Sometimes going downstairs to take out the trash feels like a sacrifice. If you also have to carefully separate everything for recycling, even more so.

But that’s not today’s topic.

A few days ago, the Japanese expression came to mind:

ゴミを捨てる – gomi wo suteru
Literally: to throw away garbage.

In the main Martial Arts, there is a family of techniques known as 捨身技 – sutemi waza, often translated as “sacrifice techniques”.

But what does suteru (捨てる) really mean? Garbage is thrown away, at most sorted. It is not “sacrificed.” We’ll come back to this.

When it comes to sutemi waza, it must first be said that only in Judo there is a codified list of such techniques. The Kodokan divides them into two groups: front sacrifice techniques (ma-sutemi waza) and side sacrifice techniques (yoko-sutemi waza).

In all cases, nage -those executing the technique- literally abandon their balance in order to break the balance of their partner. The result is a fall for both, with a greater impact on uke.

In Karate, the echo of these techniques is less evident. Some kata contain traces of sutemi waza in their applications. In Bassai Dai, for instance, certain steps suggest movements similar to ura-nage and tomoe-nage, both belonging to the ma-sutemi waza family.

And what about Aikido?

It would be reductive to think that sutemi waza originated with Judo. This is clearly a combat strategy as old as humanity itself, appearing across different martial systems.

However, in Aikido, sutemi waza -neither codified nor part of official curricula- tend to emerge where instructors have a strong background in Judo.

This raises a deeper question: does Aikido’s technical teaching benefit from being influenced by practitioners who were primarily Judoka and only later Aikidoka?

There have been remarkable, perhaps unrepeatable, examples of teachers reaching mastery in multiple Budo disciplines, such as Shoji Sugiyama. For them and their most dedicated students, achieving a synthesis between arts may have been possible.

But is borrowing techniques from another discipline truly useful?

The biomechanical approach of Judo is radically different from that of Aikido. Where the principle is “never pull uke toward yourself,” the existence of a technique like koshi nage -interestingly absorbed into Judo- already represents an exception within an otherwise coherent system.

Throwing your partner flat on their back with an ura-nage or tawara-gaeshi -what would that really add to Aikido practice?

There is a common Japanese expression: 捨て身の攻撃 (sutemi no kogeki), meaning “a desperate attack,” carried out without regard for one’s own safety.

And here we return to suteru.

We strongly believe that one of the fundamental principles of Aikido practice is the preservation of integrity -both one’s own and that of one’s partner. This is not an arbitrary interpretation, but a direct indication from its Founder.

Letting go of one’s body and abandoning the illusion of control -activating trust- is a key requirement in practice.

Without “throwing away the garbage” represented by the need for control and an ego-centered perspective, no real process of growth and learning can take place. This is what makes a discipline’s work “sacred”.

Yet often, under the pretext of technical exploration and the illusion of being capable of sacrifice, we end up turning the other person into something disposable -thus stripping the practice of its meaning and reducing it to mere physical action.

We are very good at throwing ourselves -and others- away. We accept irrational efforts when wrapped in grand, exotic-sounding words, but struggle to understand that if we ask our uke to fall and abandon their balance, it is because we must first relinquish our own tensions- physical reflections of inner ones.

So, if we truly want to practice “sacrifice techniques”, we should accept the patient work of technical progression, leaving the study of sutemi waza to contexts where they are properly taught and understood.