floating hip throw

Floating hip throw is the English name for uki goshi — the half-hip throw in which the opponent is turned over the hip rather than carried on it.

Etymology. Uki (浮) means “floating”, and it describes the hip rather than the opponent: the hip makes contact without taking the load. The Kodokan counts it as the one-half-of-hip throw against o goshi’s two halves, and places both in the first taught group, which is a deliberate pairing — they are the same turn executed to two depths.

Mechanics. The attacker stops the turn roughly halfway, so the hip meets the side of the opponent’s abdomen and the chest still angles toward them. The pull then travels across the attacker’s front and past their far hip, rotating the opponent around the hip as a pivot. Pulling downward instead of around is the common fault: that is the o goshi input, and applied to a half-hip it drives the opponent into the attacker’s side rather than around it.

Cross-reference. The full-load version is o goshi. Full mechanical coverage on Uki Goshi.