During my active years my Tokui Waza included Tai-otoshi, a little Harai Goshi, Seoi-Otoshi, then finally settling down to Seio-Nage with a tad bit of Hiza-guruma thrown in for good measure.

Some of my tokui Waza were discovered by accident. For instance, I started with Tai-otoshi, beautiful throw was my Sensei's Toku Waza. I developed a deeper attack changing to Seoi-otoshi. It worked for several years until people began to "look" for it and it became a bit more difficult to be successful with. In the mean time, I started to do a lot of squats with wts. My legs became solid without losing it's flex. Then one day out of the blue, during a Shiai match, for some unknown reason I found my self flying into a low, low seio nage , almost in a full squat, exploding up into Uke (it seemed to have been the natural thing to do at that moment, I never trained for it) . The person was over in a snap, a full ippon without effort on my part. I was more surprised than anyone else. I then trained very hard to maximize the waza. It worked from then on, until age took it's toll.

With age I became more fascinated with Newaza. After training in Japan in the early 70's I came away with a lot of motivation and dabbled with it from then on.

I think it's very natural for one to have several Tokui waza over one's Judo career. Especially if one starts young. One's body, preferences, attitude, competition all change and so does the possible need to address these changes.


My very best to all,

Kurobi