Aiki training log for tonight

Aikido with Patrick M., Kel, and Rick

• ROM & Ukemi
• Hanasu #1-8 with emphasis on releasing #1 and #2 into ukemi and emphasis on #6 and #8 as pieces of shihonage
• shomenate, aigamaeate, and gyakugamaeate
• chain #1 with emphasis on taking the steps between the steps in order to stay synchronized. We also emphasized having uke constantly moving to diffuse tori's technique.
• Cool techniques of the night: Koryu dai ni first two techniques - R4→katagatame and R3→2HG→gyakugamaeate

Getting in synch and flowing around obstacles

Aiki with Patrick M., Kel, and Rick

• Today we discussed getting in rhythm with uke, like Musashi was talking about in the passage I posted a few days ago...


• Tegatana with emphasis on shortening steps to keep in synch with an external pace.


• Hanasu with emphasis on shortening or stretching steps to get in synch during releases #1 and #3. From there we played with brushing off and disengaging. #2 turns into a particularly fabulous brushoff if tori stays light on the feet, times uke's near footfall and brushes himself off of uke.


• Koryu dai ichi section B with emphasis on staying light on the feet and flowing around obstacles.

Stick & rope

Aiki with Kel and Rick

• ROM and ukemi
• Tegatana with emphasis on relaxing the shoulders down and back throughout the exercise
• Hanasu with emphasis on the stick and rope model - that is, releases #1 and #3, the connection is like a stick - you can only effectively push forward along the length of the stick, lining the stick up between your center of mass and the point of contact. Releases #2 and #4 work like a rope - you can't push a rope, only pull it with both centers of mass lined up with the rope. What this does is minimizes all moments of torque around the shoulder joint.
• nijusan #1 - shomenate
• Sankata tantodori #2 and #3, Sakate yokomen gyakugamaeate and sakate hidari wakigatame - both of these with emphasis on evading and brushing off - minimizing the amount of time you are in the meatgrinder. #2 (at least the way we were playing it tonight - similar to the kokyunage pictured above) is another one of those super-cool ninja invisibility tricks.

Last night's aikido

Aikido with Knox, Quin, Rick, and Kel

• Warmed up with the kids with a contest to see who could run across the mat in the silliest way. There was a lot of arm flailing and head wagging, hopping, and wiggling of butts. In short, good warmup.
• Ukemi with me throwing/spotting the kids into the crash pad for about 20 minutes before class started. Then the kids bailed and the grownups showed up and continued with the ukemi in the crash pad, emphasizing forward roll falling from a reflexed position.
• Tegatana emphasizing rapid recovery, bringing the back side of the body with you, and doing it as near-instantaneously as possible.
• hanasu #1-4 emphasizing tori staying centered on the power hand and uke flowing with tori.
• knife evasions, aiki brush-off, and stab-twice.
• The brush-off led into the tantodori section of sankata, including the ushiroate brushoff, the udehineri, the kotegaeshi, and the stab-the-knee gedanate.

PM judo and aikido

Kid's judo with Gavin, Whit, Knox, Emma, and Quin

• Ukemi - and lots of it with me throwing/spotting Whit, Knox, and Quin for about 30 minutes before class started. Then the others arrived and we went through the ukemi routine for the parents' demo in about a month.
• osotogari into kesagatame
• quiet sitting counting sounds that we can hear.

Aikido with Kel

• tegatana with emphasis on taking small enough steps that the heels do not strike or lift off the mat.
• hanasu with emphasis on 'stay-off-me' hands.
• chain #1, including shihonage, iriminage, and ushiroate
• some various interesting techniques from Sankata as the cool ninja techniques of the night.

I am exhausted from the three workouts today. Elise, my darling wife, has gone to purchase me a bottle of whiskey to drink while I lie in a scalding hot bathtub.

Good vibrations

Aiki with Kel and Rick

• ROM and ukemi
• tegatana with emphasis on finishing each step, making sure that you don't drag the recovery out, and bending the knees to take up the up-down slack and keep your COM level. It turns out that there are cool COM changes happening in one step - as you separate your legs to take a step, your center rises with respect to your head, but it drops with respect to the ground, so it almost balances out. With just a little flex in the knees the COM stays very close to level and you cease to telegraph so badly and you conserve your own energy much better.
• hanasu with emphasis on taking the first step as a leap of faith, without knowing what technique will fall out. From there, we worked on transitioning between #1, #2, #5, and #6 as appropriate to follow the arc of uke's force and to attain that release feeling.
• chain #1 - release #1 resisted into release #2 into reverse kotegaeshi, ushiroate, and iriminage. This is an especially cool exercise because it makes it easier to feel the vibration in uke's body when he tries to resist and you move with him instead of fighting and damping him out. We especially played attention to the ukemi because without uke taking ukemi, tori cannot ever learn the last part of the technique.
• Kel managed to get two zen-ish sayings out of me in one night. That is a feat, because I don't consider myself a very zen-ish dude normally, so I told him to cherish it. The two zen-ish sayings...

Be like water running downhill.

Seek safety in the mouth of the Dragon.

Backup plans in aikido

Aikido with John J. and Vincent

• ROM, ukemi
• tegatana with emphasis on heel-toe, shoulder-width stance, walking on the balls of the feet, complete recovery steps, and relaxed unbendable arm.
• hanasu #1 and #2
• chain #1, including release #1 resisted into release #2, which can lead to a reverse kotegaeshi. This gave us the opportunity to talk about covering uke's hands to damp or supress his potential.
• Short lecture on the four main backup plans in aikido: 1) get behind uke, 2) disengage and move away, 3) move with uke, and 4) hit uke in the face.
• We worked on shomenate as an example of backup plan #4 when we (for whatever reason) stepped inside and parried with the lead hand (a terrible, awkward mistake).

Great falling practice

Aiki with Kel

• Ukemi emphasizing how the proper landing position is a natural consequence of managing the body properly throughout the entire fall.
• Tegatana emphasizing the panther walk and bringing the recovery step in fully
• Hanasu emphasizing full recovery steps
• chain #1 including the transition from release #1 to release #5 and the stuff that comes off of release #1 - mainly tenkai kote hineri, kotemawashi oshi taoshi, and kote hineri.
• Rokukata maeotoshi and Rokukata sakaotoshi with a crashpad emphasizing feeling to see if one step is enough or if you should take one more step and catch the next footfall. We were getting spectacular throws and falls.

Randori with locking techniques

Aiki with Kel

• We've gone from freezing cold to temperate to too-humid-to-survive in about two weeks. Scott Z. would feel right at home.
• Ukemi with emphasis on landing properly and slowing the legs down so they don't get hammered on the mat
• Tegatana & hanasu as warmup - no particular emphasis
• Nijusan #6-10 with the ukemi and pins (see this training log)
• Chain #1 - the shortcut that contains the hineri-gaeshi loop
• Randori with both partners walking into and out of gaeshi, hineri, mawashi, and wakigatame locks.
• Rokukata maeotoshi and Rokukata sakaotoshi as the cool ninja techniques of the night

Aiki practice and a cool knife video

Aikido with Rob and Kel

• tegatana with emphasis on the goofy-foot pivots and turns in the second half of the exercise
• hanasu with emphasis on synchronization
• chain #1

We talked about aikido having about four major failsafes - strategies that you fall back on when something is not working. They include:

• disengage and move away
• move behind uke
• hit uke in the face
• synchronize with uke to limit his potential

Rob is having some cognitive dissonance trying to reconcile his knife-based knowledge (which is quite good and quite aiki - but just a different training methodology) with our aikido. He called it comparing apples to oranges. I called it getting stuck on the warmups to the point you never make progress. I don't know if we resolved it but I think it might be better. I don't think he isn't buyng into the aikido, but that he is having trouble reconciling how the two sysems seem to build up to the same thing through different paths.

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We also talked about an interesting knife method that seems pretty viable and pretty aiki-like to me. (Watch out for some foul language on the film.) Rob had some commentary and potential problems with it. I think what I see there is pretty interesting because this guy talks all the same principles that we do in aikido - i.e. don't fight with the guy, disengage and run, control his balance and you control his potential, etc... I don't know if this is the 'best' knife system - but it sure is interesting.

Yonkata and other kata ideas

5AM aiki with Rob

• tegatana
• hanasu
• Yonkata #1-14 (A.K.A. Shichihon no kuzushi omote and ura)
• We talked about different ideas of what kata is - more ammo for some future posts.

Aiki practice

Aiki with John J.

• It was cold in the dojo (after our snow last night!), so it was streetclothes, no-mats practice today.
• Tegatana emphasiding bringing recovery foot back under your center and same-hand-same-foot.
• Hanasu #1-4 emphasizing relaxed, unbendable arm and moving the center behind the shield of the hands no matter where uke moves that shield. We particularly worked on #1 and #2 emphasizing how each flows into the other when resisted.
• Shomenate
• Kotemawashi off of release#3 as the cool ninja technique of the day.
• A little bit of "crazy man" randori, emphasizing relaxed movement and "stay off me" hands and

Ninja invisibility in aikido

Aikido with Patrick M., Rick, and Mytchi

• Jodo with Mytchi. We worked on rolling the cane from pencil grip to honte, gyakute, and sakate grips. We also worked on #1 and #6 seiteikata as separation events against unarmed attackers.
• Tegatana emphasizing using ideokinesis to release into shizentai by visualizing forces drawing the crown of the head and the balls of the feet apart (is that enough jargon for you or what?). This was an amazing, relaxing postural fix.
• Hanasu #1-4
• Randori as a game of random releases. Everyone was doing great on this.
• Oshitaoshi (irimi omote and tenkan) emphasizing sidestepping into uke's blind spot and staying there with feelers until you can separate or execute a technique. We also got to play with good locking posture in pins.
• We talked about several really disorienting tricks that are part of tori's motion. Things that make tori seem to disappear and make it more difficult for uke to continue attacking. We nicknamed this the ninja invisibility trick. I'll probably have a good blog post on this soon.

Thursday aikido

We had no 5AM class this morning - Rob had a test to study for.
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Kid's judo with Gavin, Whit, Mason, and Emma

• Warmup, ukemi, spider-crawling alternated with big falls (teguruma) with a spotter
• Osotogari uchikomi "by the numbers" sets of theee throwing on the last rep and trading partners. Whit was doing especially good on the osotogari, and hammered Gavin once. Gavin tried to whine about it but then started laughing.
• Osotogari into kesagatame
• Uphill escape from kesagatame. Mason was majorly out-doing the others on this escape with an excellent bridging action.
• Crawling man

Aiki with Rick

• tegatana emphasizing balls of the feet and short, conservative steps.
• hanasu #1-4 emphasizing the feeling of release.
• partner evasion exercises using release motions to evase and brush off lunges.
• suwari kokyuho (kneeling freeform pushing exercise)

PM Aiki

Aiki with Kel and Mytchi

• tegatana emphasizing falling during the first half of the step and pulling with the front leg in the second half.
• hanasu #1-4 emphasizing releasing feeling and "stay off me" hands
• chain #3 emphasizing synch and brush-off in kotemawashi oshitaoshi, hikitaoshi, and udehineri.
• review of shomenate and aigamaeate

5 AM Aikido

Aiki with Rob

• tegatana, hanasu (#1,3,5,7 are much improved. Work on centering on #2 and #6.)
• chain #2
• Sankata #1-16

The return of Rick

Aikido with Patrick M., Kel, and Rick

• Welcome back, Rick, an old head that hasn't been able to work out with us lately. We're stoked about his return and are looking forward to working out and having fun learning a lot.
• Warmup, tegatana
• partner evasion exercises - the aiki brushoff.
• hanasu#1 - the first wrist release - emphasizing the release feel and synchronization and finding a good time to brush off.
• randori off of release#1
• fast-direct oshitaoshi (ikkyo omote) as cool-technique of the day.

New green belt

Aiki with Kel

• Warmup, ukemi
• Green belt demo for Kel: tegatana, hanasu, Nijusan #1-5. Good job on all of it. Gedanate needs work (but mine does too). Remember same-hand-same-foot on the releases. Work on turning your whole body (i.e. your back hip and shoulder into the pushes during tegatana.
• One run-through of Shichihon to refresh the order
• Chain #2, including kotetaoshi and gyakugamae ate
• Randori for the rest of class

Hanasu vs. shichihon

Lately, we’ve been working on Hanasu– the wrist releases – in greater detail, trying to really get that ‘releasing’ feeling. We’ve all been doing great, and I’ve been tweaking little details, “This time do it this way… Good, but think about this… What if we try it like this…” and then I realized that I was bringing elements into Hanasu that we usually practice in the other fundamental release kata, Shichihon no kuzushi (the 7 fundamentals of offbalance). So, what is the difference between Hanasu and Shichihon?

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Superficially, Hanasu includes eight techniques and Shichihon contains seven. Looking a little deeper, Hanasu includes four releases and four backup ideas in case those first four go in an unexpected direction. Shichihon repeats those first four releases from Hanasu, with a different emphasis, and adds three new releases.

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What is the different emphasis? Hanasu is mostly about evasion, blending, and synchronization, while Shichihon is more about timing and direction and extension of specific offbalances. It is possible to do either kata emphasizing any of the ideals from either exercise, but in normal practice, each has its own set of things that it teaches. Each of these two exercises contains a different piece of the puzzle. The pieces of the puzzle begin being put together in the chains, where we evade, blend, synch, and watch for proper times and directions to extend uke into weakness.

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So why the different emphasis in Shichihon? Because of the first two new releases being inside you don’t have the safety margin like you do on the outside releases so you have to do something (kuzushi) to slow uke down and sap some of his potential while you are releasing. The rest of the kata is a timing progression. That is, the first 2 techniques are timed off of the first footfall, the next two are timed off of the second footfall, the next two are timed off of the third footfall, and the 7th technique is just plain too late.

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We used to spend the first 1-2 years of our practice working almost exclusively with the releases in Hanasu, then we would practice the releases in Shichihon but in less detail. Since about Y2K, practicing the chains has brought some of these higher-level ideas back into the kyu ranks, but I want to start doing a little more work on the Shichihon ideas.

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We are going to be alternating the release kata that we use for warmup – one class we’ll warmup with Hanasu (emphasizing evasion and blending and synch) and the next class Shichihon (emphasizing timing and direction and extension). We should be able to see pretty soon if this will help us to move toward that vague, elusive ideal ‘release’ feeling in more of our motions and techniques.

Cool ushirodori day

Aiki with Kel

• tegatana, hanasu
• Hanasu from wrist-twists as a lead-in to randori. We did randori for a good while, working on the idea of walking out of wrist binds, staying centered on the opponent, and covering hands.
• Kel wanted to work on backfalls, so we repped hanasu #2,4,6,8 into backfalls emphasizing upward extension to unhook the guy from the ground and slow him down.
• Rokukata ushiro tentainage and a bunch of various ushirodori like it including maeotoshi, kotegaeshi, tentainage, and shichihon#7.