THE HIKI TE OF UECHI RYU SENSEI Cecilia Salbuchi

Sensei Cecilia Salbuchi

The Hiki Te of Uechi Ryu

When researching a topic in Karate it is important to understand the terminology. For this, I rely heavily on a recently published book (Japanese for Martial Artists, by Sensei Rubén Gómez) where we have the most used terms in karate with their kanji/ hiraganas and literal translation.

According to this text, Hiki Te is "Hand that brings" or "Hand that pulls", and refers to the action of catching the opponent and drawing him towards us. Over the years we have become accustomed to referring to the negative position of a shot as "Hiki Te", when this is not always correct. For "Hiki Te" to exist, the catch gesture must first exist (expressed or not), and then execute the act of pulling back. In the case of most styles of Karate, this act of pulling will bring the hand back to the zero point of a blow, or the negative of the tsuki, that is, the position where the hand rests on the hip or ribs. floating ready to go. But in Uechi Ryu this is not so. I always say that to understand the spirit of a style we must analyze its kata, and in them we will see that while one hand hits the other… it remains in kamae, mostly in hirate kamae. And what is Hirate Kamae? Hirate means “flat hand”, and it is the most used position in the style, which consists of having the palms of the hands pointing forward and down… as if I were holding my opponent's arms. And it is that Hirate Kamae is the position in which the hands remain after the block intended to deflect, hold and bring the opponent's techniques. This lock is known as Hirate Mawashi Uke (open hand circular lock) but it is also common to hear it called Kake Uke (hook lock) for its typical action of bringing the opponent's arm forming a hook with the fingers. So where is the hikite? In Uechi Ryu it is in the Hirate Kamae, since the hook action of the aforementioned block pulls the opponent into that position, leaving him under our control while we strike with the other limbs, and not in the absolute negative of striking techniques. And the final question would be: Hikite… is it intended to give power to my blow or is its function to weaken the opponent's structure? And luckily I think Uechi Ryu finds it a bit easier to answer: It weakens the opponent's structure! Without a doubt. And it is enough to see how any Uechi performer can dispense with taking one hand to the negative so that the other hand throws powerful tsukis regardless of whether we hit the bag, makiwara, opponent... or merely into the air. And when we hit an opponent that we have trapped, we execute a strong pull while hitting to destabilize. We leave you a video graphing these ideas: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=wWAU5ylZQzk