Choosing your weapons

Sometimes you just fall in love with a technique. That's almost always a reason to try to make it your own. Hating a technique is more complicated. You should work it when told to, without making faces, but you should probably leave it alone otherwise.

There are other rules of thumb about choosing techniques. If you are short, wide, and strong, hip throws are a good investment. If you are long and lean, leg throws are a more likely way to go. Similarly, if you are short and wide, techniques where you get to the center first and lower are a good investment, whereas long and lean should spend more time spinning around the outside.

Long and lean should, above all else, hold good posture. Your body is like a spear, made to deliver power along a long shaft to a point. As soon as you bend in the middle, you have broken your spear.

Short and thin should work on sankyus and shionages, techniques where you duck quickly under arms and use the whole force and weight of your body on wrists. These don't require strength so much as getting to the right place quickly and neatly.

There is more to this, and more to one's own individual capacities than these very rough comparisons. Some short people are relatively weak, but fast and compact enough to deliver disproportionate power. Some tall, thin people can get leverage and produce startling power. Further, one's relative height and strength are always changing, according to who one is working with.

Study yourself dispassionately, assess your strengths and weaknesses, and start to build an armory of techniques that suit you.