Elbows. Gosoke always talks about sanken-no metsuke, the three points to watch: hand, elbow shoulder. Mainly, you watch the right hand if you want to know where the other dude's sword is going. And of course, if you want your sword to go where you need it to go, you have to pay attention to how you use (which generally means extend) your rist, elbow, and shoulder.
Today we focused on the right elbow. Alot of times the right elbow will be almost totally extended by the time the sword is drawn. This usually results in a locked elbow (sometimes even hyper-extended or tennis elbow) and a full arm swing from the shoulder. Lots of muscle, lots of rotation, not alot of forward momentum and minimal hip power, kind of like whipping the arm out after cocking and unwinding the hips.
Then again muscles on do work when contracting, not expanding, so in order to extend your elbow, you basically contract your tricep; not an impressively powerful way to generate cutting force. The key is, obviously, to extend wrist, elbow, and shoulder all at just the correct time, all moving together to channel the energy from the hips moving in, and don't forget the left hand pulling away and the right hand drives forward. Whole body has to move as one complete unit, all the bits doing their part in tune to all the other bits.
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