More on the French Curve

The other day I titled an article, 'French Curve' but I didn't really explain why in that post. What we were talking about that day in class was thinking about this particular set of exercises as being like using a French Curve.

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That is, in the chains you know that there are points in space (relationships) that uke and tori should move through but it is not the points (techniques) that are important so much as the smooth, flowing, continuous curve through those points. You have to learn to move your body through an arc with uke without a lot of discontinuity. This is the same as a French curve - you plot a few points then find the template that matches those points most closely to help you draw your arc.

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The moves in tegatana are small arcs. The moves in hanasu are French Curves. The techniques in nijusan or junana are the points that the French Curve helps you plot a course through.

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We got a lot of mileage out of this analogy last class by working it with one-handed shihonage (that is releases #6 and #8). notice, that if you stand in place and hold uke's arm with your left hand and swing them through you describe an arc. Holding uke's same arm with your other arm you get a different arc through space. If you practice shihonage holding with both hands then you never have to develop this sensitivity to the precise arc that uke is moving through. That is why we practice two one-handed variants of shihonage - better opportunity to learn.

French curve

Aiki with Andy and Rick

• tegatana x2
• hanasu with emphasis on #6 and #8 being different arcs through space that you have to learn to follow with your whole body ll the way to the end without getting discontinuities. A great way to practice this is with fine fingertip pressure touch attacks from uke instead of grabs. This way, if tori screws up it is mroe obvious because uke comes unhooked.
• shomenate and aigamaeate with emphasis on moving slowly and gently throught hte arc of the movement without adding a lot of random extra energy.
• kotehineri and kotegaeshi with emphasis on flowing from one to the other (following the arc with your whole body just like in hanasu #6 and #8 above. we wound up alternately getting near and far kotegaeshi and everyone was flowing nicely.

Wrist techniques and floating techniques

Aiki with Patrick M.

• tegatana with emphasis on sliding the feet vs. not sliding the feet. We also talked about how to hipswitch with grippy shoes on.
• hanasu with emphasis on getting offline in #2,4,6,and 8 and emphasis on getting a releasing feeling on #5 and 7
• nijusan tekubiwaza (wrist techniques) and ukiwaza (floating throws) with particular emphasis on the difference between shihonage and tenkai kotegaeshi. We also looked at the kotetaoshi-maeotoshi pair.
• Ichikata part C shihonage variations

Variations on shihonage

Aiki with Patrick M., Kel, and Ross

• ukemi, including airfalls and flying sidefalls with a spotter
• tegatana with emphasis on hip switch
• hanasu
• aigamaeate with emphasis on not pushing past the offbalance, but leaving uke hanging in offbalance while tori slips behind.
• gedanate - variants with the idea of attacking anything low when you can't attack high
• udegaeshi/kaitennage
• chain #2 including the gaeshi-hineri loop. We'll get to the migi-hidari loop next class.
• cool ninja technique of the night: koryu dai ichi section C - variants on shihonage, hijikime and sukuinage

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

AM training

AM aiki with Rob

• Koryu Dai Ichi - Sections B (variations on release #1 and oshitaoshi) and C (variations on YK#1 and shihonage).
• We talked a little about the positive influence that jodo has had on my aikido - particularly in the last year or so.

PM aiki with Rick

• We spent a lot of time working on ukemi paying attention to muscle coordination - relax/contact and the appropriate times for each.
• Same lesson plan as the AM session - Ichikata sections B&C - worked great. Wonderful flow.

A helpful handful – shihonage

Shihonage (lit. ‘four-directions throw’ or more loosely, ‘all-directions throw’) is the first of the ‘Six Pillars of Aikido' (shihonage, iriminage, kaitennage, kokyunage, osaekomi, ushirowaza). This technique is very common across most martial arts. Here are a handful of hints I’ve found helpful in working on shihonage.

• Work your way through the name of the thing. Work on finding ways you can throw this thing in every direction.
• Do it part of the time with only one hand and part of the time with only the other hand – like #6 and #8 in Hanasu no Kata. Practicing this with only one hand makes you move your body thru the right arc or you lose it. Don’t cheat by learning shihonage with the illusion of control afforded by using both hands.
• If it goes bad toward the beginning, try flowing into maeotoshi or sumiotoshi. If it goes bad toward the end, try flowing into aikinage (A.K.A. iriminage) or ushiroate.
• We use a crash pad when we practice binding the arm and throwing forward (i.e. hijikime) or when we set it up then step under the arm from the outside to the inside for a floating throw. These are severe falls and represent a severe risk to the shoulder if there is anything wrong with the ukemi.
• Going back to the name, consider Beth Shibata’s article in which she suggests that it might be more appropriate for learning purposes to call the thing the 'all-directions release' instead of the 'all-directions throw'. How does what you call the thing affect your execution of it?

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.

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.

Irresistible aiki

“Aikido is the principle of non-resistance. Because it is non-resistant, it is victorious from the beginning. Those with evil intentions or contentious thoughts are instantly vanquished. Aikido is invincible because it contends with nothing.”

The above quote from Ueshiba, like a lot of what he said, sounds like a lot of mystical woo-woo psychobabble nonsense. But I think a lot of what he was probably talking about is natural and rational - it's just that he spoke in a strange manner.

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A while back I talked about SWOT. Strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat only exist within the context of an objective. If tori does not have the objective of exerting his will upon uke, if tori does not want to execute his plans upon uke, then tori has no weakness relative to uke and uke presents no threat to tori. Tori has become irresistible because he has no plan of attack. You cannot resist something that is not occurring.

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But you have to have at least minimal objectives – you know that tori must remain alive and intact. That counts as an objective. In another recent article I talked about SMART goals and I mentioned that if you define your goals properly then you gain a lot of slack in how you execute your techniques. Specific goals (like “I will now do shihonage to make him fall just like this”) get tori into trouble. Broad, general goals (like “avoid, evade, do not engage, roll the ball, brushoff, disengage”), also called strategies, keep tori viable.

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Tori starts to get into trouble when he begins planning tactics more than about one moderate, conservative walking step in advance. Everything that happens more than about one step in the future has to be handled strategically - not tactically or technically.

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Ueshiba also said, "Free of weakness ignore the sharp attacks of your enemies: Step in and act!"

Judo and aiki at Mokuren last night

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

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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.

Nikyu rank reuirements class

Today we worked on Patrick M's nikyu reuirements. Tegatana, hanasu (particularly working on getting off the line on #2 & 4 and making the beginning of #1, 2, and 5 the same), and the wrist techniues in nijusan (kote hineri, kote gaeshi, tenkai kote hineri, tenkai kote gaeshi, and shihonage). Patrick has got the gist of the techniques - he just needs the seasoning that comes with time in grade.

We worked chain #1 and used it as an opportunity to talk about randori. We played some randori in different modes, including regular hand randori, contact improv, and some taichi push hands.

Shihonage and tenkai kotegaeshi

Everybody pretty much does some form of shihonage. It is one of the fundamental ways to force somebody to the ground. Most everybody does some variation of a two handed grab, turns under, and forces uke down backward. But perhaps a lot of folks don’t know that there are (at least) two very common forms that appear in randori.
Tomiki, when he started formulating the fundamental randori no kata, had both variants in the kata. He called them shihonage and tenkai kotegaeshi. At some point he combined these two into one technique called shihonage in the 17 basic forms, but over the course of 30 or so years of randori, Karl noticed that tenkai kotegaeshi popped up a significant part of the time – maybe even more than shihonage, so he put it back into our version of the form so that we get regular practice on both variants.
The differences between the variants mostly wash out when tori is able to take a two-handed grip on uke’s arm, but if tori is only able to get one hand on uke’s arm, the technique that pops out depends on the relationship. A cross grab (aihammi) results in tori’s strength being behind uke’s shoulder, so you get the standard shihonage as above. A mirror grab (gyakuhammi) results in tori’s strength being more off to the side of uke, so tenkai kotegaeshi results, similar to the model below.

More on aikido in the army

A while back I was scanning the Google news archives and found out that a group of National Guardsmen from Virginia were being trained right here in little ole' Mississippi about 100 miles east of here. The Local news station in Virginia ran a very nice series of features on their hometown men and women's training.

Now, I see that a Massachusetts group also recently underwent apparently similar training at Camp Shelby. Hop on over to Michael Morton's article and check out the picture of that lovely tenkai kotegaeshi. Looks so familiar it gives me sympathy pains.

When you're done with that, check out this warrior's account of a real hand-to-hand action. Awesome and frightening read

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.

The way you do the thing you do

One subject that interests me greatly is how experts in any field go about their daily practice. How do the best in the world go about getting better?

Karl Geis told me one time that there is no such thing as a quantum leap in the martial arts. The best way to practice is to take some small, almost microscopic thing and work on that. But you have to pick some microscopic thing that applies to everything that you do. For instance, it doesn't necessarily do as much good to get 100 repetitions of shihonage as it does to get 100 slow, careful, thoughtful repetitions of the hipswitch motion that is used in shihonage. If you do 100 reps of shihonage than you have pretty much only gotten better at shihonage, but if you do 100 reps of hipswitch then the improvements apply to shihonage as well as maeotoshi, tenkai kote gaeshi, and a lot of other techniques. For this reason, if you ask the highest-ranking Fugakukai aikido shihans what they are working on in their own practice they will more than likely tell you Tegatana no kata (the first thing we learn as white belts).

I was talking recently to a professional pool player and I asked him what he practiced the most. He talked about repeatedly working a certain type of spin or a certain type of bank shot. He even mentioned details about how he went about chalking his cue. Sure he plays games nearly every day just like we do randori, but the improvement comes from working these microscopic skills that apply to frequent situations in the game.

I also spoke to a personal trainer who has been doing weightlifting for probably 20-25 years. He mentioned that at the top of the game there is virtually no difference between competitors except genetics. Top weightlifters, after 15-20 years have (according to this trainer) developed their technical skills pretty much as good as they will get but what they do work on is making microscopic changes in their training routines - changing periodization, sets, reps, etc... one variable at a time in an everlasting attempt to get a 1% edge on the competition.

So, one great way to improve your martial arts skills is to identify a set of a few techniques that are lacking in some way and then try to identify the motions that are common to all those techniques. Then, instead of working that set of techniques to death, work slowly, carefully, and thoughtfully on making that common motion just a little more efficient. Do that for a while (weeks, maybe months) and see doesn't that change your performance of that set of techniques.

More on releases vs. throws

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

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

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

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

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.

Kotegaeshi and etc...

Tonight was another low-energy day because I have been sick for two days - lost 12 pounds yesterday (I'll let you use your imagination). Anyway, it looks like it was about a 30-hour bug and I'm much better now - just drained. We worked on tegatana with small steps, using the side step to calibrate the length of the diagonal steps in tegatana. We then played with the evasions and offbalances with partners, concentrating on these calibrated steps. Worked really good.
For a while, we played with the second half of owaza jupon - mostly so that I could get some reps on my favorite kata but Andy was getting some good practice too. We worked mostly on the shihonage, ushiroate, and kotegaeshi from this kata and it went well. Andy was smearing me with shihonage and I was getting a good kotegaeshi. This led to Andy and I working on kotegaeshi a good bit and talking about using the wrist control to control uke's posture. We got to work on the owaza and nijusan versions of shihonage and kotegaeshi. These roughly translate to omote and ura versions of these two techniques.
We used this work on kotegaeshi as a lead-in to chain #1 and we reviewed all of the first half of the chain (1a) a couple of times and then jumped into the second part that contains the shortcut through chain #1a and then branches off into kotegaeshi, kotehineri, and tenkai kotehineri. Andy was flowing better than I was tonight.
By this point I was waning, so we cut class short and I made it up to Andy with spaghetti and a movie.

Aikido fundamentals

Ukemi. Tegatana with emphasis on the last step (polishing the mirror) and on the extra steps that pop up between the last evasion step and the first push step. Patrick M's last mvoe is much deeper than mine. My knees weren't doing that particular thing , so I tend to emphasize finding out where all I can point myself without having to move feet. Worked on Hanasu with an emphasis on #6 and #8. We repped these two many times and got into the chains for #8 tonight, allowing us to explore shihonage, tenkai kotegaeshi, ushiroate, and kaiten nage. Then we repped all of Nijusan 1-2 times each. Good, basic class. We need to do more randori.