Owaza

Aiki with Patrick M.

• ROM, tegatana, hanasu
• Randori
• Owaza Jupon #1-10

Working with Andy on flow vs. blur

Aiki with Andy

• Folk's expectations going into a practice have a lot to do with the outcome. Today I think Andy came to class expecting to suck and be frustrated, and for me to grumble at him about it. Sure enough, he was stiff and rough. But we did randori naming the release motions being played to give his conscious mind something to do besides whipping his subconscious mind and within about 10 minutes he was doing great aikido. Good, light, smooth, flowing, etc... Maybe the best aikido I've ever seen Andy do.
• ROM, tegatana, releases, chain #1
• Andy uked for me doing all of nijusan and I uked for him doing 1-10 before we ran out of time and steam. The thing to remember on nijusan is to get all the pieces in there before going on to the next thing. It is easy to get too focussed on flow, and end up with a clumsy blur. Flow will come if you put all the pieces in there.

Amen, brother! Preach it!

This is the best video explanation I've found of what I've been teaching and calling the aiki brush-off. Just like this guy mentions in these videos, if you watch most aikido randori sessions, the tori is concentrating on applying techniques to each successive attacker. Problem is, this ties the tori up, creating openings for the other attackers. Most of the time, when you see really successful aiki randori practitioners, they brush-off more attacks than they counter with actual techniques.

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This type of brushing-off action is what I've been concentrating on in my personal practice and in my teaching for the last couple of years and it has really changed my aiki for the better. I've had several highly-ranked folks whose opinions count a lot to me say that my aiki has become more robust and effective, while at the same time becoming softer. I attribute this to practicing the aiki brush-off.

Another interesting thing to note about these randori sessions: when the brush-off either fails or creates enough time to actually do a technique, the two techniques that pop up most often are shomenate and aigamaeate (A.K.A. aikinage or iriminage). Just exactly like the results we've gotten in knife randori like here and here. Atemiwaza is the first backup for the brushoff. Everything else in the art is backup for the atemiwaza.

Why not a fusion of aiki and ju?

Dave Chesser asked me the other day, basically, “Since Tomiki aikido is supposed to be a fusion of aikido and judo, why do you not see folks do more judo techniques in Tomiki aikido competitions?” There is a lot going on there, but I think I can address some of it. First, you have to remember that Tomiki aikido is not a fusion of aikido and judo. It is an interpretation of aikido by a man who was a master of judo. So it is sort of aiki from a ju point of view. With that said...

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Judo techniques within aikido

There are some ‘judo techniques’ that are also part of the Tomiki aikido system. Going through the basic Tomiki syllabus, you see gedanate (called sukuinage in judo), wakigatame, and sumiotoshi, for example. These techniques are allowed in both competition systems and you see them thrown in competition pretty often in both systems.

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Aikido techniques that are not part of judo

Continuing through the Tomiki syllabus there are a lot of throws that do not occur in judo, at least in the context of competition. For instance shomenate (the frontal face strike) and kotegaeshi (wrist twist) and oshitaoshi (the arm push-down). Some of these are easy to explain – the judo guys never found a good, safe way to allow full power, full resistance striking in competition so they disallowed striking, or even touching the face. Early jujitsu competitions were rife with injury, so Kano disallowed all joint manipulation except for the elbow (the most stable joint on the body).

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The real mystery here is the absence of oshitaoshi in judo competition. Oshitaoshi is very similar mechanically to wakigatame, which occurs in judo competitions a good bit. Oshitaoshi is not disallowed in judo (it even pops up in judo kata) – it’s just not done in competition... I’d like someone to explain that one to me.

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Judo techniques that are not part of aikido

If you take out the several techniques that are in both systems, you find that there are a bunch of judo things that are just not done very often in aikido competition. Things like osotogari, hip throws, most footsweeps. Again, these techniques are (so far as I know) not explicitly disallowed in Tomiki tournaments, but they are just not done.

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I’ve touched on this topic before in various articles. Perhaps best in this one, But also in these…

• http://www.mokurendojo.com/2007/10/aikido-vs-judo.html
• http://www.mokurendojo.com/2007/10/another-difference-between-aiki-and.html
• http://www.mokurendojo.com/2007/10/goshin-jitsu-in-aikido-and-judo.html
• http://www.mokurendojo.com/2008/04/more-on-aiki-strategy.html
  

Eye of the storm

In moments of crisis the disciplined human mind works as a thing detached, refusing to be hurried or flustered by outward circumstance. Time and its artificial divisions it does not acknowledge. It is concerned with preposterous details and with the ludicrous, and it is acutely solicitous of other people's welfare, whilst working at a speed mere electricity could never attain. “Crab Pots” from A Tall Ship by Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

This rightly describes that mysterious time-dilation effect reported often by martial artists. I catch that sensation of time dilation, in which rapid motion appears leisurely, most acutely during aikido practice. I can even invoke that phenomenon at will (with pretty good reliability) in myself during aikido. The other place that I experience it more often than other situations is in newaza randori.

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There is this feeling of immaculate in-the-moment-ness during which the chaos and violence in the situation seems to diminish or even disappear, leaving me with the feel of strolling along with uke. Funny thing is this is often a one-sided phenomenon. Uke’s perception of time and violence seems to become enhanced as tori’s becomes diminished. Uke’s world becomes more chaotic and hellish as tori becomes calmer and moves slower. Some writers have described this as similar to the eye of a storm.

Good AM exertion

5AM judo/aiki with Rob

• groundwork mobility cycle X2 as warmup
• hizaguruma from the deashi bump
• newaza randori. I got Rob twice in various positional things and he ran me to a draw the third time. Good sweaty exertional judo.
• drilled legs-over escape from jujigatame. Rob brought up the point that omoplata might be a threat if you do legs-over from there. In judo you don't have to worry about that but it is something to think about.
• switched to aiki for a cooldown. repped owaza #1-4 many times into a crashpad and then did a handful of reps of owaza 5-10.

More fundamentals and randori with the new guy

Aikido with Patrick M. & Allen

• ROM, Ukemi
• tegatana with emphasis on concervative steps and upright posture.
• hanasu - releases #1 and #2
• evasion drills and aiki brush-off
• aigamaeate
• standing kokyudosa-like randori
• cool technique of the night - wakigatame starting from the inside like in shomenate. We even played this with a knife in uke's free hand and it works even better. cool.

Randori within constraints

AM aiki with Rob

• releases as warmup
• chain #1 - the first part with emphasis on left-right synch and hineri-gaeshi synch
• chain #2 - the sharp turn with emphasis on up-down synch and the 'who's the boss?' idea. This led into the idea of chains as randori within constraints. It is randori with enough structure to make it repeatable so you get to do randori around a set of 4-5 techniques or positions with good flow.
• Getting Rob ready for nidan in aikido. End of October would be a good time to do that as part of the aiki buddies gathering.

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.

Variations on katatetori ikkyo

Aiki with Patrick M., John J., John W., and Andy

• We did environmental training today - since it was so pleasant outside, we worked out on the concrete slab, mostly avoiding falling, in street clothes and with or without shoes as each person felt led to practice.
• Tegatana with some emphasis on panther walking.
• Hanasu with emphasis on #1, #3, and #5.
• Koryu Dai Ichi section B (variations on katatetori ikkyo)
• Crazy man randori
• My arm is still swollen - but not like it was - and the rash has receded for the most part but still itches. Still working on the antibiotics.
• John W. asked me for some help with organizing a teaching syllabus. I haven't forgotten that - I'll get it to you.

Ukemi is a kind of intelligent blending

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

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

Graduation day

Today was the graduation day and judo demo and family night for the end of our first season of Kid's judo here at Mokuren. If you're coming into this story late, we decided to run kids' judo on a seasonal sports model, like teeball or soccer, since so many of the parents around here understand that sports model better than the usual 2-3 classes/week all the time model. We ran the season from last September till today and will take off during the busy baseball season and the intolerable heat of summer, to begin again this coming September. We practiced once per week and had club judo tournaments each month. It was a lot of fun and the kids learned a lot and we all had a lot of fun.

Following is the text of the program for tonight's judo demo for those interested:

Judo Embu (Demonstration)

Introduction

In Feudal Japan, samurai warriors learned jujitsu, a form of empty-hand combat, as a backup plan in case they were disarmed on the battlefield. But after the Restoration of the Meiji Emperor to the throne in 1868, Japan began to pull itself out of feudalism through a long process of westernization and modernization. During this modernization, the old feudalistic samurai arts, including jujitsu were considered no longer necessary, and perhaps even backward. Hundreds of years of refinements of the jujitsu arts were in danger of dying out within the space of a generation.

In the 1880’s, Jigoro Kano, a master of several of the ancient jujitsu arts, came up with the idea to preserve the aspects of jujitsu that were still beneficial to individuals and to society - qualities like strength and courage and discipline. Kano took some of the techniques from the ancient jujitsu arts and used them to create a wrestling sport, which he called Judo. Judo rapidly grew in popularity in Japan, Europe, and throughout the world as both a sport and a form of self-defense.

Tonight you will see a demonstration of some of the skills that your children have learned over the course of the last few months; demonstrations of their maturing strength, technique, persistence, and courage. Thank you for joining us in this celebration of their achievement.

Demonstration

• Line-up, salutes, and warm-up
• Safe falling skills (forward roll, forward fall, left fall right fall, back fall)
• More falling skills with a spotter (deashibarai, teguruma, hizaguruma, seoinage)
• Throwing skill: osotogari (the big outside reap), that we call the “1-2 throw”
• Holding skill: osotogari→kesagatame (the scarf hold)
• Escape skill: osotogari→kesagatame→uphill escape
• Ground grappling skills: crawling man contest
• Standing wrestling skills: standing randori

Presentation of certificates and new belts

• All students will be presented with certificates, and the older students will be presented with new belts. The younger students’ new belts are on back-order and will be presented during a post-season play-day during the Summer.
• Gavin - Yellow Belt - Gavin is the oldest, and because of the age and mass advantage, had the coordination and strength to do well. Gavin especially improved in his mental control of his frustration when someone (like Whit) would grind him or play rough.
• Whit - Yellow Belt - Whit is naturally athletic and coordinated. Particularly agile on his feet, he was able to dominate much of the standing work. Whit developed a good osotogari and a fair deashibarai this season and he is making progress in learning to control that alpha-male ego thing that he has going.
• Mason - Yellow Belt - Mason is nearly indomitable on the ground because of his fierce persistence. He absolutely refuses to lose if there is anything he can do about it. He has also shown a great deal of control over natural frustration when he is dominated to the point of exhaustion on the ground by a larger opponent (like Gavin). Mason also has a naturally good leg pick.
• Knox - White&Yellow Belt - Knox is the kind one. He has enjoyed being able to develop and express a more vigorous aggression in randori this season, but tonight in standing randori he absolutely refused to throw Emma because he thought he might hurt her.
• Emma - White&Yellow Belt - It's hard (impossible?) to keep the attention of kids this young, but Emma has done very well and has improved her attention span greatly. She has had a lot of fun especially in the randori and groundwork games with Knox and Quin.
• Quin - White&Yellow Belt - Got a late start this season, and was handicapped by his small size (a 000 gi swallows him), but he has a natural aggression and a will to power that will serve him well in judo as he picks up a little more mass and coordination.

Congratulations to all of our newly advanced students!

Wonderful jodo and aikido sessions

Jodo with MytchiKo

• Reviewed moving from pencil grip, which is her normal mode of holding the cane, into honte, gyakute, and sakate postures and measuring the distance to the opponent. She is improving on the measuring stick idea.
• Worked some strikes - pencil→sakate→ushirotsuke, pencil→gyakute→gyakuteuchi (to shin or knee or extended wrist)
• Worked on moving from pencil to sakate and using the structure of the forearms and stick like a cowcatcher to brush off and roll the ball.
• Showed her a cool addition to the stab-the-foot move that she has been working on - if you miss, use the stick as a reference and step forward onto their foot, then use their reaction to roll the ball and brush them off.
• I took out a quarterstave and worked some of the same concepts against Woodreaux.

Aiki with Rick

• ROM and ukemi with emphasis on landing position and rolling back to standing smoothly
• Hanasu #1-4. Rick has excellent motion.
• Rick asked about randori so we played releases #1-4 in a limited randori, then started broadening the scope of the randori as we talked about the randori concept. The rest of the night was randori.

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

Great intro to randori

Very interesting lesson follows. For a good introduction to aikido randori as we practice it, watch the video and substitute the word, "randori" whenever this instructor says, "push hands."

Chad from Akari Judo

Judo with Chad, Whit, Knox, and Quin

• Ukemi for about 30 minutes before class with me throwing/spotting Whit, Knox, and Quin. then the kids bailed out and Chad showed up.
• We had Sensei Chad Morrison down from Akari Judo of Richmond VA, now teaching at McCoy MMA. Chad and I traded ancient oriental secrets, me showing him some of the kumikata material we've been working on lately, and him showing me several good groundwork tricks, including a cool sankaku entry from ukigatame. We spun off into several bouts of randori, spinning back into lessons every so often. Chad's positional control and ground mobility have improved a lot from rolling with the MMA dudes.
• The things that Chad seemed to enjoy and he'll want to remember include: 1) the sweep-prop combination that makes uke feel so stupid, 2) the bump-and-sweep deashi/kosoto from the outside cross grip, 3) the footsweep-to-control drill that we start each class with, 4) treat uphill escape as a bridging technique with the emphasis on smashing uke's nose into the ground - you'll get more mileage from uphill escape and bridge&roll (downhill escape) will be easier when it occurs, and 5) Chad, you need to start a judo blog. Do it today.

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.

Randori with locking techniques

Aiki with Kel

• We've gone from freezing cold to temperate to too-humid-to-survive in about two weeks. Scott Z. would feel right at home.
• Ukemi with emphasis on landing properly and slowing the legs down so they don't get hammered on the mat
• Tegatana & hanasu as warmup - no particular emphasis
• Nijusan #6-10 with the ukemi and pins (see this training log)
• Chain #1 - the shortcut that contains the hineri-gaeshi loop
• Randori with both partners walking into and out of gaeshi, hineri, mawashi, and wakigatame locks.
• Rokukata maeotoshi and Rokukata sakaotoshi as the cool ninja techniques of the night

My Take on Colin's 'My Tekki...'

I hate to rub it in, but y’all missed out! A while back Colin Wee of the Traditional Taekwando Blog offered his readers a free copy of his kata DVD, “My Tekki On It.” (Here's the 1-minute teaser trailer) Unfortunately for y’all but fortunately for me, I was the only one who responded, so I got the free DVD and I have to say - it is outstanding.

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On his DVD, he shows a wide assortment of bunkai for Tekki, illustrating how this single kata could, as Choki Motobu put it, be an entire self-defense system. Tekki has always been my favorite of the Karate kata because of the variety of ultra-practical self-defense application – but what Colin illustrates on this DVD is the fact that Tekki by itself could be the core of an extremely good karate-do or jujitsu system.

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I enjoyed all of Colin’s applications that he demonstrated and he only scratched the surface of the potential of Tekki, but I also wanted to comment that I see the practice of Tekki perhaps a little bit differently than Colin illustrates on his DVD. I do not really see Tekki as a catalog of dozens of situational applications to specific attacks, but rather as a small set of the most common, most useful general-purpose motions for close-fighting. Look at the motions in Tekki:

• Lateral stepping with strong rotational hip motions
• An open-handed shuto, back-knuckle, or eye-flick
• A horizontal elbow smash
• A couple of conservative, low, snappy kicking motions
• Two or three sets of two-handed push-pull motions that can be applied in many ways

That’s it. You repeat those motions on both sides and you’re done with the exercise - but this handful of motions and skills are infinitely applicable to close-fighting and grappling situations. Personally, I don’t find it really helpful to try to visualize a specific application for each move during regular practice, because Tekki is a very general thing – the building blocks of in-fighting strategy. For instance.

• When overwhelmed or waylaid, lateral stepping and the stepping-in-front motion is the basis of most of the useful evasions and body displacements possible.
• The open-handed eye flick is a great distracter, separator, or delaying measure, as well as having the potential to end the fight right away.
• The elbow smash is the most powerful upper body infighting strike there is and the same motion is applicable as a block or a lock too.
• The kicking motions can decimate opponents’ legs or set up great off-balances making the rest of the grappling stuff work even better.

Anyway, you get the point. In my opinion you could study Tekki in a couple of productive ways.

• Dissect hundreds of specific applications out of it and practice them as bunkai.
• Practice the kata as a motor control exercise to improve body coordination in this handful of general motions and then use one-steps and randori to creatively look for application.

Both practice modes are probably good. Both may be necessary, but I lean toward the second training method. That way you only have to learn a handful of things and then you work in an “aliveness” type environment on creating application. But enough of what I think. Well, nearly enough…

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I think Tekki is awesome, and I think Colin’s DVD demo of Tekki bunkai is fantastic, and I think if you hop over to his blog and ask him nicely you might be able to get him to re-run his original offer, or at worst, he’ll probably only charge you a tiny fee for such a great demonstration DVD.

Aiki practice

Aiki with John J.

• It was cold in the dojo (after our snow last night!), so it was streetclothes, no-mats practice today.
• Tegatana emphasiding bringing recovery foot back under your center and same-hand-same-foot.
• Hanasu #1-4 emphasizing relaxed, unbendable arm and moving the center behind the shield of the hands no matter where uke moves that shield. We particularly worked on #1 and #2 emphasizing how each flows into the other when resisted.
• Shomenate
• Kotemawashi off of release#3 as the cool ninja technique of the day.
• A little bit of "crazy man" randori, emphasizing relaxed movement and "stay off me" hands and