Aikido this afternoon

Aiki with Kel

• ROM, warmup
• tegatana
• hanasu emphasizing synching with uke's up-down rhythm all the way through the technique. We also worked on recognizing when uke shifts from casual walking to "getting ready to fight" walking and seeing if we could switch him back with an offbalance.
• rokukata maeotoshi off of release #4 emphasizing executing hte technique by stretching a footstep right at the instant of uke's footfall. Kel was getting it on the wrong footfall about half the time but it was still working great! Coolness.
• We started working on chain #3 and got as far as the elbow-to-elbow wakigatame when Kel was called away.

A helpful handful: wakigatame

Here are a few hints I hold in my hat when I'm teaching wakigatame. Hope they help y'all too.

• Wakigatame is really the same thing as gokyo in aikikai – but the basic form that is commonly practiced looks different. In Tomiki and in Judo, the gokyo relationship is called wakigatame. This thing is superficially similar to ikkyo (oshitaoshi) but the hand grip is different (one hand over and one hand under).


• The first version we were taught was a “look ma, no hands” version in which the wrist is trapped in the crook of the elbow and the upper arm trapped under the other armpit with the elbow turned backwards across tori’s chest. This gives tori a little less control but leaves both hands free to do other things.


• When you try a variation more similar to the basic gokyo, try to get your hands on his arm (under the wrist and over the elbow) as if you were holding a jo, then maneuver your body in behind your hands and stab his arm forward in the direction his arm is pointing as if his arm were a jo.


• Try it with both hands on the wrist and your top elbow controlling his elbow. This elbow-to elbow wakigatame is an abrupt submission.


• If wakigatame goes bad, it tends to lead into kotegaeshi, gyakugamaeate, or gedanate.

Shortcuts

Judo with Rob

• warmup with the groundwork cycle. We worked on shortcuts from munegatame to tateshiho and from the guard to tateshihogatame.
• randori - rob started out beating me a couple of rounds, once with a very uncomfortable face-down rear mount and the threat of a RNC. Towards the end I wore him down some and had better success. I then sprawled as Rob shot in and got him in a facedown position with a relatively wimpy collar choke but the addition of the sprawl submitted him.
• osotogari working on getting the timing and direction of the individual pulls right.

Aiki with Jill

• walking kata and releases
• chain #3: wakigatame and kotegaeshi
• nijusan wakigatame working on emphasizing the release feeling and brushing off.

Don't forget the Call for Submissions for Carnival #5.

Amazing flow and continuity in Chain #3

Aiki with Kel

• Tegatana several times with emphasis on getting little details right.
• Hanasu 2-3 times as preview/warmup for chains.
• Chain #3 including wakigatame and kotegaeshi. This is what we spent the bulk of our time on and it is the thing we were wowed over. Release #3 has this amazing, light, continuous remarkable lack of feeling when done right - particularly when done inchain form instaed of hanasu kata form. This release #3 really seems to be the prototype for the correct releasing feeling.
• Part of chains #5 and #7 into various forms of kotemawashi, kaitennage, udegatame, or wakigatame.

Goshin Jitsu in aikido and judo

Someone asked me a while back to discuss the differences between how we practice the Kodokan Goshin Jitsu kata in our aikido classes as opposed to in our judo classes. Some of this we've already discussed in a previous post about the pros and cons of aikido and judo. My official position, from what I understand about the arts, is that judo and aikido are two lenses on the same art. Somewhat similar to the idea of climbing a mountain by different paths but ending up close to the same point. Sometimes folks like to call aikido “separated judo,” suggesting that they work at different ranges, but this is only true to a degree. Some folks also like to separate them based on their aggressiveness, calling aikido reactive or defensive and judo an art of aggressive attack. Again, I think this is only true to a point. So, back to the question – how do the two arts differ in their understanding of Goshin Jitsu. Short answer – they don’t.

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But there are minor differences in how the exercise is typically practiced in the two arts. For instance, take the first technique. Uke steps in, grasps both of tori’s wrists and tries to either pull him into or hold him still for a frontal knee strike to the groin. Tori responds by slipping back and to the side, breaking the grasp on the far arm and using it to deliver a strike to uke’s face, then grasping uke’s near wrist with both hands and applying wakigatame. In judo we typically see a direct pulling against the fingers grip release followed by a closed-fisted back-knuckle strike. In aikido we tend to avoid having tori do closed fisted striking atemi because it disrupts his ability to move properly. So the grip break is a winding thing and the atemi is an open-handed palm to the face – really more of a separator and distractor than a strike. This type of slight modification is typical throughout the kata.

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If you watch two well-trained aikidoka do Goshin Jitsu and watch another pair of well-trained judoka do the kata, it will be easily recognizable as the same thing. They will be more similar than different. It is not like we want to train the student to do it one way in one class and another way in another class.

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.

8, 9, 10, and Goshin Jitsu

Today we had a fun aiki class. We were incredibly sore from Thursday (at least I know I was and I think Andy was in much the same shape). We warmed up and then worked on nijusan #8, 9, and 10 (hikitaoshi, udehineri, and wakigatame). This was mostly review for Andy and Patrick M., but we refined these techniques and toward the end they were looking much more precise. At the end of class we worked on the first set of Kodokan Goshin Jitsu. Goshin Jitsu is interesting because it is very much the gray area where aikido and judo become the same thing. Invented by Tomiki and his cronies at the Kodokan in the 1950's, much of it either bears a great resemblance to Tomiki's Koryu Daisan or it compliments Daisan well. I recorded some video and should have it uploaded soon.

Kotegaeshi, kotemawashi, and wakigatame

As rat mentioned in his comment to the previous post, kotegaeshi seems to occur much more often in randori than does kote mawashi (nikkyo). Tomiki noticed the same thing as he was putting his fundamentals kata together. He originally thought there would be roughly fifteen techniques (including kotemawashi and kotegaeshi), but through a period of randori it must have occurred to him that people just don't put themselves into mawashi-type situations as much as they go for gaeshi-type positions. He didn't discard mawashi, but his next version of that same fundamentals kata included seventeen techniques and did include kotegaeshi but not mawashi. We have found through the years that kotegaeshi and wakigatame (gokyo) are probably the two most commonly occurring locking techniques in randori. Resistant ukes seem to always be pushing into wakigatame or snatching their arms back into gaeshi. because these two techniques transition into each other so much, we work a good bit on flowing between them in chain #3.

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Stay tuned for some discussion about the nature and use of locking techniques in general and kotegaeshi in particular.

Hodgepodge

Yesterday's afternoon class was a hodgepodge you-call-it class. Related to aikido we worked on Nijusan #6, 7, 10, 11, and 12. Take away points:

• on oshitaoshi, fade around the end instead of doing tension-compression. feels slmost like tekubiosae (yonkyo) instead of oshitaoshi, but with a strong sense of releasing.
• on udegaeshi, fade around the end in order to take their radial stylus (wrist knuckle) down the line away from them. Again, releasing feeling.
• on wakigatame, enter as in shomenate, push the arm, pull the arm, push the arm. Great feeling of releasing instead of doing. On the goshinjitsu wakigatame, collide with uke and seek the line down which the two bodies want to fall. then get behind the arm on that line.
• on udehineri, walk the ulnar styloid (the other wrist bone) up and in front of uke so that your two hands are not counter-pushing against each other.
• on kotegaeshi, hold the lock to take the slack out, and just after footfall, enter, stretch down the line, or separate. Also, otoshi can become guruma easily if you stretch the step by separating centers.

In judo, we worked on various things, including nagenokata kataguruma, seoinage, sasae tsurikomiashi, and tsurikomi goshi. Various hints. We worked on making seoinage a true hand throw, like the kodokan book says it is. We also worked on various little adjustments to nagenokata that imprve tori's time efficiency in stepping, like pulling in on sasae tsurikomi ashi.

Needless to say, after this three-hour hodgepodge we were all knackered.

Surprise Chop

Today we had a surprise chop. Chops is summering in Baton Rouge and plans to make the trip to Magnolia on Saturdays for a while. We just thought he'd heard about the blackberries and tomatoes starting to make and was showing up two weeks early to the Aiki Buddies Gathering.

Before class we worked some jodo because I rarely get to stick-whack real people. We worked on the sword traps and on hikiotoshi. Chops verified some of the direction I've been going with my jodo based on a recent trip he took to see Henry.

In aiki, we worked tegatana and hanasu with the brown belts (Andy and Chops) rotating between the white belts (mytchi and Richard). We chained our way through chain #5, working on kaiten nage, wakigatame, and hikitaoshi. At the end we worked shomenate as a form of aiki brush-off. Richard and Mytchi had to leave early, so the brown belts worked on some grab-and-go knife randori and some knife nijusan with uke specifically instructed to stay centered on tori and keep cutting no matter what. Shomenate, gyakugamaeate, and aigamaeate were the most effective things we saw today.

Judo with Rob

Rob and I had an hour or so of grappling to ourselves. We worked on the first groundwork cycle and then moved into the envlope exercise (mune, kesa, wakigatame, udegarame, ushiro katagatame). Standing up we worked on deashibarai until Rob declared the falls to be too severe for his delicate constitution ;-) then we moved on to single-leg takedown.Fun, good exercise, and educational.

Foundations

Great class (as usual) tonight. There was just Kel and myself and we worked on fundamentals (the REALLY important stuff), including footwork, the aiki basic instinct (offline+hands up), and hanasu #1-4. We spent a good amount of time on this stuff, finally zooming in on chain #3, which gives us an opportunity to play with wakigatame (gokyo) and kotegaeshi. After we beat that to death we spent a lot of time on shomenate (the basis of everything in aikido) and previewed aigamaeate and gyakugamaeate. Kel is doing good aiki work. I think he'll be a 'good un.

Kristof's controlled substance

Hey, Yesterday's post was my 300th post here! A milestone!

Today we had Kristof and Vincent at aikido. Vincent is a police officer and one of his law buddies stopped by to check us out. He got to observe for a while before duty called. Vincent has not done much aikido with us but is a 30 year veteran of judo and has seen many of the pieces that make up the system in his Police Control classes.

We worked on tegatana footwork and hanasu#1 fading into chain #1. We spent a while on the initial evasion refex - step offline and put hands up. I Think I may have gotten Vincent and perhaps his buddy excited about working out with us regularly to sharpen and maintain their subject control skills.

After class, since none of Kristof's kata partners were at class, I uke'd for his sankyu demo. Not an optimal setup for a rank demo, but hat's how it went. He did a great job, perhaps needing a little polishing on wakigatame, but otherwise very good. He got me with a particularly surprising gedanate. So we have a new sankyu. Unfortunately, He is going to return to Ukraine in a couple of weeks. "Love 'em and leave 'em!" That's Kristof's motto! As a very nice going-away gift Vincent bought Kristof a new gi. It should arrive this week - just in time to get some Mississippi sweat on it before he flies out. I wonder if that counts as a controlled substance?

What's up, doc?

Tegatana concentrating on small steps and medial balls of feet. Hanasu as a warmup into Chain #2, including kote taoshi, mae otoshi, hiki taoshi, and oshi taoshi. Nijusan concentrating on shomenate, aigamaeate, and gyakugamaeate. After class, Patrick M. and Kristof demonstrated Nijusan 1-10 for our new guy. Patrick has made some particular improvements in the atemiwaza (1-5) of Nijusan. #4 and #7 still need some work. Kristof did well with his demonstration, but still needs to clean up #10 (wakigatame) and the pins on #6, 7, and 8.
I’d like to introduce our new guy, Kel. He comes to us from an aikido class in the vicinity of Purdue University where he studied under Dr. Thomas Burdine. I like to ask new guys that have done aiki stuff before if the stuff we do looks the same or different – Kel responded, “Yes.” Dr. Burdine shares some aiki lineage with us, having trained under Tomiki as well as Tohei, and Burdine sensei must still using some of the Tomiki structure because Kel told me that he recognized pretty much all of the nijusan that Patrick and Kristof demonstrated and that he’s seen it in similar format.
As for my current posture quest, after each repetition I made a point to rock my head back and look upward a couple of times to get the feel of what a little more neck extension might feel like. Working this I made an interesting observation. Tori doesn’t have much trouble working with good neck extension but uke pretty much has to break this neck posture in order to do an event as athletic as an attack. I think this practice might have helped me some without really trying to remain rigidly upright. Head/neck posture has some interesting interactions with the concept of eye contact (metsuke) too.

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

It really is a spectacular day in the neighborhood. about 65 or 70 degrees rising into the mid 80's, spring has sprung, birds chirping, grass is green, etc... The only downside is the pollen. But that's not the kind of neighborhood I wanted to talk about.

Techniques in the martial arts do not exist in some kind of random distribution. Certain techniques live together in neighborhoods. A goodly part of our aikido practice involves these flow drills that we call chains in which we explore neighborhoods of techniques that live near each other. Today we walked around in neighborhood #3 and got to meet and chat with wakigatame, kotemawashi, oshitaoshi, kaitennage, gyakugamaeate, and gedanate. it was a pleasant little neighborhood party.

We did some randori and Patrick M. has improved his posture and timing a lot this past month or so. Afterwards we worked on udegaeshi and Patrick M. had this wonderful, miraculous variant that knocked me down most every time.

Judo meatgrinder

Tonight at judo class we had Gary the Hattiesburger, Rob, and myself. We warmed up with a few reps of deashi and kosotogari trying to throw into ukigatame. From here we moved into the meatgrinder series, working on getting from the back mount to tateshiho and working on getting hadakajime, okurierijime, and the cool backwards meatgrinder choke. We also got to work on the wakigatame/udegarame part of the envelope series.

The most aiki-like of all techniques

Whoa Nellie! Another unexpectedly cold day in the dojo. We had Mytchi and Richard McKenzie, Rob, Kristof, and myself. It was so cold I thought we'd break if we had to hit the ground, so we took tegatana apart and practiced each move separately, repping it many times to warm up a little bit. we did shomenashi, wakiashi, hipswitch, forward and backward pivots, and the "washing the mirror" exercise. Then we moved into hanasu for several reps and then focussed on hanasu#2 leading into the"who's uke now" part of chain #2 where we get to practice shomenate, wakigatame, gedanate, and ushiroate. This went well for a nice, long practice, and then we moved into the nijusan version of ushiroate for several minutes. At the end of class, we worked on the "wrong sided" shomenate from gokata and the "aiki brush-off" from sankata. To me these two things feel like the most aiki-like things that exist within the program.

Richard wants to see some video added to this blog of the basic stuff - like tegatana and hanasu. I'll work on filming some of that stuff this week and see when we can get it up.

Omote and ura oshitaoshi

Good class tonight. We calibrated with tegatana and with hanasu then began using hanasu as a vehicle to explore some of the principles I wanted to look at tonight - specifically, metsuke (eye contact), shizentai (upright posture), and moving from the center.
This led us to alternate between the omote and ura versions of oshitaoshi (ikkyo) with emphasis on how the insde version is more direct but promotes worse situational awareness. We worked for a good long time on oshitaoshi trying to shorten the duration of the power transfer between uke and tori. From here we moved into Nijusan 1-10, which led us to emphasize wakigatame (gokyo), hikitaoshi, and gedanate as three techniques that happen early in an ura path - right as uke rounds the corner on tori.
At the end we played with a part of chain #3 in which we transition between wakigatame and gedanate. This led to a couple of interesting variants of gedanate, which is really any well-trained balance attack against the lower body. The variants included a stepping knee strike against the common peroneal nerve in uke's leg prior to pushing uke off, and a simple but effective step-on-uke's-foot as a balance disturbance prior to pushing uke off.

More on releases vs. throws

Tonight's aiki class included Patrick M., Kristof, and myself. We did some rolling, emphasizing the concept of the point of no return and looking at what happens around that point. Until uke reaches that point of no return, he still has options. Uke's not dead until he's dead.

We repped tegatana, looking at the 'pulling forward' step that the aiki buddies have been tossing around in our email discussions lately. Works nicely. Certainly interesting feel. It's cool how a kata that youve done many times per week for nearly fifteen years goes completely apart when you add a new concept. Yes, Andy, that still happens to me, so get used to it.

Moved into hanasu for a rep or two of kata mode followed by an emphasis on #8. It is important to turn the hips completely inward during the two turns in this thing. We also looked at this technique as a true release. It's easy to get partway through the release motion and get in your mind that you have to get into a strong position to do a thing to uke, but this spoils the release. If you think that release #8 is basically shihonage then this screws the whole thing. It changes from a release to a throw. We finished up hanasu by looking at chain#8, which includes tenkai kote gaeshi, ushiroate, and all the release #3 motions, such as kaitennage and wakigatame.Cool set of techniques to practice and this chain has the extra advantage of being short and sweet. The chains really give me the feel that all techniques are releases instead of throws.

We ended class focussing on shomenate from two situations - one the more flowing, following shomen found in nijusan and the other the more angular, direct shomenate found in junana or when uke settles down to be strong.

Robust responses

Well, I’ve has a sabbatical from blogging for several days now, and it’s time to get back to it. I’m exhausted with work and school and etc… but last night’s class was excellent and really pumped me up. Cold mats, so we warmed up slowly and omitted all the mat pounding. Then we did a lot of kneeling forward and backward rolls looking in particular at the role of the abs in slowing the fall, reducing the impact, and throwing you back out of the ground.

We spun through hanasu and then worked on the two “lost wrist releases” and the “really lost” wrist release, finally moving into the chains for #9 and #10. From here I sorta spun off into a tangent of Owaza Jupon (my favorite kata) as responses to the #10 release situation and/or the two-handed grab (ryotedori).

We cooled down with suwariwaza, working the first three of sankata and the munetsuki haragatame from kimenokata. Really cool stuff –an I got a good lesson from Kristof. I had made a passing comment about these sankata responses being very general-purpose and very robust. They work in a lot of situations – even if uke attacks “all wrong” like with the other arm. After working on these robust responses for a few minutes, I almost smote Patrick M. mightily when he shifted his feet in seiza ;-). When we started the haragatame, Kristof came off his knees lunging at me with the wrong arm! Guess what – it worked great. In Sankata#3 we got to play with the kotegaeshi/wakigatame relationship and in kimenokata we got to play with the haragatame/wakigatame relationship because uke was attacking unpredictably with left or right arm.