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.

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.

PM Aiki

Aiki with Kel and Mytchi

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

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.

Early morning aikido

Aiki with Rob

Today was the beginning of our 5am aiki/judo mixed class. This morning was pretty cold and the mats were stacked so we did sweats and shoes aikido without the mats.

• tegatana emphasizing pulling with the front foot and making the turns more stable and stronger.
• hanasu working a lot on synchronization, stretching the step, direction of offbalance, and doing true releases so that uke can't reverse you.
• Chains 1 and 3 as a demonstration of how these release ideas come together into techniques.
• shomenate (junana and nijusan versions as two ends of a spectrum)
• Plus I got some jodo solo work done. Saw a neat thing on #7 and #8. Hard to put into words right now, but might improve #8 some.

Cool rokukata tentainage

Aiki with Patrick M. and Kel

• tegatana emphasizing turning the hips/body with the leg to develop a powerful position and keep the knee safe.
• hanasu segue into chain #2 but starting chain #2 from the wrong side (i.e. like shomenate or yonkata #1). This also got us off onto a tangent of how to use uke's motion and mass to get tori out of a corner or off of a wall and reverse positions.
• nijusan #1-5 (Kel's rank requirement)
• rokukata tentainage (this thing worked like a charm! Even wrong-sided! Even against really strong opponents! Even against really light opponents! Man this thing was cool!)

Randori night at aikido

Aiki with Kel

• Tegatana - no particular emphasis. Just repetition.
• Hanasu - emphasis on getting both tori and uke that smoothe, flowing release feeling. Uke doesn't want to stop becuse then he eats all the momentum and mechanical advantage tori has built up. Instead, the smart uke attempts to flow to diffuse the problems tori presents. This way both uke and tori are active learners.
• Chain #2 working on the sharp turn, shomenate, and wakigatame
• Randori - and a goodly amount of it at that.
• Aiki-handshake as the cool technique of the night.
• We also had a lovely discussion of PNF in aikido, hyperactive reflexes, and these wonders at the ends of our legs that are our feet!

A helpful handful: shomenate

Everybody who does Tomiki aikido or one of the Tomiki derivatives knows shomenate. It’s one of the first things taught, and it can rightfully be considered the foundational basis of virtually everything that comes after it. Shomenate is the essence of irimi. Here is a handful of helpful hints to get a little bit of extra mileage out of your shomenate.

• Get your distance right. You want this thing to be a mental shock to his system. You don’t get a good surprise reaction if he sees it coming from a couple of feet away. You want to be at arm’s length from his face at the end of the first step.
• Play with this technique with the idea of pushing yourself off of uke instead of pushing uke down backwards. Think of uke as a sprinter’s starting block to push off of. This will shorten the energy transfer between tori and uke and will help tori to get back outside ma-ai more quickly, even if it doesn’t knock uke down.
• It helps for tori to cultivate the attitude, “He is going to go backwards no matter what. Hit me, cut me, whatever… he’ll do in moving away from me.”
• It is more effective to bump uke’s lead arm with a straight arm as you evade just shorter than arms-length than to step aside and chop uke’s arm. Let uke feel the entire weight of your body through your unbendable arm and let that bump him into offbalance.
• Tomiki reportedly said of his aikido, “None of this stuff works unless you do shomenate first,” so, try shomenate as an entry to other techniques. For instance, enter, grasp the arm, push off the face and keep your momentum going until you hit the end of his reach. Then turn into shihonage or snap him past you into ushiroate.

New nikyu

Judo with Rob

• Worked on Karl’s “Creating the moment” material
• Footsweep to control
• Deashi, stepping around the corner, hizaguruma, kubinage/ogoshi, ashiguruma

Aikido with Patrick M., Kel, Jill, and Cynthia

• Warmup, ukemi, tegatana (emphasizing following-foot and shizentai), hanasu #1
• Aiki brushoff from hanasu #1 on the far footfall and on the near footfall
• Rokukata hikiotoshi as a brush-off and ushiroate as a follow-up to a spoiled hikiotoshi
• Patrick M. did his nikyu demonstration. His shomenate, aigamaeate, gedanate, and shihonage were particularly excellent. His kotegaeshi might need some work.

Miniature ABG

This weekend we had a miniature Aiki Buddies Gathering (The gathering was miniature, not the aiki buddies. We weren't kicking little people around the mat.;-) John was in from Florida and dragged Bryce with him and we had some new folks today.

.

Aikido and Judo with John and Bryce

• Judo standing randori
• We worked through Karl's 'Creating the moment of attack' material, including the footsweep to control drill, deashi, stepping around the corner, kubinage, ashiguruma, and hizaguruma - all off the ki bump, or ping as I've been calling it lately. I was pleased that I was able to put some of this material into use in randori.
• We moved into aikido, getting onto 'true' releases and crazyman randori.

Aikido with John, Bryce, Patrick M., Kel, Vincent, Gerolyn, and Cynthia

• Tegatana, emphasizing tsugiashi and recovery step.
• partner evasions emphasizing evasion, getting the hands up, brushing off, and brushing off into specific techniques. We worked shomenate and Sankata ushiroate from the brushoff.
• wrist release #1 emphasizing evasion, getting the hands up, getting behind the arm, and moving with uke a few steps.
• Crazyman randori.

Don't forget the Call for Submissions for Carnival #5. The theme for this month is related to non-violent resolution of conflict.

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.

Judo and aiki at Mokuren last night

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

.

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.

Kid's judo and big-folks' aiki

Last night we had a superb kid's judo class. We worked on all our usual moving, falling, etc... Then got into some games that simulate different parts of randori. We did British bulldog (Sorry, Jill reminded me of the game but I couldn't remember the name she used, and it reminds me of British bulldog that we played as kids.) This was crawling man with one man in the middle and everyone else crawling across the mats with the man in the middle choosing someone to immobilize. Crawlers who are stopped become stoppers. The last crawler left unstopped wins.

.

We also played with knee-grab randori. Start with a normal grip on the jacket and move around with the goal of securing a knee grab. The second form of randori that we played was really exceptional. Start with normal grips on the jacket and the goal is to win by taking a side or rear control (i.e. bearhug around the waist). to do this you have to remove one of his grips from your jacket and either spin him or offbalance him and slide around him. The kids did really well with this. The kohaku shiai for November is next week.

.

In aikido, we worked on tegatana emphasizing how the unbendable arm helps with balance in the turns and how we should keep placing our feet under our butts instead of trying to move our butts over our feet. We spun thru hanasu a couple of times then got into chain #2 again to work on the sharp turn-shomenate-wakiatame chain and the kotetaoshi-maeotoshi-hikitaoshi chain.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

Pictures of the weekend coming soon...

Goofy-foot parry, hikitaoshi, and tekubiosae

We had another small class last night. Jill and I warmed up, did some ukemi, and got a little farther into tegatana no kata. We've been adding 1-2 new motions to the kata each night and last night we got into the first goofy-foot turn, sometimes called the "helicopter pivot." One possible application for this is to build on our reflex to partly sidestep an attack and block/parry with the opposite arm. Well this is not always a great position - particularly if you happened to sidestep inside, so the helicopter pivot fixes the position by swinging uke's parried arm between uke and tori, placing tori behind.

.

We worked on hanasu no kata (wrist releases) getting through 6 of the 8. Jill was doing much better last night of creating mechanically sound ground-paths during the releases (especially #1). For some reason release #3 is uncomfortable for her but she naturally does #5 just right.

.

For the technique of the night we worked on hikitaoshi from the point of view of offbalancing, switching hands, and continuing your motion away from uke. We got into the idea of how the technique changes for reluctant vs. aggressive ukes. Aggressive ukes tend to get smeared onto their face, while reluctant ukes getbrushed off into shomenate. Ukes that become too aggressive to deal with get kaiten nage or udehineri.

.

At the end we worked on suwari shomenuchi yonkyo (seated head-konk forearm press), also known as tekubi osae. This builds on the idea of the goofy-foot parry from tegatana, a blending loopty into an awkward posture for uke, followed by an immobilization of the arm/shoulder on the ground.

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.
.
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.
.
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.
.
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!
.
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.

Explicit and implied in various ryuha

Jujitsu is divided into specific ryu, or streams of thought about the material being taught. Over the years, each ryu has divided into smaller streams (ryuha) as students, each with different understandings, have become teachers. The Fugakukai aikido and judo that we do may be classified as descended of kitoryu, daitoryu, and several other ancient ryu down through the ryu of Morihei Ueshiba and Jigoro Kano, down through the ryuha of Kenji Tomiki and into Karl Geis’ school from which it has been disseminated to his students and their students.

.

So, though it’s really all the same type of material (jujitsu), the exterior form taught in one branch of the family tree often looks very different from the forms taught in another branch. But within a particular ryu, like aikido (Ueshiba-ryu), what differentiates the various ryuha? It is mostly the following three things:

• what is considered fundamental or foundational (kihon)
• what is to be taught explicitly (kata)
• what is implied or assumed to be learned over time (randori)

For instance ikkyo omote is an explicit thing in Aikikai (ikkyo being the first thing you learn, the most foundational technique) but it is mostly just implied in Tomiki. The Tomiki curriculum to some degree assumes that if you happen to get someone fairly close to ikkyo omote then you’ll be able to figure out how to do the technique. Shomenate is another example. Shomenate is an explicit technique in Tomikiryu (indeed, it is considered the most foundational of techniques) but in Aikikai it is mostly implied, or absorbed within other concepts (e.g. irimi). In each system, some material is made explicit and other material is either assumed or is taught in an unstructured way (i.e. in randori).

.

Hopefully, at some level, the students of all ryuha will progress beyond the foundational material and all the different ryuha will begin to approach the same thing – the ryu – aikido – takemuso aiki - aikijutsu. In my experience, Tomikiryu begins looking a lot more like Aikikai toward the end of the student ranks (sandan). Some of the videos of Doshu Moriteru very much express the same qualities and attributes as Tomikiryu.