The Granby

Even with all my nice talk about "knowledge is not power - knowledge shared is power..." This clip is so good that it hurts me to share this. This is a video clip of some awesome wrestling, and if you back off a touch, what you see is a good offensive application for ukemi skills in judo or even aikido. Check out these guys' great ground mobility. If you want to begin playing this stuff in judo or aikido, uke had better be rolling and blending compliantly or he's going to eat a lot of energy and break corners off of his body.

Ukemi is a kind of intelligent blending

Cool aikido, iaido, and jodo demo, including the multiple opponents aikido randori that I was talking about with Rick last night. Notice in the randori that the tori does not engage in a fight with every single opponnent. In fact, he doesn't really engage any of them. He evades and brushes them off, moving on the the next attacker. Most of the attackers blend well with tori's redirection and brushoffs, ending up in simple forward rolls, but a time or two you can see an uke that hangs on an instant too long, applies force the wrong way at the wrong time, or is slightly out-of-synch with tori, and that uke eats a lot more energy in a bigger fall.

In situations like this you can see that skillful blending is a part of uke's role too - and I don't mean jumping for tori. I mean really attacking, then responding by blending intelligently to remain viable. Ukemi is a kind of intelligent blending. The falling is a natural extension of the act of blending with the relationship between tori and uke.

Great rolling exercise

When we begin training beginners to roll, we put them kneeling and have them roll forward into a proper landing position. Then we reverse that and have them roll backward from either a landing position or a seated position into a kneeling position. It usually doesn’t take too long to get to feeling fairly proficient with these two exercises, and here’s why: momentum covers mistakes.
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Take a bicycle wheel as an example. Stand it up on its edge and it falls over. Stand it up and start it rolling and it takes much longer to fall over. Because of conservation of angular momentum, a rotating object resists a change in its axis. So the wheel does not fall over and it is fairly easy to roll forward and backward with momentum.
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But what if as you gain proficiency you begin to slow down your kneeling rolls. Your momentum is reduced and the roll again becomes a challenge. As you slow down the rolls the muscles in your abdomen and torso have to adapt and become more coordinated at balancing you on the line of the roll.
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As you become more proficient these slower rolls become easier so you reduce the momentum further and it’s challenging again. You can actually continue profiting from these two initial exercises indefinitely so long as you keep balancing your feeling of success with reductions in momentum. The natural endpoint of this process is the forward roll into shoulder stand or the backward roll into shoulderstand.
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So, if you think you’re pretty good at the forward roll, try slowing it down until you feel uncomfortable again. Try to prove to yourself that there is such a thing as ‘not enough momentum’ to do the roll (there isn’t).

Judo bruisers

Somebody hit upon my blog the other day with the search term, “bruising in judo.” That certainly brings back un-fond memories. Back in the day when I was first learning to fall, I would have these huge bruises on the sides of my hips and thighs from falling and I would have hand-shaped bruises on my upper arms and chest from people grabbing for sleeve and pinching flesh. Abrasions (mat-burn or gi-burn) on the knuckles and feet and forehead and neck were common too. This abrasion and bruising was a perpetual thing. It lasted for years. I would often have overlapping areas of purple, blue-green, and yellow bruises all in different stages of recovery.
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So far as I know, this bruising was common to most everyone who did judo and it was benign, though I’ve wondered about the possibility of impact hemolytic anemia in judoka (BTW, that would be a great medical study to run if anyone wants to give me credit for the idea.)
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But anyway, in answer to the question implied by that search term, bruising in judo is common, normal, and probably benign in young judoka who play rough. Abrasions, on the other hand, can become seriously infected. If you get mat burn or gi burn a lot, keep your mats as clean as possible and keep a can of Solarcaine (or other spray antiseptic) handy in the dojo.

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.

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.

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

Baby got backfall

Here is a quickie video of a couple of my 4-year old students demonstrating the best, most powerful self-defense technique there is.

At the risk of being called a heretic...

...let’s re-think this falling thing.

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First, I am a big proponent of ukemi practice. It has a lot of benefits within and beyond the dojo. We practice ukemi in every single class and I am always preaching to take the technique all the way to the ground – nagekomi instead of uchikomi. But with that said, Does uke really have to take all those falls?

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If you make your aiki practice ukemi dependent, then...

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• ...you have to have special equipment and a lot of space to practice.


• ...you have to teach things in a certain order (generally from easier-to-harder) which means that you have to teach the relatively less street effective stuff first and it can take years to learn a sufficient amount of aikido to be effective in the street.


• ...you either limit your mat years or you have to change how you are doing aiki mid-career. At some age aikidoka need to slow down on the falling and eventually stop altogether for self-protection.


• ...you intimidate the novice and run students off.


• ...you increase the safety issues and incur greater liability. I've heard of judo clubs being told to get rid of climbing ropes because of liability. Well, for Pete's sake, think! Which is more dangerous, climbing up a rope once or twice per class or taking dozens of airfalls per class?

Throws like kotegaeshi and sumiotoshi do not have to end in an airfall if you can be satisfied with practicing slowly and deliberately and achieving the reflexive precursors to the throw (i.e. kuzushi, positioning, metatarsal reflex, etc...). Only two falls make up virtually all self-defense applications. – side falls and forward rolls. Nearly all other forms of falling are either preparatory exercises for these two forms or they are merely filling in the corners with a few special-purpose falls that are very limited in their utility.

But on the other hand, these big throws are, in large part, the artistic trademark of aikido. Many of the people that you ask will say they got into aikido in the first place because they saw a little old man with a beard pitching young, athletic judo-type guys effortlessly. That the big falls looked like magic. Well, in my opinion, that illusion of effortless magic is actually detrimental to the popularity of aikido in today’s environment of ultra-pragmatic self-defense systems (i.e. kravmaga, CQB, etc…) and full-contact sport systems (BJJ, GJJ, UFC, NHB, etc…). I say get rid of the magic, get rid of the illusion, and concentrate on the real aiki. The aiki that the old guys did – and not necessarily the large-motion aiki that is exhibited so beautifully in demonstrations.

What does that mean we need to do?

Rethink your goals. aikido can be amazingly effective without uke being required to take an airfall. In fact, to do good aikido, tori absolutely must get rid of the idea that his goal is to make uke fall in a certain way. This is a nearly impossible goal to accomplish unless you have a compliant uke. Change your goals to things you have more control over (staying safe, keeping uke extended and offbalance, staying in motion, etc…) and which are less dependent on uke's compliance or skill. Get away from choreography like "tori does X and then uke does Y and so tori throws Z" and work on learning skills that allows tori to say, "I don't care how uke reacts to this. I'll be okay."

Look for the large subsets of aiki that you can do with uke responding by kneeling down or sitting back into a gentle backfall. Emphasize these subsets and all of a sudden you have an extremely viable, practical self-defense system that virtually anyone can learn rapidly (months - not years), comfortably, and in greater safety without the need for large open spaces and matted floors.

Another difference between aiki and judo

While we're on the topic, has anyone noticed that aikido and judo throws tend to end in different kinds of falls from uke. A lot of aiki falls end up smearing uke facedown into the mat in an armbar or else throwing uke away and letting go of him. Judo throws tend to throw uke straight downward into the mat with tori still holding on.

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Folks whose minds jive with aikido tend to fear judo and judo-types tend to hate aiki-like falls.

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Of course these are generalizations - but has anyone else noticed this?

To tuck the foot or NOT

Well, I got several comments on the rolling video I posted a few days ago. I wanted to break these two rolls apart and discuss them, so I'll start with the back roll. First, what is excellent about this form of rolling? As several folks mentioned, it is very smoothe. Potatoe Fist also mentioned the demonstrator's awesome ability to roll smoothly to standing without apparently stopping and orienting in a kneeling position. This is very difficult to do - at least, I can't do it. But there is one glaring problem with this form of back roll, and that is the tucked leg.

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First, the leg is not made to bear weight with the top of the foot against the ground. Rather, it is made to bear weight with the bottom of the foot against the ground. This means that once the leg is tucked, it cannot be effectively used to slow the fall down.

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Second look at what we are trying to do with these falling exercises. We're trying to build a reflex that will save you when you are surprised and forced to take a fall from an awkward position. In order to execute this form of the backfall, you must first be in a prepared position, then you have to shift your weight forward, tuck the leg, then fall. There are a lot more steps than it first appears. What happens when you internalize this skill of this way and then you are placed in an awkward position in which you don't have time or control enough to do the weight shift and foot tuck?

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One more point against the foot-tuck fall. It is somewhat against the "Budo Spirit." By that, I mean by placing yourself into a weak, helpless position, you're giving up before it is necessary. What if, during the technique, something happened and tori lost control of the technique? Could uke reverse the fall and stand back up? IF you tuck the foot you commit yourself to the role of uke. Falling without the foot-tuck offers you the option of reversing the technique for a longer period of time.

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The way we teach this back fall is to take a half step backward, squat onto the heel bearing your weight on the ball of the foot. This way the foot becomes a smooth extension of the curve of the back. Then you just allow the foot and back to act like the rocker it is shaped like. This way your bottom leg is in a much better position to help you slow the fall.

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I used to think that this backfall was just a superficial difference between judo and aikido training methods. Judo guys tend to teach to fall like i'm talking about while the foot-tuck fall is most often seen in aiki classes. But then I saw an interesting thing - The non-foot-tuck fall is demonstrated as the basic form in Gozo Shioda's book, Total Aikido. You also see the non-foot-tuck fall in old videos of Tomiki. So, The old, "hard style" aikibudo guys were doing non-foot-tuck falls. I don't really know where this foot tucked fall originated from?

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I've had students who had started learning this backward fall in other classes and it is a difficult habit to break, but once broken, they have all admitted that falling from a crouching position with the bottom of the foot on the ground is much better than falling with a tucked leg. One even mentioned that he broke his tailbone learning to do that tucked-leg backfall and never knew why. Well, it's because you can't use that leg to slow your fall, so if anything goes wrong with the smoothe curve of the thing then you just plop down onto your coccyx. I'm surprised you don't hear of that sort of thing more often.

Forward and backward rolls

Alright, here's a demonstration of two forms of ukemi (falling). What do you guys think of it? I'd like some specifics to discuss. What do you think is excellent about these two forms? What needs work or rethinking? Is this level of refinement on these two skills sufficient or should one continue to strive to improve these two basic forms? Are these two forms good ones to teach a beginner?

Falling leaves ukemi

This guy has seriously GOOD body coordination. We don't teach ukemi exactly like this, but these are good drills with a stepwise progression to teach a few of the most important falls. If you'd like to see a few of my hints for developing this kind of skill, check out this post.

Ukemi - attacking and falling

Over the course of the last year or so, I've written 22 posts that I'd labeled ukemi. Well, slow me! That actually encompasses two different kinds of articles - some on how to fall down safely and some others on how to give your partner a better attack. Well, now I've removed the ukemi label and have labeled those articles more appropriately falling/rolling or attacking. Hope y'all can find stuff better around here now.

Forward kneeling roll

When learning to do a forward roll, many instructors have a kneeling form that they say is lower-impact and easier than a standing roll. Well, the way that I've seen it done most often is not really a kneeling roll and it is not even easier than a standing roll. This is because typically it is done by beginning in a kneeling position with the front knee up - and then standing up into a crouch. This is actually counterproductive. Check out how we teach this first kneeling forward roll exercise.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4134922017577940531&hl=en

(AAARGH! that infernal Google embedded player makes me crazy. It worked for a while then puked out. The above is the link to the video.)

Things to notice include: the front knee and shoulder start on the ground. The hips rise but the shoulder does not come off the ground - so this is truly a no-impact exercise. Not only is it no-impact but it is exceptionally low-speed. The benefit of this is that it really improves the muscular coordination of the torso and hips better than throwing yourself through the roll.

Now, for pure entertainment value, check out this forward roll...

How to improve your ukemi

So, I've been posting a good bit about ukemi recently. Maybe someone's gotten the idea that I consider this a pretty important subject or something. So, how do you go about improving your ukemi skills? There is, of course, my usual advice, "Go do about quarter of a million repetitions of this and then come back to me." But perhaps you would like some more advice - maybe some that you don't often get. Maybe some you don't want to hear...

Here's a few ways to improve your ukemi skills:

• Work on your flexibility some - especially hams, quads, hips, and low back. Why? A lot of the energy from a fall is absorbed in the musculature, and a good uke relies on the muscles crossing his hips, knees, and low back to control the direction and the impact of the fall. My prescription for a sensible flexibility program is Yoga Conditioning for Weight Loss, by Suzanne Deason. I don't know about doing yoga to lose weight, but this is an excellent flexibility program that is scalable to all different skill levels and provides a great intro. Trust me, just a little extra flexibility will do wonders.
• Work on your cardiovascular conditioning some. Just like with flexibility, you don't need to be a super-athlete to get some benefit from some cardio work. And I don't necessarily mean running. Walking does fine. The key is to do slightly more than you are comfortable with and repeat this application of stress regularly - most days of the week - that's at least 30 minutes per day, 5 days a week of walking slightly faster than comfortable. What does this do for your ukemi skills? Well, for one thing, it improves the strength and endurance of your hip, ab, and back muscles - might not make you a hottie but it does help. Also, let's face it. Dragging your overweight butt out of the mat every 6-12 seconds for an hour is hard work.
• Some improved muscle tone won't hurt either. Again, you don't have to be a bodybuilder if you don't want to, but as I said earlier, muscle absorbs impact. More muscle absorbs impact better. You can do whatever type of resistance program you want but I am a fan of functional fitness. Do something that moves your own bodyweight against gravity like shrimping, bridging, pushups, crunches, etc... Get a yoga ball and wrestle around on the mat with it. For a challenge, find a Pilates tape and work on some ofthe stuff they do.

Bruce Lee said in Tao that most martial artists spend far too little time preparing themselves for the activity. John Wood expressed a similar idea in one of his early posts. I agree totally, though I don't think we should be spending class time on situps and pushups when we can be working on skill improvements for which you need a coach. Take some time on your own out of class on a regular basis and work on the parts of your physical structure that take the most abuse in ukemi. It'll pay off.

The third great fear

In the video I posted Saturday, the narrator talks about dealing with fear - "removing fear from his practice." Karl Geis likes to say that there are three great fears; fire, water, and falling. In a martial art we can't so much about fire and water (I recommend Boy Scouts or a similar organization for people who want to work with those), but in aikido and judo we become very intimate with the third great fear - falling.

In aikido and judo, nearly everything is done with a partner and nearly everything is done to it's ultimate conclusion - the ground. There are no half-techniques. No pulled techniques. If uke hits the ground it's because the technique worked. Some people argue that uke just jumps - especially in aikido. That's nuts. No person with any sense (that is, a healthy fear of falling) will hook themselves to another person who is moving around violently and then jump upside down through the air. That's just stupid. We don't jump. Uke never jumps for tori. Of course if uke has any skill and any sense he will flow with the technique to try to neutralize it, but there come times (frequently) when uke runs out of "altitude, airspeed, and ideas" (another Karlism) and he just has to stop and lie down.

Those times when aiki or judo techniques happen perfectly and uke falls are very similar mechanically to the times in 'real life' when we fall. We trip and roll. We slip and fall. We bash our knee into something as we walk along and collapse. We get so badly off-balance that our leg muscles won't hold us up and we crumple. As such. there is no better training than aikido and judo in preparing for the most common self-defense scenario you will ever face.

Getting the evil smashed out of you

Ukemi practice teaches a falling reflex that helps keep you safe, but it also has some hidden benefits. Ukemi has greater leverage for positive change in peoples’ personality and behavior than perhaps any other aspect of martial arts.

Ukemi is about knowing when you can keep going along your current path safely and when you can’t. You have to learn to tell when you are beaten so you can stop putting energy into the system – energy you’ll have to eat at the end.

Bad actions begin with wrong thoughts and the two are so linked as to be inseparable But a lot of us get in trouble when there is no apparent consequence for a wrong thought or a bad action.
Ukemi is about consequences. After spending hundreds of practice hours getting tens of thousands of reps of being smashed for mistakes caused by wrong thoughts, you begin to get the idea that “maybe I shouldn’t act that way,” or more specifically, “Maybe I shouldn’t think that way.” Thus, ukemi gives you a vast amount of aposteriori knowledge that wrong thoughts have potentially severe consequences. Ukemi literally knocks the evil out of you one throw at a time.

Take for example, this fellow who made the news recently. What if, as a child and young adult, he'd been smeared a few thousand times by an elderly female sensei. What do you suppose would have gone through his mind just before this encounter?