You have a person punch, their hand is not open, it is in a tight fist.  They have not grabbed you, nor do they have a loose, open or bent wrist.  Students seem to think that Tuite is now impossible.  It is far from impossible, you just need to make the hand loose, open or bent.  If one tool isn't working, use another.......Kyusho or Atemi.  A good nerve strike on the forearm will get just enough of a bend or opening of the hand to slide into Tuite.  

There are a lot of people in the martial community who are naive enough to believe that Tuite is a useless art because you can never catch a hand.  I have used Tuite so much in my job that I would go as far as saying that it is not only possible, it has been my number one tool at work for over two decades.  It is, however, not viable as taught your first day in class.  The way we teach it is slow and unrealistic AT FIRST so that you learn how it works.  The shop teacher doesn't hand you a cunk of wood and point at the power button on the band saw with his 7th grade students on day one.  Not unless he has some obscure finger fetish and keeps a drawer full of them.  He explains how the machine works, the safety of it, and sets up a bunch of rules and protocols to teach his students safely.  Eventually, with time and training they can use the tool safely and with other tools.

Tuite works.

Kyusho works.

And like pancake and syrup, they are much better together.