Even with all my nice talk about "knowledge is not power - knowledge shared is power..." This clip is so good that it hurts me to share this. This is a video clip of some awesome wrestling, and if you back off a touch, what you see is a good offensive application for ukemi skills in judo or even aikido. Check out these guys' great ground mobility. If you want to begin playing this stuff in judo or aikido, uke had better be rolling and blending compliantly or he's going to eat a lot of energy and break corners off of his body.
Okay, Elise here, a.k.a. Shug (only to Pat) and The Boss to everyone else.
Let me tell my version of Pat’s pit problem. Last week, Pat ran out of deodorant. He claims he told me several times that he was out, meaning I had to buy him some more. Now, Pat’s a big boy, right? He has a debit card in his wallet, what’s stopping him from going to the store and buying his own darn deodorant, one may ask. Well, I homeschool our children, as well as organize and conduct classes for the children of 7 other families. I am mom, teacher, principal, secretary, librarian, janitor, and school nurse from 8-2:30 Monday through Thursday, and half-day on Friday. Going to the store for anything (finding the time, organizing someone to keep the kids, etc) is a strategic event that takes days to plan. Again I ask, what was stopping him from getting his own deodorant? It would take him 10 minutes, me 10 days! Twice he used my deo. Perhaps I should preface Pat’s particular pit problem by explaining that he has had mild allergic reactions in the past, and we’ve learned there is one kind of one brand only that he can use with no reaction. . Anyway, a few days after using my deodorant, he gets a little red. A kind of blister forms in his arm pit, and I lovingly (laughingly) applied some anti-itch ointment to it. Men can’t take pain, I might add, and the burning he claims to have suffered after the application of this ointment was enough to grip sheets, grind teeth, and squirm for 5 minutes. Big baby. The next day I comment on his numerous baths – and the fact that he has gone through a bottle of bleach and a bottle of vinegar and my house stinks. Not to mention water in Magnolia is like a dollar a drop (long story about re-piping the town, engineering screw ups, inflated water bills for people in the city limits, etc) and we ration water as if we live in a desert 3rd world country. When, on the third day, his baths came at hour intervals, I knew I needed to intervene. . “Pat, show me your arm pits.” He was lying on the bed, his knees crooked over the footboard, arms flung over his head, draped in a towel having just come out of the bath. He removed the towel. . “Oh, hell, you need to see a doctor!” . What had been a little pink rash had spread from his nipples to his shoulder blades, and from the inside of his elbows laterally to his midsection. The pink of it was raised and swollen, so puffy his shirt-sleeves were tight. When he stood it looked like he needed a man bra. He’d come home early from work (usually a bad sign – he knows better than to come home unless he’s worked his full hours. We’re poor! I knew it had to be serious if he’d chance my nagging him about coming home early) and claimed the rash was now seeping. . “What could it be seeping?” I asked. . He replied with some medical mumbo-babble that I can’t pronounce, much less spell, so I gave him directions and permission for going to the doctor first thing in the morning. . I called him at 9:30 this morning to see what the doctor said. Instead of being able to go to StatCare after getting his ducks in a row, he was still at work. His one nurse had called in sick with the pink eye, and his other assistant is 10 months pregnant. He couldn’t conceivably leave her there alone with patients, so he was suffering in silence. . He finally got to go at lunch, and later told me the doctor, upon first seeing it, backed away calling for the number for the CDC in Atlanta. A tech in a HAZMAT suit took some blood, only to discover his white blood cells were okay in number, and he had some contact dermatitis which has caused cellulitis. He didn’t need House, he needed J.D. and Janitor!
Two shots and a gallon of antibiotics later (and a shot or two of whiskey) his swelling is much decreased, my water bill is stabilizing, and hopefully soon he’ll stop walking like a sissy with his hands propped on his hips.
So, who would win? A wrestler or a boxer? If you forgive, at least for the sake of argument, the incredible stupidity of this question, you might find the following video clip interesting.
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.
So, we saw in class today that once two vibrating objects (uke & tori) are coupled together, they may either amplify each others’ motions or they may damp each others’ motions out depending on how they are synchronized and how they are coupled. Here’s the cool physical example of this principle that I mentioned in class. And here it is done with three metronomes… and with five metronomes.
So, who all out there can say they've seen this type of phenomenon happen between two people in a martial arts setting?
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.
Last night, as we practiced aigamaeate, Kel and Rick commented on the difference between what I was doing and what they were doing. They were pulling uke around in a circle and it was making tori have to go faster to compensate for lack of offbalance and for the centrifugal effect. I was floating uke into offbalance, slipping aside at the proper time, doing less, moving slower, and getting greater effect.
This brings me back to Musashi’s Wind book, which I was quoting the other day:
Speed in Other Schools Speed is not part of the true Way of strategy. Speed implies that things seem fast or slow, according to whether or not they are in rhythm. Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast.
Some people can walk as fast as a hundred or a hundred and twenty miles in a day, but this does not mean that they run continuously from morning till night. Unpracticed runners may seem to have been running all day, but their performance is poor.
In the Way of dance, accomplished performers can sing while dancing, but when beginners try this they slow down and their spirit becomes busy. The "old pine tree" melody beaten on a leather drum is tranquil, but when beginners try this they slow down and their spirit becomes busy. Very skilful people can manage a fast rhythm, but it is bad to beat hurriedly. If you try to beat too quickly you will get out of time. Of course, slowness is bad. Really skilful people never get out of time, and are always deliberate, and never appear busy. From this example, the principle can be seen.
What is known as speed is especially bad in the Way of strategy.
The reason for this is that depending on the place, marsh or swamp and so on, it may not be possible to move the body and legs together quickly. Still less will you be able to cut quickly if you have a long sword in this situation. If you try to cut quickly, as if using a fan or short sword, you will not actually cut even a little. You must appreciate this.
In large-scale strategy also, a fast busy spirit is undesirable. The spirit must be that of holding down a pillow, then you will not be even a little late. When your opponent is hurrying recklessly, you must act contrarily and keep calm. You must not be influenced by the opponent. Train diligently to attain this spirit.
I particularly enjoyed Musashi's analogy of holding down a pillow. The image that comes to mind is smothering someone with a pillow in their sleep. In a lot of ways aikido is like that.
Here's a really interesting police combatives system that appears to have a lot in common with the aikido and judo that we do. Notice the things I found most ingteresting included:
The adjectives and descriptors that Lt. Col. Grossman (the first guy on the film) used to describe the system: "more than just combatives, the spirit, the soul of the warrior. Teachable in a lecture framework to executives... powerful...funny...dynamic...style and substance..." How many instructors can claim that kind of teaching skill?
Reality based training, or as they refer to it, environmental training. Recreating the physiological responses and environment that occur in combat. I would really like to implement this. Anyone out there in Southwest Mississippi want to practice aikido or judo at night under a sprinkler with a strobe light? Let me know and we can play that one... That might just be something to play at the next ABG!
"We discuss everything that would be important to that officer right from legal aspects all the way down to the hands-on physical"
When we begin training beginners to roll, we put them kneeling and have them roll forward into a proper landing position. Then we reverse that and have them roll backward from either a landing position or a seated position into a kneeling position. It usually doesn’t take too long to get to feeling fairly proficient with these two exercises, and here’s why: momentum covers mistakes. . Take a bicycle wheel as an example. Stand it up on its edge and it falls over. Stand it up and start it rolling and it takes much longer to fall over. Because of conservation of angular momentum, a rotating object resists a change in its axis. So the wheel does not fall over and it is fairly easy to roll forward and backward with momentum. . But what if as you gain proficiency you begin to slow down your kneeling rolls. Your momentum is reduced and the roll again becomes a challenge. As you slow down the rolls the muscles in your abdomen and torso have to adapt and become more coordinated at balancing you on the line of the roll. . As you become more proficient these slower rolls become easier so you reduce the momentum further and it’s challenging again. You can actually continue profiting from these two initial exercises indefinitely so long as you keep balancing your feeling of success with reductions in momentum. The natural endpoint of this process is the forward roll into shoulder stand or the backward roll into shoulderstand. . So, if you think you’re pretty good at the forward roll, try slowing it down until you feel uncomfortable again. Try to prove to yourself that there is such a thing as ‘not enough momentum’ to do the roll (there isn’t).
After writing the previous post on gun safety, I got to looking for vids on YouTube on the subject, and found this travesty. This is one of those rare instances where everyone involved would have probably been better off not being educated. This was one of the scariest things I've seen in a long, long time.
And what's more, the agent had the balls to sue the DEA (his own agency) for releasing the video and thus tarnishing his reputation.
Alright, some of my Kids' Judo parents have asked me how they can help their kids learn to tie their own belts. Here is a very good video demonstration of the simplest method for learning to tie your belt. Some judo instructors make this a pre-requisite to starting judo - you have to be old enough to tie your own belt. I'm not a stickler for this, but I would really like the yellow belts to all be able to tie their own belts by the beginning of next judo season (this coming September).
Demographers have been telling us for years about the baby boom generation. This is the group of people born between about 1946 and 1964. This is a worldwide phenomenon, but in the U.S. it represents a group of about 80 million people beginning to move into retirement age. . Three trends that concern many older adults are health care (in 2004, boomers averaged $2700 per year in healthcare spending), finances (fixed incomes and rising cost of living), and personal safety (Things seem to move faster and violence seems harder to deal with). The perfect solution for these problems is my aikido class. . If you are an older adult living in Southwest Mississippi and want an affordable way to get a little reasonable, moderate exercise and learn to protect yourself in an increasingly chaotic and violent world, come check out my aikido class. . Fees are both reasonable and negotiable, and you can learn a martial art designed by older adults for older adults, taught by an adult, and proven effective in countless real-world instances for use as personal protection by older adults. . You don’t have to be trapped by your own fear and you don’t have to spend a fortune to learn a martial art with the potential to really change your life for the better. Send me an email at mokurendojo@gmail.com and I’ll get you set up or I’ll try to help you with whatever other information you need.
I just got back from seeing our great friend and teacher, Henry Copeland. I posted a video of Henry a few days back and a couple of the videos that YouTube suggested as similar was a pair of videos by Henry Kono. The first one is a very fine lesson and the second is a very lovely aiki demonstration. Much the sort of aiki I'm talking about in much of my blog. Enjoy...
I enjoyed his discussion of the eidetic teaching style of OSensei. I've talked about that elsewhere. I think (I'm guessing) that what Ueshiba and Kono were calling the "Yin and Yang" solution to the aiki problem is the same thing that we're talking about when we refer to the Kito principle - the idea that energy waxes and wanes. You can read more of my ideas on the Kito principle here and here. I also find it interesting that he mentions the idea that real aikido is driven by getting your mind straight - not through years of physical practice. Here is an interview in which he expands on this a little.
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In any case, This certainly looks like good aikido and I would love to have the chance to work out with Kono Sensei sometime.
I'm back from the Spring 2008 Henry seminar. It was a blast as usual. Well attended - I got to see some of the Tennessee aikidoka that I don't get to see much. Everyone learned a lot. Here are some short highlight clips from the weekend.
Wow, this is a fascinating interview with the guy who was the factual basis for the movie, Searching for Bobby Fischer. Josh Waitzkin fell somewhat out of love with chess and got into taichi. Eventually reconciling his problems with chess, he came to equate the two arts as the same thing. In the end of this interview he talks about a fascinating perceptual thing that goes on in the martial arts - time dilation. I'm ordering the book he's hyping in this video because it sounds super interesting and right up my alley.
