Fundamentals and randori

Aiki with Kel

• ROM, extended ukemi session on a crashpad
• Releases with emphasis on pushing forward instead of cutting down or grabbing
• shomenate, gyakugamaeate, udegaeshi
• chain #2, including maeotoshi, shihonage, and ushiroate
• randori with emphasis on synchronization, triangulation, and watching the role of tori (or 'boss') trade back and forth between partners during an exchange. This was the first time I'd seen a good, strong effect from practicing the triangulation trick.

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

A helpful handful: gyakugamaeate

Called sokumen irimi in aikikai, or perhaps parting wild horse’s mane or slanted flying or single whip in Chinese (i.e. taichi) terminology, gyakugamae is one of the three fundamental forms of atemi taught early in Tomiki aikido. Here are a handful of hints I try to keep in mind in my practice.

• If you do this technique as a strike, you may or may not do enough damage to end the fight but your hand will recoil off his face and you’ll have to find him again to push him down. This is what you see in the stick version of gyakugamaeate in goshinjitsu in judo – a strike, then reacquire the face, lay the hand on, and throw. Instead of striking and recoiling, lay your hand on him and push instead of hitting.
• Drape a bent wrist around the bridge of his nose like a pair of sunglasses and push. This obstructs his vision, is disorienting, and is a good pushing position.
• Be sure to push forward through uke by dropping your center forward onto him. Don’t throw by pushing sideways.
• Try the gyakugamaeate that you see in Gokata – I have found this more generally useful lately. Enter to the inside, as if for shomenate but wrong-side forward, strike the face with the hand nearest uke, and push yourself off of uke to get back to maai.
• Alternates might include pulling the hair backward instead of striking/pushing the face – or perhaps pushing the philtrum under the nose – but this is not as good because you don’t get the startle associated with attacking the eyes.
  

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

A helpful handful: kubiguruma

The first of the 'black belt techniques' in our syllabus, kubiguruma exemplifies a new type of motion not seen in the previous fundamentals kata. Following are five faithful pointers that have helped me.

• Anything named guruma in this system is done with a slightly later timing that things named otoshi. Otoshi happens right as uke steps down onto a foot but guruma happens an instant later as uke tries to rise from the preceding otoshi.
• Guruma is also a spinning action whereas otoshi is a straight action. Define an axis from the crown of the head through the center of mass to the lead foot and turn uke around this vertical axis.
• Try this as a followup to the second movement in yonkata – the inside gyakugamae release. Bump the wrist as uke steps down with the front foot then, holding the wrist and the neck, back around drawing uke down a line perpendicular to his stance line.
• If you can only get a partial guruma action around that vertical axis, but can’t get uke to fall, osotogari makes a great backup technique. Do the guruma then pull in and clip the leg. Osotogari is roughly equivalent to aikikai’s tenchinage, so tenchinage also pops up in this situation a lot.
• Guruma is a very versatile action. You can try this thing with uke leaping/punching at tori, with uke grabbing one wrist (gyakugamae posture) or from a two-wrist grab.

Metsuke and stay-off-me hands

Tonight Jill and I reviewed some of the cool stuf that she missed at the seminar this past weekend. We worked on tegatana a couple of times, first half of hanasu several times, second half of hanasu a couple of times, then moved into chain #2 including techniques like kotetaoshi, gyakugamaeate, and gedanate. We got to discuss and work on slowing the conflict down through proper eye contact and we worked on using the "stay off me" hands to continually brush off and roll the ball right in the centerline (we called this "crazy man randori" at the seminar). We transitioned into randori naming the releases and from there into plain, old randori. It was a good night.

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.

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.

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.

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.

To maeotoshi and beyond...

Tonight we worked tegatana emphasizing the coordination of the pushing hand with the weighting of the front foot in the first turn. We call this idea 'same-hand-stuck-foot.' Then we moved into hanasu looking at how that same idea crops up in #1, 2, 5, 6, and 8. It occurs in the others too - we just chose these particular ones to look at. From here we went into nijusan and checked out maeotoshi and shihonage.

Our chain work consisted of chaining the nijusan version of tenkai kote hineri to ushiroate, aigamaeate, aikinage, and back into maeotoshi. It was pretty cool to work on this neighborhood of techniques and see how it came right back around to the maeotoshi we'd started with. We seemed to emphasize the idea of hiding in shikaku.

For the cool ninja technique of the night we did the two yokomenuchi kokyunage throws from gokata. These led to the suwari gyakugamaeate from sankata, which is really an instance of the same thing. You know, the three suwari from the beginning of sankata would really be worth a month or two of intense study and repetition.

Mytchiko's aikido

Here's some video from today's practice. Here Mytchi and Kristof are practicing Hanasu (wrist releases) and atemiwaza from Nijusan. The only atemi I got on video was gyakugamaeate. The hanasu includes release#1 with uke resisting the motion and tori moving into release#2, also release #2 resisted into release #1 and release #5. I think my white belt is doing particularly well with these motions.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7358755642979484297&hl=en

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.

Aikidoka do it with upright posture!

Tonight we're going to work on gyakugamae ate (some call it sokumen irimi). After the initial offbalance (the one in junana and nijusan) there are three common reactions that ukes make. If they have enough momentum they may pivot and continue backwards for a step or two in the direction they were going. If they are strong and reactive they may stop in their tracks and try to regain their balance. If tori hits the offbalance just right uke will sometimes stumble in the direction of uke's push. Gyakugamae works with all three reactions and all three are worth working on.

The principle of the month for my students is going to be shizentai (upright, natural posture). If you can't do it with upright natural posture you can't do it. If you can't do it with one well-timed, small step forward (just like in tegatana) then you likely can't do it very well with a larger step. If you break your own posture then it was a poor technique even if uke does hit the ground.

We're also likely to be previewing some of the gokata material that Henry will be teaching at the Starkville clinic in April. Gokata is interesting - especially the suwariwaza at the beginning - because it's the same old stuff but tori is the instigator. Tori provokes an attack from uke then deals with it. That's a type of sen (initiative) that we rarely deal with outside of gokata.

Another good fundamentals class

This morning was surprisingly cool in the dojo considering the 70+ degree days we've been having for a couple of weeks. I think (hope) that there will only be a couple more 30 degree nights this spring and pretty soon we'll be back to broiling in one anothers' sweat here in southwest Mississippi. I don't like the heat but I HATE the cold.

This morning's class included 2/3 of clan McKenzie, Kristof, and myself. We worked on tegatana several times looking at potential applications for the moves in tegatana. This is sometimes an iffy proposition because tegatana is just a collection of general-purpose movements that reoccur in aikido - not really techniques. So, no one of these motions really has one definite application. Rather each movement can be reused in part or in whole in any number of situations. But, we went through all of them and gave 1-2 common applications as examples.

Then we worked on hanasu #1 and #2, melding into part of chain #2 where kotetaoshi and gyakugamaeate live. Everyone was picking up on these movements well when a tiny bout of randori broke out between Richard and myself, leading into the technique that I particularly wanted to work on today anyway - aigamaeate. We did aigamaeate with hanasu#2 as a leadin, holding the elbow with the free band and releasing the held hand and then using the newly-released hand for aigamaeate.

Vocabulary revisited

Okay, I've worked over the aikido vocabulary a couple of times here and here, but tonight I feel like trying my hand at another treatment of it (more for my entertainment than anything else). There are (at least) two main sets of Japanese terms for aikido ideas - Aikikai and Tomiki. I don't know why Tomiki named things differently than Ueshiba did - but he did and now a large portion of the aiki world has grown up using different terminology. So, here's a comparison to aid in translation of ideas.

Check out this page for the core of aikikai terminology. In the list that follows, the entries start with Aikikai terms followed by Tomiki synonyms and then by English explanations.

• ikkyo - oshitaoshi - pushing the opponent into an armlock on the ground while holding his wrist and elbow.
• nikkyo - kotemawashi - wristlock bending the little finger toward the ulna (armbone).
• sankyo - kotehineri - wristlock with the wrist extended and the forearm turned inward.
• yonkyo - tekubiosae - nerve attack on the forearm or using the forearm to push the opponent away similar to ikkyo/oshitaoshi.
• gokyo - wakigatame - locking the elbow and leading the opponent into unbalance along the length of the arm. Similar in form to ikkyo/oshitaoshi but with a different grip.
• shihonage - shihonage or tenkai kotegaeshi. wrist/arm lock done by holding a wrist with both hands and turning outward and under the arm to twist the arm behind uke's shoulder and head.
• iriminage - shomenate, aigamaeate, gyakugamaeate, or aikinage - any blending evasion followed by a whole-body strike that takes uke off his feet. Gyakugamaeate is also called sokumen iriminage.
• kotegaeshi - kotegaeshi. Wristlock done by flexing the wrist and turning the forearm outward.
• kaitennage - kaitennage or udehineri. Locking the shoulder by holding it behind uke's back and using the arm as a lever to push uke away. Sometimes similar to the hammerlock in common wrestling.
• tenchinage - tenchinage or sumiotoshi or osotogari. Leading the opponent into sideways offbalance with one of his arms held low and the other high. Sometimes it is a hand throw - Aikikai calls this kokyu (breath throw) and Tomiki calls this ukiwaza (floating technique). At other times it is done stepping in behind ukes leg to trip him.

Chain #7

At aiki class last night we warmed up with tegatana and hanasu, skipped ukemi because of the cold mats, and moved into chain #7. All of the chains are really neat - each for its own reasons. Chain #7 consists of hanasu#7, kaitennage, hikitaoshi, and oshitaoshi. Kaitennage has several variants that we played with, including arm-and-head, kotemawashi kaitennage, and udehineri. Hikitaoshi, of course, also leads to udehineri when it goes bad and oshitaoshi, of course leads to udegaeshi and the other Chain #1 stuff when it goes bad. So, chain #7 and Chain #1 sorta represent a family of techniques that all live in the same neighborhood. Really, that neighborhood probably really includes all of chains #1, 3, 5, and 7. We ran through all of nijusan and then focussed in on kotehineri and tenkai kotehineri. Nothing to really note there on my part.

Afterward, Kristof did his yonkyu demonstration with Patrick M. as his partner. Kristof did very well. I thought he did particularly well on #4 - gedanate, whereas he thought he did particularly well on #3 - gyakugamae. Afterward we worked on #5 - ushiroate with an emphasis on getting a feeling of 'climbing up uke's arm' as you pass by him. By this point we were finally warmed up and we did several runs of the ukemi, including a couple of new falls and exercises that P4 and Kristof had not seen.

The "really lost" wrist release

Last night was a good class with Patrick M., Kristof, and myself. We got a little bit farther into the ukemi with the turn-side and turn-back rolls. The rolls are looking better. It’s time to start getting much deeper into the airfall preparations in ukemi. In tegatana we explored the relation between the size of back steps and our ability to stay on the balls of the feet with heels slightly brushing. With a larger than normal back step,the heel lifts, leaving you balancing on the balls of the feet. Ever so slightly less stable.

We repped hanasu a couple of times, including some practice on Patrick M’s off-side. He was doing great releases with that arm and it brought up the topic of the “really-lost” wrist release. Not the two that begin yonkata – those are just “lost.” This is the “really lost” release. There comes times when tori’s or uke’s grip begins to fail, giving us the choice of losing contact or holding harder and harder. The harder and harder option is a particularly bad one, so the solution (the release) is to switch hands as the grip fails. This is a form of release that does not appear in hanasu or junana – but it occurs in randori and in the chains. And it is an important release skill. Anyway, with Patrick M’s reduced range in his off-side, he gets into that “really lost” release situation earlier and more often than the rest of us. So he provides a great reminder of a skill that some of us can forget to practice sometimes!

We played with Chain #2, getting into the forearm pushdown. We played with some variants of this, including doing it with just the wrist and doing it with wrist and head like the entry into aikinage. Then for the “cool ninja technique of the night” we did the gyakugamae ate out of sankata where uke grasps tori’s upper sleeve in gyaku stance and tori binds the arm and rotates behind him, pulling him into gyakugamaeate. Worked great and was a lot of fun.
At the end of class we did Nijusan 1-10 and then emphasized techniques #1, 4, 8, and 13. #1 because it is the basis of everything and #4, 8, and 13 because they seem to be an example of a slightly different timing than the others. These seem to occur slightly earlier in the ura (outside) path.

Japanese vs. English

Subcultures are defined in large part by their specific use of jargon. The martial arts world is rife with this and aikido is probably worse than other martial arts, because it has at least two different commonly-used systems of terminology for naming techniques(Aikikai and Tomiki).

I realize that one of the best ways to irritate my readers is to use terms that only a select few of the in-crowd understand. But the problem with not using the Japanese is that often a complex thing has been given a name that happens to be Japanese. In some cases, I can give the English in parentheses, like when talking about the oizuki (lunge punch) technique, but in other cases, like when referring to gyakugamaeate, there are several potential English translations ranging from literal (reverse-posture striking) to loose (the outside face push), none of which convey the idea of what is being discussed. To stop in each post and write the paragraph that it would take to give an approximate meaning of gyakugamaeate would be onerous.

So, to help out all those who I have irritated by using Japanese terminology, here are a few guidelines that I will attempt to follow from now on when posting on here:

• When something has a widely-used English term that is both concise and evocative, I will use the English, maybe followed by the Japanese in parentheses. For instance - the guard (dojime gatame)
• When the concise, evocative English term does not exist, I'll use the Japanese terminology, often followed by a loose English translation in parentheses. For instance - yama arashi (one-armed shoulder throw combined with a leg sweep).
• When I'm specifically talking about Aikikai techniques or when I think the topic might be particularly interesting to my Aikikai buddies, I'll use both naming systems as I understand them. For instance - gyakugamaeate is roughly the same thing as sokumen irimi nage.
• When I can, I'll provide links to pictures or video to clarify especially problematic terms, like gyakugamaeate .

Thanks to my friends who have told me that my use of Japanese terms bugs them. Please keep reading and leaving comments and let me know if I get better or worse ;-)