Being uke is seen as a chore, which is a mistake. When you are uke, the training does not stop. For many people, they ignore the opportunities given to them when they are uke and only train half as much as others can.

Uke is Japanese for “receive.” In martial arts, it often refers to the person on the receiving end of the technique. I do not like the term “attacker” because some techniques are supposed to teach how to attack, so in that case uke might mean “The Poor Victim.”

I honestly think that having a good uke for training can be just as important as having a good teacher. I have had numerous bad ukes over the years and some of them really didn’t help me learn at all. When you have someone that is willing to work with you, instead of being self centered or worse- adversarial, it can really help you out.

The role of an uke can’t be under-stressed. He is a partner, not an opponent. He might push you, but he is not there to work against you- big difference. The job of the uke is to help serve as the perfect example of the attack needed to do the technique. If he does not know how to throw the attack to be countered, or just doesn’t want to, then you really can’t learn as much. While living in Japan, I had a chance to work out with a lot of visitors. Many people say that when you go to Japan or a seminar you should find someone you haven’t worked out with to get used to different bodies. That is nice, but I came to the conclusion that having a bad uke negates any advantages working with a different body might give.

I often would put off training with Masaaki Hatsumi, head of the Bujinkan, until a friend of mine told me he was going as well. If I could go every class without racking up costs and my wife’s patience I might have gone a lot more. But I wanted to make the most of the limited times a month I could go see him. I got a lot more out of working with a few folks I knew than I did with people that just were not good ukes.

First and most obvious thing an uke needs to do is attack correctly. If the technique calls for a punch to the face, then that fist has to be able to smash your nose in if you are still there when it arrives. There is a term called “the heat avoiding missile” to refer to punches that purposefully miss the other person. That is a grave insult if you try in with a Japanese senior teacher. People don’t actually want to hurt their partners, so it is understandable that if they know that the technique has the person move to the left, they will angle their punches in the opposite direction so as to lesson the chance of accidental injury. For sometimes people do space out and are still there when the punch arrives. But as nice as the intentions may be, it hurts the other person’s chance to learn.

When the technique calls for a punch, you need to throw the best punch you can. There needs to be intent behind it. You might do it slowly so that the person can get the technical aspects down before you up the pressure, but it must be a technically good punch.

One of the greatest amounts of praise I got from one of my teachers was when I had a bad uke who kept throwing strange punches. I figured out he was throwing heat avoiding missiles and stood stock still instead of moving at all. Sure enough, the punch merely grazed my cheek instead of knocking me across the room. I glared at the idiot I was paired with and heard my teacher praising me for staying in place until the last micro second (a big thing in his dojo). He also glared at my partner, and was much scarier than I.

That is one of the things you learn while training- which attacks are a danger and which are not. If you don’t throw real attacks, the other guy never learns to recognize them. Your attempts at being nice hold them back and instill bad habits in them. So when you are uke, throw real attacks with intent. I can’t believe I have to actually point that out, but I know a lot of people have experienced the same thing.

There was a Japanese student I liked to work out with. He frustrated me a lot. He wouldn’t be tossed to the ground unless I had the technique down perfectly. Any flaw in what I did resulted in failure. I sometimes took four or five attempts before I finally got things to work. But when I did, I knew it was damn near perfect. As I noted in a blog a short while ago, no one likes to be frustrated and the rumor going around was that he hated non-Japanese. I got more out of working with him than I did anyone else.

In the same blog about frustration, I mentioned that I think the Japanese gave little tests and if you passed them, they upped the level of frustration and your ability to learn. I remember one such test with this Japanese I respect so much.

My teacher at the time was very big on preparing us for the next technique Hatsumi was probably going to show. We were just starting a year devoted to Shinden Fudo ryu and the first technique in the school was Nichigeki- a response to someone trying a hip throw on you. So the first class we had for the year spent half of it teaching us good hip throws. Most folks in the Bujinkan do what I call the “reverse-rape” throw instead of a hip throw. They grab the top of the other guy and then twist so that they ram their ass into the hips of the guy doing the counter throw. (Maybe I should have mentioned that this blog was PG-13... Oh screw it.) There is no kuzushi, no set up and if the other guy just stands there, you are NOT going to throw him. My teacher didn’t want us to do that. He made sure we knew how to do a proper throw and drilled us for most of the class.

A few days later, I am in Hatsumi’s class and paired up with the Japanese I respect. Sure enough, it is Nichi-geki and I am the uke. I was eager to practice the throw I had just learned and did my best. I kept expecting the counter to come at any second. But it was a test and he did nothing. The sound of him hitting the floor gave me a mixed feeling, but he grinned up at me from the floor and quietly got up to continue. From that point on, the level of frustration went up a notch, but so did my chance to grow.

When you are uke with a skilled person, you can feel how things are supposed to be done. Sometimes you just have to feel things to understand them. When a lock is being done, you can tell how it is being set up and see for yourself how there is no gaps or things to let the person slip out. That is, if you are actively observing while you are uke. In most of the classes with the senior teachers of the Bujinkan, class size is small enough so that he can run around the class and do the technique on everyone there. Many times after he does it, you hear students tell their partners, “It didn’t feel the same as when sensei did it.” That is key. Having a person do the technique on you imprints what it should feel like on you and from there you can tell when your partner feels different.

You can’t get that sort of thing from a video course. Even if you have a partner going through the DVD with you, neither of you have felt it being done by the hands of a master. That is one, of many reasons, that video course people aren’t deserving of the term students. If you merely watch a technique, you aren’t a student but merely a voyeur.

It isn’t hard to get the teacher to do the technique on you. Just watch as he repeats the move on a person close to you instead of turning your back. Most times they will walk up to you and do the technique. It really tells you a lot and I hope people take advantage of it next time they get to Japan.

Finally, being uke helps train you. Most people space out a bit when they are uke and are merely waiting for their turn to do the technique. This is a mistake. Instead of being passive while uke, be active. Don’t do anything, but keep your attention open to what is going in. You might look for openings in the other guy. At first, people have a lot as they try to get down things like balance and transitions. But some folks just seem to ignore the attacker’s other hand and you need to train yourself to be able to recognize that sort of opening. Mind you, I am not saying to try to take advantage of it. If the teacher has not tasked you with pushing the other guy by doing things like tapping him where he is open, don’t take it on yourself to be a teacher. That is just a dick move. Such training is probably needed, but that is the teacher’s call and not yours.

When being thrown, note how your balance is effected and at what point is point of no return. Toshitsugu Takamatsu, the previous soke of Togakure-ryu, learned a valuable lesson when his eardrum was shattered. He had been taking a challenge match and managed to throw the other guy. While in the air to the ground, the opponent had reached out and slapped him in the ear. You don’t get to be able to do that if you just space out when you are being thrown by your partner. It takes a lot of active observation to learn just how you can take advantage of someone when you are on your way to the ground. The skill of doing so is called sutemi-waza, and there is a bit of it in Shinden Fudo ryu and a lot of it in Gyokushin ryu when I was shown it. But before you even start to learn that sort of thing, you have to be on the receiving end of a lot of throws. And you have to be active instead of passive even though you are just uke.

But really, the point of this blog is there is no such thing as “just” uke. So learn during the entire class and not just when it is your turn to do the technique.