Bram Frank & Rob Belote

We're famous (again). This teaser for http://www.budointernational.com/ with grandmaster Bram Frank includes my student, Rob Belote, in the second-to-last segment starting at about 2:30. I'm glad to see that Bram is starting to get some of his stuff out there on YouTube. I've tried to search for his name, or for CSSD every so often and this is the first time that I've found any extended clips to speak of. In the brief time that I got to train with him I was very impressed with his knife material - it was very aiki. I'm looking forward to seeing him again at the end of the month for a short vacation in San Antonio.

Busy, busy day

5:00 am aiki with Rob.

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

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

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

6:30 aiki with Kel and Rick

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

Stick & rope

Aiki with Kel and Rick

• ROM and ukemi
• Tegatana with emphasis on relaxing the shoulders down and back throughout the exercise
• Hanasu with emphasis on the stick and rope model - that is, releases #1 and #3, the connection is like a stick - you can only effectively push forward along the length of the stick, lining the stick up between your center of mass and the point of contact. Releases #2 and #4 work like a rope - you can't push a rope, only pull it with both centers of mass lined up with the rope. What this does is minimizes all moments of torque around the shoulder joint.
• nijusan #1 - shomenate
• Sankata tantodori #2 and #3, Sakate yokomen gyakugamaeate and sakate hidari wakigatame - both of these with emphasis on evading and brushing off - minimizing the amount of time you are in the meatgrinder. #2 (at least the way we were playing it tonight - similar to the kokyunage pictured above) is another one of those super-cool ninja invisibility tricks.

Knife teaches stick and hand

Another concept, related to knife changes nothing, is an idea from the CSSD Modern Arnis guys, Blade teaches stick (and empty-hand) but stick does not teach blade. (I hope I quoted that right) Even though I was an utter rank beginner in the tiny little bit of experience I have with the CSSD guys, I especially liked this knife system because it was so much like the aiki ideas that we preach. I suspect that having this knife changes nothing basis to our aikido is part of what makes the two systems so comparable and so compatible.

If you learn the knife aspect of the art first (like in CSSD) or if you manage to convince yourself that every opponent is as dangerous as a knife guy (like we try to do in aikido) then you don’t develop the laxness and complacency that comes with thinking that there are some empty-handed opponents who are simply not a threat to you.

Knife changes nothing

I've mentioned this before in passing, but I wanted to bring some attention to it in today's post. In aikido (or judo or karate or etc...) we mostly practice empty-handed, but occasionally put a simulated knife in the hand of the attacker. It it not that we want to emphasize those ridiculous "knife defenses" that are the bread and butter of so many martial arts classes - so why do we even mess with a knife?

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Simply put, the addition of a knife highlights a particular weakness in the defender's mindset. That is, if the defender suddenly becomes sharper, more alert, quicker, and more precise when a knife is thrown into the mix, then he was under-estimating the potential of the unarmed attacker.

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As you practice aikido, you absolutely have to treat every single uke as if they are the most dangerous guy on the planet and they have a knife.

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So the knife is really just a measuring device that points out this partcular suki (weakness). The goal would be to train enough that knife changes nothing.

Last night's aikido

Aikido with Knox, Quin, Rick, and Kel

• Warmed up with the kids with a contest to see who could run across the mat in the silliest way. There was a lot of arm flailing and head wagging, hopping, and wiggling of butts. In short, good warmup.
• Ukemi with me throwing/spotting the kids into the crash pad for about 20 minutes before class started. Then the kids bailed and the grownups showed up and continued with the ukemi in the crash pad, emphasizing forward roll falling from a reflexed position.
• Tegatana emphasizing rapid recovery, bringing the back side of the body with you, and doing it as near-instantaneously as possible.
• hanasu #1-4 emphasizing tori staying centered on the power hand and uke flowing with tori.
• knife evasions, aiki brush-off, and stab-twice.
• The brush-off led into the tantodori section of sankata, including the ushiroate brushoff, the udehineri, the kotegaeshi, and the stab-the-knee gedanate.

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.

Aiki practice and a cool knife video

Aikido with Rob and Kel

• tegatana with emphasis on the goofy-foot pivots and turns in the second half of the exercise
• hanasu with emphasis on synchronization
• chain #1

We talked about aikido having about four major failsafes - strategies that you fall back on when something is not working. They include:

• disengage and move away
• move behind uke
• hit uke in the face
• synchronize with uke to limit his potential

Rob is having some cognitive dissonance trying to reconcile his knife-based knowledge (which is quite good and quite aiki - but just a different training methodology) with our aikido. He called it comparing apples to oranges. I called it getting stuck on the warmups to the point you never make progress. I don't know if we resolved it but I think it might be better. I don't think he isn't buyng into the aikido, but that he is having trouble reconciling how the two sysems seem to build up to the same thing through different paths.

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We also talked about an interesting knife method that seems pretty viable and pretty aiki-like to me. (Watch out for some foul language on the film.) Rob had some commentary and potential problems with it. I think what I see there is pretty interesting because this guy talks all the same principles that we do in aikido - i.e. don't fight with the guy, disengage and run, control his balance and you control his potential, etc... I don't know if this is the 'best' knife system - but it sure is interesting.

Weapons Instructor of the Year

So, who is this Bram Frank guy that we got to work out this past weekend? 2007 Black Belt Hall of Fame Weapons Instructor of the year - That's who!

Bram Frank pictures

Here are a few pictures from our weekend session with Bram Frank. We had the extreme fortune and pleasure of getting a couple of hours of instruction on the beginning of the CSSD Modular knife system and it was wonderful. I posted more details in the previous post. We're working out on the green by the gazebo across the street from Bowie's. That's the Mississippi River bridge in the background.

Weddings and knives and grandmasters

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

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

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

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

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

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Pictures of the weekend coming soon...

Army Ranger grappling training

Interesting video. he has some good comments on some things we've been discussing on this blog for a while, including the knife thread and the warrior thread.

Chiron on knife defense

Rory at Chiron posted a superb piece (September 3, 2007) about knife defense training that mirrors and amplifies some of what I've said before while adding some GREAT simulation exercises. Check this out...

Randori day at the ABG

Today, was really a randori day. We started out with a nice, long hand randori session with various partners. It was much better than yesterday. Smooth, flowing, controlled randori. Then we worked on two things that help with randori - rolling the ball as a way out of strength situations, and kokyunage, the aiki brushoff. We worked on several forms of kokyunage, including shomenate, chudan aigamae, sankata ushiroate, gokata kokyunage, and owaza kataotoshi. We also played with hanasu #1-4 in a brushoff mode where tori releases, breaks uke's grip, and brushes off.

From here, we moved into multiple person randori to test our aiki brushoff and rolling the ball. The partners were given instructions to attack one at a time but in rapid succession and tori's goal was to evade and disengage repeatedly, completely refusing to engage with any uke. Additionally, ukes were told that they could attack simultaneously if they caught tori engaging with any one uke or trying for a technique. It was great, lots of fun, and educational. Everybody knows that you don't go to the ground with multiple opponents, but in this form of randori you can really see that it's the act of tori engaging uke (even if it stays standing) that is super-dangerous for tori. Hopefully we'll have some video of this randori that we can upload soon.

As another form of randori, we played knife randori with uke told to cut twice no matter what tori does. The first attack had to be a ballistic attack from outside ma-ai but the second attack could be stab, slash, high, low, anything. Turns out that the first attack is easy to evade, but if you engage with uke instead of brushing off then the second attack almost always cuts. Shomenate and aigamaeate are still the most viable techniques I found (other than the brush-off). If you can get tori moving backward away from you (e.g. shomenate) then his second knife attack has less potential.

This was a great, high-energy, sweaty aiki practice. Take away points:

• Aikido is about avoiding force, disengaging safely, refusing to engage - the aiki brushoff
• Rolling the ball is a great way to disengage from a strength-vs-strength grappling situation. Roll uke about 1/4 turn then brushoff.
• Aiki brushoff is the crucial skill in multiple opponents randori, followed by short, low-commitment atemi, like shomenate and aigamaeate.
• Two-stab knife randori is a great form of knife evasion that really emphasizes the importance of aiki brushoff and atemiwaza.

Mutual education

What a great randori session we had tonight. It started out as judo with Rob and myself, but we were both feeling lazy, so after some standing drills (including some work on happo no kuzushi - look for the posts in the next couple of days) and some light nagekomi we de-volved into chatting about knife randori and our aikido system. We ended up shutting up and putting up. We played with some of the variant forms of randori that I've talked about on this blog lately, including grab-and-go knife randori and the S.T.A.B. hug the arm maeotoshi. I got my thighs and belly cut up pretty badly a couple of times but managed to catch Rob a couple of times with shomenate (You remember, the technique that Tomiki said preceeds all successful aikido).

It was neat trying my aikido against a really dangerous knife guy in some unfamiliar randori situations with some resistance involved. You want to have someone worthy of testing your skills against, go find one of Bram Frank's CSSD Modern Arnis guys. It was neat to see how well the core of our aiki system (shomenate) works even against this worthy an adversary.

We also played some drills that I've been preparing for the Aiki Buddy Gathering next month. Using aiki brushoff and rolling the ball to integrate the kata and chains we do into randori. Cool stuff. For instance, we worked on a couple of nijusan techniques (shomenate and oshitaoshi) with uke given the instructions to absolutely not fall using the standard fall from kata. This leads, naturally into rolling the ball to stay safe and retain control and aiki brushoff to disengage and flee. Really cool. Worked wonders on Rob even as he added greater levels of force and speed and resistance. And Rob was able to do it well with minimal instruction.

The really cool thing is, I think I managed to communicate to Rob what I've been trying to tell him for a while (that the Kihara methodology is really cool) and he was definately able to show me better than tell me what he was talking about in his knife randori comments (that the CSSD modern Arnis guys really know what they are talking about). We clarified and simplified a lot of our talk and theory in the crucible of randori tonight.

The role of the knife in aikido

Rob has an excellent, reasoned comment on my ongoing discussion of knife technique in aikido. he makes the point that he essentially wouldn't want to go empty handed to a knife fight. That he'd rather have a knife (a tool). Too true. But I think there is an underlying misunderstanding of the role of the knife in aikido training in general.

Tomiki, when he started teaching aikido, put a foam knife in the hand of the attacker. Why? Some people say it was to facilitate competition. That's nonsense. He could have just as easily devised a competition ruleset with the attacker doing lunge punches. Some say that it was to preserve the budo spirit. I find that shaky too. If he's wanted to develop a traditional samurai-type sport he could have had them wearing kendo armor and defending against bokken or at least swinging foam bats. So, what does the knife do for us?

The obvious answer is, "We learn to defend against a knife." Well, that's the biggest load of malarkey yet. The knife has evolved over the course of thousands of years as the best weapon around - even surpassing the firearm for general utility. Knives cause gruesome, debilitating wounds even when they are not fatal.

Now, I'm biased. I'm not a fan of the Tomiki tanto randori methodology. From what I can see from what little I've watched. About the only thing that anyone has ever learned from competing against a foam knife is that if you take two relatively equally trained aikidoka and give one a knife, he will almost always win (see the video below). The knife is simply that big an advantage. Sure, in tanto randori, someone is occasionally able to knock the knife guy down, but it is almost never via clean technique and it is almost always at the cost of being cut many, many times. So, how do they balance that huge advantage of the knife in randori? They only score the attacks in which uke stabs moving forward with decent balance and they specify that the knife must enter tori's torso at nearly a 90 degree angle. Basically you can only do zombie stabs (albeit fast ones). But this is NOT a rant against tanto randori players. If you want to practice that way it's no skin off my back. I'm trying to get at what is the role of the knife in aikido?

In my opinion, the only reason we practice against knife attacks is in order to learn to deal with being totally outclassed. It doesn't really provide much incentive to test yourself against those that are weaker than you - you never have an incentive to get better. But if you give even the most inexperienced player a knife then all of a sudden everyone gets the point that everyone is potentially dangerous. With the knife we can see how we stand up in the absolute worst of situations, and that is incentive to improve. We learn that we have to treat everyone the same - as if they are so awesomely dangerous that they totally outclass us.

Please stab me... twice

Today it was Patrick M, Kel and myself. We worked on rolling and falling and tegatana getting Kel up to speed on how we do class. We worked a lot on the aiki basic instinct and used it to build up hanasu 1-4. Then we chained through chain#1 for a while.

Today we worked on uke's attack. I've talked and written a lot about attacking lately but this was a different way of thinking about it. One of the big recurring problems with a lot of aikido is poor attacks. Ukes lurch forward like the living dead, hanging an arm out for tori to break. Well, today we specified that uke's attack had to be one balistic motion through ma-ai just like always, but then uke has to retract his arm and center on tori in order to bring his other arm into play. Basically this turns all of our aikido attacks into either 1-2-type jab-cross or grab-cross combinations. This simple rule adds a lot of reality back into the training and gives tori a motivation (the second arm) to shape up. We've played this way some before but I really think I'm going to specify that pretty much all attacks in my class from now on are this type of simulation of jab-cross or grab-cross.

We worked shomenate this way and then added a knife, but with a twist. Uke's job was to stab tori twice no matter what else happened. This is another excellent way to put an end to the attack of the living dead. You'd be surprised how much of what passes for 'knife defense techniques' on YouTube goes totally down the toilet when uke starts with the express intent of at least stabbing twice. (Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised.)

And guess what - shomenate still worked like a charm! Sure we all got cut up some on each attack, and we each got totally evicerated once or twice, but we did pretty good against a decent simulation of a relentless knifer - which is about as out-classed as we can get ourselves without dealing with ninja or snipers.

Knife randori

I can see some potential pros and cons (pun intended) in the police knife video. Let's take them one at a time.

Potentially good things:

• The defending officer protects his gun side (assuming he's right handed and the baddie attacks right handed.) Protecting the gun side of the body is fundamental in police training, and that can lead to odd, one-sided techniques just as in SMR jodo (in Japan there were no left-handed swordsmen so the system is mainly one-sided).
• The defending officer may be assuming the presence of a partner, in which case, if he can get a nominal control of the attacker then the partner can assist. He may also be able to assume the presence of knife resistant body armor (not that that would protect his hip flexors).
• The defending officer does end up in a mechanically superior position with respect to the attacker's base of support (sure uke could stand differently, but just go with me for right now).

and the potentially bad points (besides the ones y'all have already mentioned):

• The form that the officers demonstrate is force-on-force situation, which may be intuitive and easily teachable but strategically undesirable.
• The defending officer has to make one or two iffy hand switches.
• Though the defending officer has good mechanical advantage, it would be easy for the defender to scoop him with something like taniotoshi or gedanate or sukuinage.

Now, the S.T.A.B. video clears a lot of this up. In the police video we only see one repetition of a demnstration form of the thing, but in the S.T.A.B. video we see several different people doing variations with different levels of resistance. So we have a lot more info. I'm sure not trying to sell you on S.T.A.B. but I can see a lot of good in it.

Basically what the guy has done is built his system around one aikido technique - maeotoshi. he's got a chain, or a circle of techniques - just like Karl talks about - all related to maeotoshi. The shoulder hit may be seen as a sort of testing the attacker to see if he'll fall for sumiotoshi. The guy didn't demonstrate it, but gedanate would work well from this situation. He does demonstrate a form of ushiroate. Uke is primed in much of this video for deashibarai or kosotogari. And the guy does show smooth transitions from an inside clinch to maeotoshi and from maeotoshi on one side to maeotoshi on the other side.

The knee to the peroneal nerve is a pretty good addition to the system. It doesn't over-commit tori but it can hurt and it can give tori a good offbalance for maeotoshi or gedanate. Another good form of the same thing is for tori to stand on uke's near foot, pinning it to the ground. I also saw a head-butt in there.

Several folks mentioned that the instructor got cut up a lot in his demonstrations. I don't know how long these folks had practiced this system, but the students were doing pretty good. I didn't see them getting cut up like the instructor. Plus, we've all heard the old adage to expect to get cut.

Overall, I think the police video was a pretty poor demonstration of an overall pretty decent exercise that I'd like to play with some, sort of as a hyped-up form of randori. I've seen a lot of what I'd consider a lot worse.

The standard disclaimer applies - I'm not a knife fighter - I don't even play one on TV. Fortunately we've got a certified (certifiable) knife guy working out with us. Rob, maybe you could expand on what you think of these videos and what you see of this system's potential.

There's still more of my thoughts to come on the knife defense topic. Stay tuned...

More knife defense

I know many of you are eagerly awaiting the follow-up that I promised to post on the police knife defense video from last week. Here is another little tidbit that I wanted y'all to check out. It's apparently the same knife defense system but this vid has much more info that you can use to evaluate.

Cops teaching a knife defense

Well, folks, what do you think of this?