Mae Mawari Ukemi

Key points

• Roll along the diagonal from one hand to the opposite hip
• No part of your head or spine touches: the roll is on muscle
• Finish in the side breakfall position and slap

Step by step

Left-handed: these steps use the standard right-handed form. Swap every left and right.

1. Stand with your right foot forward and place your right hand on the mat in front of it, fingers pointing back towards your own left foot.
2. Turn your right elbow outwards so your arm makes a rounded arch, and tuck your chin to your left shoulder.
3. Look towards your own left hip and push gently off your back foot so your weight rolls onto the arch of your right arm.
4. Roll diagonally across your back, from your right shoulder to your left hip, keeping your body rounded throughout.
5. As your left hip lands, slap the mat hard with your straight left arm, palm down.
6. Finish on your left side in the side breakfall position, right leg bent and lifted. Learn it from kneeling first, then crouching, then standing.

VI judo notes

Build it up from kneeling with a hand already on the mat, so the roll starts from a known contact rather than from a fall. The diagonal is the whole skill: shoulder to opposite hip, and your chin stays tucked towards the shoulder you are rolling away from.

How it is taught elsewhere

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has published guidance on this. Choose whose to show under Organisations' own guidance on My progress.

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology · Japan

This guidance was written for compulsory school physical education in Japan, not club instruction, and is taught to a whole class, including everyone who did not choose judo. Its teaching stage does not indicate how difficult the technique is.

① On the spot: from the one-knee-down (half-crouch, standing) posture

From the posture with the left (right) knee down and the right (left) leg raised, place both hands on the tatami, bend the right (left) elbow slightly forward, put the body weight diagonally forward to the right (left), and, raising the hips, rotate the body diagonally forward to the right (left); at the instant the left side of the back touches the mat, take the breakfall while striking the tatami with the left (right) hand and both legs. The arm and both legs take the same shape as in the yoko-ukemi (side breakfall). Once students are used to it, lift the left (right) knee off the tatami and start from the half-crouch or standing posture.

Printed page 108

② While moving: moving several steps with ayumi-ashi (walking footwork)

Using the foot that has been stepped out as the pivot, take the forward rolling breakfall and arrive at the yoko-ukemi posture ①. When standing up at the advanced stage ③, increase the speed with which both legs are swung down, use the centrifugal force that raises the upper body as the side breakfall strikes the tatami, and push the tatami strongly with the whole arm to rise ②. In every case, emphasis is placed on the yoko-ukemi posture ① within the forward roll.

Printed page 108

Point

When the right hand is put forward, turn using the right foot as the pivot. Make an arc with the right arm and, passing through the right wrist, right elbow, right shoulder and left side of the back, take the breakfall with the left hand. Once students are used to it, let them take the breakfall from progressively higher postures, such as the half-crouch A and the standing posture B. At the elementary stage it is enough if the set of the hands and feet when turning is correct and the side breakfall can be done.

Printed page 108

The pages this is taken from

Printed page 108Close ✕

From School Physical Education Practical Instruction Materials No. 2 (Third Revised Edition): Guide to Teaching Judo, published by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan. Page images are reproduced from that document.