How to Make Inside Trips Work: Kouchi and Ouchi Gari

Inside trips fail this way more than any other way. Kouchi-gari and ouchi-gari are not leg catches. They are balance attacks that happen to finish with a leg. Learn them as a pair, drive the balance first, and the legs start working.

Section 01Two Throws, One System

Kouchi-gari is the minor inner reap. Ouchi-gari is the major inner reap. Both are ashi-waza, leg techniques, in the Kodokan classification. Kouchi-gari sits in Dai Nikyo, the second set of the Gokyo no Waza, and ouchi-gari sits in Dai Sankyo, the third set. In the current Kodokan list, ashi-waza holds 21 techniques, and these two are its inside pair.

The names carry the size difference honestly. Minor and major describe the reap's scale, not the throws' value. Kouchi reaps the near leg with the sole or inside of your foot, a smaller, quicker action that often starts an exchange. Ouchi drives your whole leg through the space between uke's legs and reaps one leg with the back of your leg, a larger commitment that often ends one.

Tori is the thrower. Uke is the partner receiving the technique. In both throws, uke must be standing on the leg you take, with balance already traveling away from it. An unweighted leg is just a leg in the air waiting to be put back down somewhere safer.

Section 02Kouchi-Gari Taught Straight

Start from movement. Kouchi works best as uke steps, settles, or retreats onto the target foot. Your sleeve hand fixes uke's arm on that side so they cannot post. Your lapel hand drives uke's upper body back and toward the corner behind the target heel. This drive is smaller and quicker than a major throw's, but it is not optional. Kouchi without it is a foot tap.

Your reaping foot slides in low, sole to the back of uke's heel, and reaps in a short arc that pulls their foot forward and across your front while your hands complete the drive. Your support foot steps in close enough that your body is behind the action. The finish is compact. Uke sits back over the corner and falls behind, and you stay standing with the sleeve controlled.

Section 03Ouchi-Gari Taught Straight

Ouchi asks for more of you. Your entry step goes deeper, between or beside uke's feet, your chest and hands drive uke back and split their stance, and your reaping leg travels through the middle and takes the far leg from behind with the back of your thigh and calf. The reap and the drive finish together. Uke falls back over the reaped side.

The kuzushi picture is a split. Uke's legs are separated by their own stance or by your entry, their weight is parked on the leg you will take, and their upper body is already traveling back. If uke is square, narrow, and light on both feet, ouchi has nothing to reap yet. Create the split first, with movement, a kouchi threat, or a sleeve draw that turns their body.

Posture decides whether ouchi finishes or gets you driven backward. Enter bent over at the waist with your weight behind your feet and a pushing partner will run you off your own reap. Enter tall through the chest, weight traveling with the leg, and the same partner runs out of floor. Your head stays up, your support foot lands deep, and your hands drive through the whole reap rather than giving a shove at the start and retiring.

Section 04The Chain Between Them

These throws are taught together because each one builds the other's picture. This is the paired system, and it is where inside trips stop being party tricks.

Run the chain slowly in drilling. Attack kouchi, feel which defense arrives, name it out loud for a week, then add the matching second throw. Naming sounds slow and is in fact the fastest route, because randori gives you about half a second to recognize a defense and most players spend it hoping the first throw revives.

Section 05Why They Fail Against Stiff Arms

The stiff arm defense is the inside trip's natural predator, and it deserves an honest account. Uke locks both arms straight, grips hard, leans back, and keeps you at full arm length. Your trips need your leg to reach the inside of theirs, and from that distance your leg arrives alone, without your body's drive behind it. You hook a leg from far away, uke leans on their frame, and the pair of you hop.

Reaping harder from that distance does not fix it. The fixes change the distance or the arms first.

Break the frame's shape, not its strength. Pull one sleeve down and across your front as you angle to that side. A straight arm pulled across the body stops being a post and starts being a handle. Enter on that angle, not through the middle of two locked arms.

Attack the feet while the arms are busy. Foot sweeps in the deashi-harai family, the advanced foot sweep, threaten the base under locked arms. Uke who must hop to save a foot cannot keep both arms locked and leaning at the same time for long. The sweep does not need to score. It needs to make the frame blink.

Go forward honestly. If the arms stay locked and the trips stay out of range, a forward throw entered with a grip change, or a decision to strip a grip and restart the grip fight, beats a third hopeful hook. Coaches differ on the preferred answer in their rooms. The shared rule is that the answer is never a longer reach with the same leg.

Section 06Finishing Direction and Control

Both trips send uke backward, and the finish direction matters for safety and for what comes next. Kouchi finishes uke toward their back corner on the reaped side. Ouchi finishes uke back and over the reaped leg, often flatter. In both cases tori keeps the sleeve, guides the fall, and stays standing. Falling on top of uke after an inside trip is a common beginner picture and a bad one. Your drive goes through your hands and leg, not through your whole body onto their ribs.

Uke's fall is a backward fall, chin tucked, slap wide, no reaching back with a straight arm. Tori checks the space behind uke before full finishes, because inside trips travel backward from uke's position and dojo walls and other pairs do not move.

Section 07Counters, Named Honestly

Kouchi-gaeshi and the pick-up answers. As you hook inside, a skilled uke can reap your supporting leg or lift and turn you. These counters punish shallow entries where your weight sits behind your support foot. Depth and a real drive are the prevention.

The hop and step-out. Uke removes the leg and resets. Prevention is timing on a settling step. The live answer is the chain. The defense just told you which second throw to use.

Tsuma-gari style blocking and the leg lift defense. Uke blocks your reaping leg with theirs or lifts the target leg and turns. If the leg is gone, the throw is gone. Exit clean and re-enter on the next step rather than wrestling a leg that is no longer loaded.

Being driven backward out of ouchi. Uke pushes through your entry and runs you over your own heels. This is a posture verdict, not a strength verdict. Tall chest, deep support step, hands driving through the reap.

Competition note, stated plainly. Leg grabs with the hands are restricted under current IJF rules in standing play, with penalties for grabbing below the belt in tachi-waza except in specific transition contexts that referees judge tightly. Inside trips in this article are leg-on-leg reaps with standard grips. They are not hand pick-ups, and drilling them as pick-ups builds a habit modern referees will punish. Your federation and event rules always govern, so check the current ruleset before a competition season.

Section 08Drilling the Pair

Section 09Where It Goes Wrong

Catching the leg without breaking balance. The signature failure. Fix: feeder grades the load on the target foot before any reap counts. Unloaded legs do not count as reps.

Entering ouchi bent over. Weight back, drive gone, partner runs you backward. Fix: tall chest entries at half speed with a partner pushing honestly, until the posture holds.

Chasing the hopping leg. You follow uke around the mat still hooked. Fix: unhook, reset your feet, and take the chain throw the hop offered.

Treating kouchi as a tap. A gentle foot touch with no hand drive. Fix: lapel hand drives to the back corner on every rep, checked by the feeder's report.

Ignoring stiff arms and reaching anyway. Fix: one full drilling block on frame answers, angle entries, sleeve pulls across, and foot sweep threats, before trips against a locking partner are scored again.

Dropping your weight onto uke at the finish. Fix: finish standing standards in nage-komi, with any landing on uke graded as a failed rep.

Section 10The Companion Guide

This article gives you the knowledge. The companion guide turns it into training. The Inside Trip Playbook carries technique cards for both throws, entry checklists with load tests, moving pattern drills for kouchi timing, split-stance building drills for ouchi, the full chain tables with feeder defense scripts, a stiff arm answer block with doses, counter recognition drills, and session plans that build the pair over eight weeks. Logging sheets track which defense you met and which answer you chose, so the chain becomes a record rather than a hope.

It is made for intermediate players whose inside trips catch legs and change nothing, and for coaches who want a pair taught as one system instead of two unrelated syllabus items.