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

Musashi and Canadian Brass on speed

Last night, as we practiced aigamaeate, Kel and Rick commented on the difference between what I was doing and what they were doing. They were pulling uke around in a circle and it was making tori have to go faster to compensate for lack of offbalance and for the centrifugal effect. I was floating uke into offbalance, slipping aside at the proper time, doing less, moving slower, and getting greater effect.

This brings me back to Musashi’s Wind book, which I was quoting the other day:

Speed in Other Schools
Speed is not part of the true Way of strategy. Speed implies that things seem fast or slow, according to whether or not they are in rhythm. Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast.

Some people can walk as fast as a hundred or a hundred and twenty miles in a day, but this does not mean that they run continuously from morning till night. Unpracticed runners may seem to have been running all day, but their performance is poor.

In the Way of dance, accomplished performers can sing while dancing, but when beginners try this they slow down and their spirit becomes busy. The "old pine tree" melody beaten on a leather drum is tranquil, but when beginners try this they slow down and their spirit becomes busy. Very skilful people can manage a fast rhythm, but it is bad to beat hurriedly. If you try to beat too quickly you will get out of time. Of course, slowness is bad. Really skilful people never get out of time, and are always deliberate, and never appear busy. From this example, the principle can be seen.

What is known as speed is especially bad in the Way of strategy.

The reason for this is that depending on the place, marsh or swamp and so on, it may not be possible to move the body and legs together quickly. Still less will you be able to cut quickly if you have a long sword in this situation. If you try to cut quickly, as if using a fan or short sword, you will not actually cut even a little. You must appreciate this.

In large-scale strategy also, a fast busy spirit is undesirable. The spirit must be that of holding down a pillow, then you will not be even a little late. When your opponent is hurrying recklessly, you must act contrarily and keep calm. You must not be influenced by the opponent. Train diligently to attain this spirit.

I particularly enjoyed Musashi's analogy of holding down a pillow. The image that comes to mind is smothering someone with a pillow in their sleep. In a lot of ways aikido is like that.

Busy, busy day

5:00 am aiki with Rob.

• we worked on the Sankata knife stuff. I enjoy getting his CSSD Modern Arnis ideas at work on the aiki knife stuff.

5:30 PM Kid's judo with Gavin, Mason, and Emma

• Laps of the mat with silly walks for warmups.
• ukemi, including the demonstration forms and the crash pad forms
• osotogari
• osotogari→kesagatame
• osotogari→kesagatame→uphill escape
• taiotoshi

6:30 aiki with Kel and Rick

• ROM & ukemi
• tegatana with emphasis on using some ideokinesis ideas to improve posture and relaxation of the shoulders.
• hanasu with emphasis on loose, relaxed shoulders
• hand randori
• aigamaeate
• 2-3 of the Rokukata knife-taking and knife-retention techniques

A helpful handful – Aikido for self-defense

Over the past 23 or so years I have studied taekwando, karate, judo, aikido, hapkido, and jujitsu and I can honestly say that of the martial arts I have experienced, aikido appears to me to be the best self defense there is. The following are a handful of aspects of aikido that I think make it particularly suitable for self-protection purposes.

• Ukemi – the art of falling safely – particularly the simple side fall and the forward roll. Proper reflexive falling skills will likely save you from many more hazards during your lifetime than any other martial arts technique or skill. Check here for a collection of good articles on proper falling.
• Evasion and the aiki brush-off – the ability to efficiently get out of the way of an incoming force and push the opponent off of you or push yourself off of the opponent. This is the fundamental skill in aikido, practiced in every class as the foundation of every technique. To read more about the aiki brush-off, check out this article.
• Shomenate and aigamaeate – the first two striking techniques taught. These make wonderful strikes, separators, and set-ups for other techniques. We have acid tested these two techniques in resistive, fast, relentless knife randori (free play) and found them to be the simplest, most effective techniques in the syllabus. Here are a couple of good articles about shomenate and aigamaeate.
• Karl’s “Shirai system of defensive groundwork.” One of the common complaints about aikido is that there is no groundwork (See Rafeh’s comment here). This is not true. In all aikido there is suwariwaza, which is a limited form of groundwork, but in Fugakukai aikido, Karl has given us a wonderful defensive groundwork system for aikidoka which I have personally seen proven outstandingly effective in combat in the street with a single aikidoka against multiple attackers.
• Re-calibrating hyperactive reflexes so that you don’t make your situation worse through spastic motion when you are surprised. This is sort of a surprise, or side effect of aikido training. The aikido learning method tends to make your reflexes less spastic so that your reflexive movement is much more efficient and effective. Here you can read about a practice that showed this aspect pretty well.

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.

A helpful handful: yoko o mawashi

A couple of days ago, John asked about potential applications for the last movement (yoko o mawashi) in our first exercise (Tegatana no kata). Following are a handful of applications or things that this last movement teaches - but not before a disclaimer. I consider this exercise to be very general-purpose. This movement, or something similar could occur in many techniques.

• As John pointed out, all the steps in this kata are very small, conservative motions, so, in contrast, this large, lunging motion teaches us what a large recovery is involved with a large step
• You may also consider this as a withdrawing evasion (like a retreating tenkanashi) getting the hands up on the centerline. You may not step that deep, but in essence yoko o mawashi is a specific type of aiki brush-off.
• You may also interpret this motion as pushing uke down: an evasion with some degree of turning motion, dropping, and pushing uke into offbalance - taking an incoming opponent and driving them into the ground.
• As for specific techniques, you may see this type of motion as a kotegaeshi. As uke punches, tori evades with a retreating tenkanashi, grasps the arm, and returns back to the starting point, throwing with a gaeshi.
• You could also call it aigamaeate or aikinage - retreating tenkanashi scooping the arm and head in an arc, then turning the other way attacking the face.

A helpful handful: aigamaeate

Consider the similarities between aigamaeate and aikinage (known in aikikai as iriminage). They are really the same technique - or perhaps you could say that aigamaeate is a form of iriminage. Here is a handful of helpful hints - some of the things I work with my students on.

• Often in practice, aigamaeate is done as a more direct entry and abrupt atemi, whereas aikinage seems more flowing and roundabout, but either technique can be done either way. Try aigamaeate from a backing-around situation when uke interrupts your tenkan and tries to turn back in on you.
• Because aigamaeate and aikinage are about the same thing, all the helpful handful for aikinage apply to aigamaeate too.
• Where there two techniques really diverge is in the relative height of tori as compared to uke. A taller tori will often find it easier to strike over uke’s arm, while a shorter tori will strike under uke’s arm. Takng a palm to the chin from a short tori sliding upward along your body can be one of the worst experiences ever.
• Aigamaeate happens abruptly and effectively when someone is trying tori out using snappy lead jabs and testing feints. If you see 1-2 testing jabs, get ready for another one and follow it back into uke with an atemi of your own.
• Another fundamental version of aigamaeate is in response to a jo thrust – slip out of the way moving forward and outside the strike and clothesline or better yet, palm uke to the face while blocking and taking the jo with the other hand.

A helpful handful: aikinage

This is really the thing that aikikai guys call iriminage. Here are a handful of things that I've played with on this technique.

• This technique contains two tenkan motions and sorta describes a yin-yang shape on the floor. Either of the tenkan motions might cause uke to fall. In fact, in aiki demos you often tori throw uke facefirst into the ground and uke pops back up as tori switches directions and clobbers uke.
• Think of the hook around the head as a feeler instead of an end-effector. If you pull hard with the head-hand then you can spoil the technique and give uke stability.
• Try throwing with a tenkan motion back into the front of uke's hips instead of a clothesline.
• Try throwing with a palm to the face, like aigamaeate. This is a much better small-tori technique than the clothesline.
• This can be thrown as a hip throw.

Improvement on osotogari and kesagatame

Judo with Gavin, Whit, Mason, Knox, Emma, and Quin

• warmups, running, ukemi
• kneeling kubinage into kesagatame - most were doing much better on getting into kesagatame
• uphill escape from kesagatame - this is the first time they'd seen it and most of them did pretty good. This will give them incentive to get better at kesagatame, which wil in turn, give them incintive to get better at uphill escape and to learn more escaping actions. A cool feedback loop.
• osotogari - all were improved and we worked on uke's falling action - making sure the butt hits first and slapping instead of putting arms down. We also wlrked on supporting uke by pulling up with both hands on one arm and moving in beside the chest as uke falls. The 6+ year olds were grtting this action pretty good.

Aiki with Kel

• warmups, tegatana (worked on some hand motions), hanasu (kinda off tonight)
• Chain #2, including maeotoshi, over-the-shoulder straight armbar, shihonage, aikinage, sumiotoshi, and tenkai kotehineri
• This transitioned into randori. Kel was doing well tonight.

Aiki randori day

Aikido with Patrick M. and Kel

• warmup and ukemi emphasizing forward roll and slipping side fall
• tegatana emphasizing keeping fingers together, the pulling feeling in stepping (i.e. moonwalk), and not making extra arbitrary motions to correct for imperfections in stance.
• hanasu emphasiing releases #1 and #5
• chain #1 emphasizing the shortcut - chudan aigamae to tenkan to kotegaeshi-kotehineri loop. We talked about letting the step release instead of releasing then stepping.
• randori emphasizing slow, smooth, continuity, going with your reflexes to see if you win or lose.
• we saw a lot of different instantiations of the goofy-foot backwards turn from tegatana (the next-to-last move)

Judo and aiki at Mokuren last night

A slight change in the format of my training logs...

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Judo with Rob

• Groundwork cycle – emphasis on minimizing 2-knee downs and reversing the flow of the cycle using the shoulder press turnover, the knee-lift turnover, and the cross-face near ankle breakdown.
• Newaza randori followed by drilling the skill of walking out of jujigatame by feeding the arm farther in and stepping over his body. I also got to try a step-over guard pass that I saw in a book. Worked great.
• Standing throws into a crashpad. A few repetitions of ogoshi (I hate that throw!) then working into the otoshi-guruma concept with taiotoshi, ukiotoshi, sumiotoshi, and hizaguruma.

Aiki with Patrick M., Kel, Jill, and J.P.

• Tegatana emphasizing pulling with the front foot to snap the recovery foot back under your hips to minimize time spent in an indeterminate state.
• Hanasu emphasizing the transition from #1 into #5 and #2 into #6
• KiHara Chain #2 working maeotoshi, shihonage, tenkai kotegaeshi, and aikinage/aigamaeate. Emphasis on using the wrist-hand in aikinage as a feeler instead of an end effector.

Juntai releases and aikinage

Tonight we worked tegatana once then moved into hanasu, working it once fairly close to kata mode then shifting to juntai timing similar to what Whit and I are doing in this video. This is a neat exercise because it introduces the beginnings of chaining and uke learns that in order to give a good attack he has to keep trying to center on tori. Tori learns to recognize the line that he has to move off of each time. Tori also learns to treat uke centering on him as an attack. We worked through 1-4 using this type of timing.

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Then we moved into aigamaeate and aikinage, two of my favorite throws! Everybody got the hang of these things almost right off the bat and we used them to illustrate several principles. One of the things that aikinage illustrates well is the scalable nature of aikido. Aikido done properly causes tori to act like a mirror, reflecting uke's violence back onto him. So, aikido automatically scales itself appropriately to the level of violence tori encounters.

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The following is an example of Nariyama whipping the living sh__ out of his poor ukes using aikinage (the 2nd and 4th techniques in the following video). While I don't approve of abusing ukes, it does illustrate the point that aikinage can be easily upgraded from the gentle-but-effective, uke-friendly version we do the neck-wrenching, bone-smashing version seen here...

And my comments are not meant, by the way, as derogatory toward Nariyama. I think the following video amply demonstrates his skill with some very nice aikido without whipping his uke too badly (though the 2 ushiroate on the second uke are pretty harsh).

Weddings and knives and grandmasters

What a wholly remarkable weekend! First, we got Rob properly and officially married off to Nikki. Congratulations to the new Belote family! All the wedding details were perfect. Just as they should be, thanks to great attention to detail by the mothers and the wedding planner and the proprietor of the tour home where the event was held. The weather was perfect and Natchez was beautiful.

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But an added bonus was that the groomsmen got to meet and work out for a couple of hours on top of Roth Hill in natchez overlooking the Mississippi River with Bram Frank, grandmaster of Modern Arnis and owner of the Common Sense Self Defense (CSSD) knife methods. Truly a masterful teacher. It was wonderful. I am so excited about the stuff I saw because of the explicit overlap between it and the aikido that we do. Bram was talking directly about many of the principles that I preach so much, including:

• get off the line
• natural motion
• centered, strong arm positions (i.e. unbendable arm)
• same-hand-stuck-foot (he didn't talk about it but he was doing it)
• working from the worst predicaments first
• covering the opponent's face with your hand to block his vision and get startle reactions

The first of his modular knife things (similar to our chains) that we did was almost directly analogous to our kata versions of shomenate/aigamaeate.

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This stuff that I saw really was aiki-knife at it's finest. One thing that I have to admit - and this was probably the finest lesson I got that day - although I could see that the motion was common to aikido, and although I know that theoretically the addition of the knife shouldn't make much difference - it did! While I didn't absolutely suck, I was much worse than I should have been. It was similar to when I show my students something slightly new and all their previous stuff falls to pieces and has to be rebuilt into a cohesive system with the new thing. That's really why I thought the lesson was so fine - it highlighted a weakness in my aikido. I'm really excited about working this stuff a lot more. Fortunately, we have a great CSSD instructor right here at Mokuren dojo - Rob Belote.

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Pictures of the weekend coming soon...

Katame no kata

Recently we’ve had a new aiki partner at classes. Jill comes to us from a judo background but is getting into aikido. She lives and works locally, so it seems like she could end up being a good, stable workout partner at Mokuren. She’s also dating the judo instructor at Lafayette, so she represents some more connectivity with the rest of the local judo scene. Welcome, Jill.
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Last nite at judo Rob and I warmed up as usual with ground cycle #1 and then I introduced Rob to katame no kata. This is an interesting exercise. Required for demonstration at nidan, sandan, and yondan levels, it is comprised of 15 grappling techniques, almost all of which the shodan has already seen – just not in this form. The really neat thing about katame no kata is that it is a hybrid between kata and randori.
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When you are doing randori and you get into a bad position you don’t want to avoid that position in the future. You want to recreate that position over and over and over until you learn from being at that particular disadvantage. Well, in normal randori, often it is hard to recreate a particular situation because your observant mind is not working as well as your habitual/reflexive brain. So sometimes it is hard to figure out how to recreate the position you just got into. Well, katame no kata gives us an exercise for exploring fifteen pretty common ground situations.
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Katame is done switching back and forth between kata and randori mode. Tori approaches uke, applies a precise form of a hold or choke or jointlock, and as tori cinches the position, uke takes that as a signal to switch to randori mode and attempt to break the hold or neutralize tori’s advantage. In practice it is often done with uke struggling full-on against tori’s position of advantage. For kata demonstration it is done with uke attempting three explicit escapes/neutralizations for each position then tapping. Below is a pretty good demonstration of katame no kata You have to forgive the silly posturing and crawling around on the knees – that’s part of the specified formality of the thing. Pay attention to uke attempting to reverse each position tori places him in. This video also gets the award for cool, funky background music!
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At aiki for the past couple of times, Weve been introducing Jill to how we do aiki. We worked on warm-ups, ukemi, about half of tegatana no kata (the walking exercise), about half of hanasu no kata (the wrist releases), and aigamaeate and oshitaoshi. She’s doing great and seems to be having fun. I can tell from the giddy grin when she smears a guy twice her size facedown on the mat in an armbar. We’re looking forward to having her at class and progressing – like Kano's motto...

You and me going forward together.

Old-Bear regains his honour

Another good class. Tonight in judo we worked the Meatgrinder entry into groundwork and focussed on entering into jujigatame from the rear mounted position. Cool and easy. Standing we worked on some nice, easy ukigoshi followed by some uchimata. Good work. Rob needs to work on getting the standing leg placed properly under himself as a fulcrum. That involves:

• toe-out and hipswitch
• standing foot slightly farther back underneath our collective center of mass.
• standing foot, knee, both hips, and all abdominal muscles pointing in the same direction
• butt cheek underneath uke, almost through uke's groin

On the ground the old bear recovered his honor. I got Rob in 4-5 good submissions, including a kesagatame (i think), a couple of tateshiho, and a jujigatame. Rob crushed me at least once with something or other - maybe a kesagatame? Good stuff. Neither of us got clean throws tonight in randori. I got a partially successful kouchigari and he attempted several single leg picks, which mostly got him sprawled-on and grounded. I think I may have gotten an arm-snapdown and I know I got a great cross-face turnover.

At aikido tonight, Kel and Patrick M. and I worked on hanasu into ukemi, a little light randori, some kata shomenate and several variants of aigamaeate, including some from goshinjitsu and kimenokata. Cool stuff.

Day of the bear

I got schooled tonight by a measley judo shodan! Rob tapped me 5-6 times to my 1-2. Mostly positional deals, but I do recall him getting one fine jujigatame and one good choke of some sort. I think I tapped him with a sodegurumajime (sleeve wheel choke) and with a head-crushing tateshiho (north-south hold). But I know for sure that my mat mobility was off tonight and Rob did very well. Standing I got a sode tsurikomigoshi (sleve lifting hip throw) and a morotegari (double leg pick). Rob, as I recall, mostly got these clinches and dragged me into the ground, from which position he crushed me. He must have had a good judo instructor at some point in his past.

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And that was all before aikido class started! By the time Kel got there I had the shaky jelly triceps fasciculations. We worked releases into ukemi, tegatana, and the atemiwaza (striking throws) from Nijusan. Kel is getting very good at shomenate and his aigamaeate and gyakugamaeate were better than mine tonight. We'll keep working on his rank requirements and solidify his skill and knowledge and have a rank test in a few weeks. At the end we played with the offbalance for kubiguruma and the kata otoshi brushoff from Owaza Jupon. Fun, but not very sklled performances on my part by that late point in the night.

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If I did not already have a great name for the dojo, I think I'd come up with a name involving a bear - as in my defacto motto, "Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you."

Gyakugamae, wakigatame, and kotegaeshi

Another great class with Kel. The new schedule really seems to be jiving with his schedule and he is able to make more classes. Tonight we warmed up on ukemi from releases and tegatana focussing on different chest wall positions for different types of pushes. From there we moved into gyakugamae ate from nujusan. After repping that a while, we talked for a few seconds about how the assumptions you start with govern the techniques that pop up in your syllabus.

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Well, we begin with three atemi to the face (shomenate #1, aigamaeate #2, and gyakugamaeate #3), which suggests that uke might respond by blocking the strike (technique #4) or running into you (#5) or running away from you (#6). Tonight's option was to grab or parry the hand in the face into waki gatame. Funny thing about waki gatame, it can serve as a follow-up or a counter to shomenate. We worked on both of these situations. Then we worked on wakigatame as an unorthodox release from a reverse forearm grab. Then we moved into Chain #3 and worked on wakigatame and kotegaeshi from both sides.

Another aiki basics class

Another good aiki class (is there any such thing as a bad one?) with just Kel and myself. We spent a goodly long time warming up stiff low backs and hips and worked on some ukemi, including releasing into rolls and backfalls. From there we worked tegatana a couple of times emphasizing walking on the balls of the two longest levers in the foot instead of the outside toes.

Last time we worked on #1 and #6 (shomenate and oshitaoshi) so this time we worked on #2 (aigamaeate) and #8 (hikitaoshi). Kel took to doing hikitaoshi as if he'd been born to it.

Aiki & judo weekend with John

This weekend at Mokuren Dojo we had John & Belique (hope I spelt that right) from Florida, Vincent, Andy the Hattiesburger, and a new guy, Trey. We had good workouts - the reason I know, we were all sore and tired and dragging today after yesterday's practice. Working backward through my memory of the weekend...

This afternoon, Andy and I worked on nijusan #6,7,11, and 12 (oshitaoshi, udegaeshi, kotehineri, kotegaeshi) emphasizing the slipping aside idea that I wrote about the other day. We worked slow and soft so we could really get into the coordination of these four techniques. They worked well. Andy is closing in on time in grade for nikkyu rank, and with a couple more months good work like this today, he'll be ready to feel good about ranking.

Earlier this morning, John, Andy, Belique, and I worked on aiki. We warmed up with tegatana and hanasu then focussed in on #1, 3, and 5. Andy had asked about the 'lost wrist releases' so we worked on jodan aigamae a while, trying to make it work just like hanasu #1 with uke grabbing wrong. When this happens, it places tori on the inside close to uke's free hand, so tori has to either strike uke or move away to stay safe. This led to practicing shomenate in nijusan mode as well as in aiki brushoff mode. John asked about what he missed from the recent ABG, so we worked brushoff, stab-twice randori, and multiple attacker randori for a while.

Yesterday, the class that wore everybody out and made us sore was judo. We worked on kosotogari into ukigatame into tateshihogatame, bridge&roll escape from tateshiho, and various escapes from the guard. I managed to pull one out of the hat that John hadn't seen (knee in the butt) so he'll have something to try on Bryce when he gets back to Florida

Precision in practice

Great aiki class this AM with Patrick M. We warmed up with ROM and Ukemi, spun through tegatana once, repping the hipswitch and the forward turns for a while, then got into hanasu. For a long time now, I've been working on robust, gross-motion aikido, and that is a good thing, but I want to bring some of Usher-san's precision back into our practice. In hanasu we worked particularly on #2 and #4 emphasizing pushing yourself around uke as well as stepping precisely onthe line of uke's feet and bumping him on the perpendicular offbalance.

You can get the feel of these elements by imagining release #2 as katatetori iriminage (wrist grab aigamaeate) - as uke steps in to grab, you push his attacking arm across in front of him then go for the face. Alternately, you can think of release #2 as trying to slip uke's grasp completely and going for the face as in aigamaeate. Sometimes in this situation, uke will grab to prevent the iriminage (aigamaeate) so you turn behind into release #2.

We brought this same precision into nijusan, working on shomenate and aigamaeate. We emphasized timing and angle of the kuzushi as well as not pushing uke through the offbalance or pushing him down to give him support. The feel of these two techniques today was phenominal!

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Efficient, threatening attacks. Natural, reflexive evasions. Sharp, precise kuzushi. Flowing, well-timed, but powerful pushing throws. Good ukemi. Felt like budo to me!

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After we worked these two techniques to death, we surveyed Nijusan #6, 7, 10, 11, kotetaoshi, and maeotoshi with regard to the stuff we saw at the recent ABG.