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.

A helpful handful: aigamaeate

Consider the similarities between aigamaeate and aikinage (known in aikikai as iriminage). They are really the same technique - or perhaps you could say that aigamaeate is a form of iriminage. Here is a handful of helpful hints - some of the things I work with my students on.

• Often in practice, aigamaeate is done as a more direct entry and abrupt atemi, whereas aikinage seems more flowing and roundabout, but either technique can be done either way. Try aigamaeate from a backing-around situation when uke interrupts your tenkan and tries to turn back in on you.
• Because aigamaeate and aikinage are about the same thing, all the helpful handful for aikinage apply to aigamaeate too.
• Where there two techniques really diverge is in the relative height of tori as compared to uke. A taller tori will often find it easier to strike over uke’s arm, while a shorter tori will strike under uke’s arm. Takng a palm to the chin from a short tori sliding upward along your body can be one of the worst experiences ever.
• Aigamaeate happens abruptly and effectively when someone is trying tori out using snappy lead jabs and testing feints. If you see 1-2 testing jabs, get ready for another one and follow it back into uke with an atemi of your own.
• Another fundamental version of aigamaeate is in response to a jo thrust – slip out of the way moving forward and outside the strike and clothesline or better yet, palm uke to the face while blocking and taking the jo with the other hand.

Cheat notes in jodo

Here's a hint that has helped me in my jodo a good bit. Mark up your practice jo and bokken with a black Sharpie so that you will have significant reference marks. I thought about using marking tape so that I'd have a tactile as well as visual reference, but I figured the tape would rapidly wear off, leaving the jo gummy. Here's how I marked mine:

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For the bokken, first find the center of mass of the weapon by balancing it on one finger. Place a mark on the flat back edge right at the center of mass. It doesn't have to be conspicuous to others, but it should be highly visible to the swordsman holding the bokken. Then hold the tip end of the bokken in one closed fist and make a second mark on the back edge that is one palm-width from the tip. This marks the cutting surface (the last 3 inches) as well as marking the point to cross sword and jo to measure ma-ai. The center-of mass mark serves mostly as a reference point for your subconscious to make note of relative positions every time the jo and sword meet during a technique.

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For the jo, make a mark at the center of mass just as above. Then hold the jo in a proper honte grip and make a mark at the point that your front index finger and thumb rest on the jo. Do this on both ends. Finally, make a mark one palm-width from the end of the jo on both ends.

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These marks will be valuable references during kihon in getting your grips precisely correct, they will help you develop a more precise understanding of ma-ai distance, and they will serve as positional references for all the techniques.

Fun with Whit and stick

Here's some more video I've been holding onto for a while and now have finally had time to get it processed and posted. Here Whit and I are playing with a sword-throwaway from jodo. Legend has it that Draeger could break sword blades with techniques like this - I guess by driving them into the ground. I'm a long way away from that sort of ability.

And yes, I really do get a kick out of beating up on poor little kids - at least on this one. Whit would have probably kept coming back for more all evening long but I seem to remember it being about a million degrees outside that day.

A helpful handful: wakigatame

Here are a few hints I hold in my hat when I'm teaching wakigatame. Hope they help y'all too.

• Wakigatame is really the same thing as gokyo in aikikai – but the basic form that is commonly practiced looks different. In Tomiki and in Judo, the gokyo relationship is called wakigatame. This thing is superficially similar to ikkyo (oshitaoshi) but the hand grip is different (one hand over and one hand under).


• The first version we were taught was a “look ma, no hands” version in which the wrist is trapped in the crook of the elbow and the upper arm trapped under the other armpit with the elbow turned backwards across tori’s chest. This gives tori a little less control but leaves both hands free to do other things.


• When you try a variation more similar to the basic gokyo, try to get your hands on his arm (under the wrist and over the elbow) as if you were holding a jo, then maneuver your body in behind your hands and stab his arm forward in the direction his arm is pointing as if his arm were a jo.


• Try it with both hands on the wrist and your top elbow controlling his elbow. This elbow-to elbow wakigatame is an abrupt submission.


• If wakigatame goes bad, it tends to lead into kotegaeshi, gyakugamaeate, or gedanate.

Yesterday's classes

Kid's judo

• warmup, ROM, ukemi (including deashi airfall with a spotter), hopping
• osotogari left and right every time uke sticks a leg forward
• newaza randori starting back-to-back. The little kids had to get the opponent's back on the ground. The older kids had to pin the opponent on their back long enough to say, "Persistence means keep on going!"

Aiki with Bryce and Kel

• tegatana, hanasu emphasising 1,5, 6, and 8
• newaza #1-5 (Kel's rank requirement)
• Rokukata ryotemochi ukiotoshi (with good success)
• Owaza jupon and Sankata #1-12 with Bryce
• deashibarai and kosotogari with Bryce

Personally, I like police

Dojo Rat has posted a great police video on his blog and has asked some good, thought provoking questions. Y'all ought to get over there and check it out and leave a comment or two. I thought I'd post here as a sort of Devil's Advocate ;-)
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I've heard a police forensics guy say, "the problem with cops is they're always there when you don't need them and they are never there when you do need them." I've done some research with some of the wildlife enforcement guys here in Mississippi (one of the most dangerous LEO jobs there is) and they are woefully undertrained in combatives and maintain poor physical fitness standards. Dojo Rat tells a couple of stories like one about some cops that pinned a knife-weilding crazy lady with grocery carts and shot her because they couldn't figure out what to do with her. You hear stories like this all the time.
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But I still like police. They are the good guys. The blue wall between us sheep and the wolves in society. Like any domain of practice, there are some cops that suck at their job, but overall, in my experience, the police I've run across have been well-trained, well-intentioned professionals. I know several of the local police and I had a particularly good experience with one of our local policemen (Officer Kenny) a year or so ago.
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How about the following as a counterexample to DR's video. An example of well-trained, good-hearted policemen. This sniper took a lot of flak for this shot, as did his superior that authorized it. But they took this shot instead of the fatal one anyway.



So, what do y'all think? Have the majority of y'all's interactions with police been positive, negative, or neutral? Come on, I want to hear juicy details!

A Mississippi Aikido Christmas Eve

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the dojo
No students were stirring, none had their mojo;
The mats were all stacked in the corner with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The sensei was nestled all snug in his bed,
While kotegaeshi danced in his head;
And shihan in her hakama I in my gi,
Had no sooner tied them and we needed to pee,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a crow,
grabbed up my tanto and drew nigh my jo.

The moon glinting off of the leaf-strewn driveway
Gave a lustre to the objects as if of mid-day,
When, what do you think I saw then from afar,
But a van and a truck and a hoopty old car,

With a little old driver, so lively and flush,
I knew in a moment that it must be Usher.
More rapid than eagles his minions they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

"Now, P3! now, Rich-san! now, Porkchop and Quan!
On, Edward! on Gimli on Malloy and ‘that other one!
Get into that dojo and lay out the mats!
Now dash away! dash away, while I wake up Pat!"

As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,
In Doctor Usher came with a bound.
He was dressed in his gi, pressed shiny and neat,
Tied with his belt he just couldn’t be beat.

His eyes -- how they twinkled though he said his back ached.
His joints creaked, his hips popped and his knees they were fake!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And it looked that despite that he was ready to go!

He spoke not a word, we went into randori,
Sankata newaza and yoko wakari,
He throttled poor P3, to his team gave a whistle,
And we practiced like mad throwing ukes like missiles.

After practice he marked in his book with a glower,
"Merry Christmas to all! That was worth half-an-hour!"

High-resolution jiu-jitsu and low-resolution judo

Martial arts randori or shiai or sparring is to a large degree a pattern recognition problem. You have to find the right opportunity to apply the tactics and techniques that your strategies and principles suggest will help your situation. This is the Observe-Orient-Decide part of the OODA loop - finding the pattern in the chaos of combat.

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Techniques are just named reference positions, labels that are placed on commonly-occurring motions just to have a shorthand way of talking about that type of motion or situation. Part of the pattern recognition problem involves the number of techniques in the system from which you have to choose, the number of categories you have to recognize.

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This is similar to the problem of resolution in a computer monitor. The greater the resolution, the greater the scan time required to keep all those pixels refreshed and lit up. In the olden days (10 years ago or so) this problem was solved by moving the gun farther back from the inside of the screen so that shorter gun motions described a wider arc on the screen. The problem was this led to much larger (deeper, heavier) monitors. It took a while to develop the technology to make fast, hi-res, flat panels.

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In the same way, you can increase the resolution of your martial art by labelling more and more of the motions that you find in randori/sparring/shiai. For example, the escape from the mount (tateshiho) in judo or BJJ. If you do some randori for a while you can probably come up with a dozen or more decent ways to get out of tateshiho. Keep doing randori and each of those dozen will recur at least once. So there you have it – recurring motion! Let’s name it and call it a technique and teach it as part of a high-resolution syllabus. Problem is, it takes time to learn a technique and it takes time to scan thru those techniques during a fight to choose the right one. Thus leading to a larger (deeper, heavier) jiujitsu.

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What you need in your martial arts system is sufficiently high resolution with minimal scan time. Technical resolution has to be great enough to solve many of the likely problems you will encounter but it needs to be small enough to minimize scan time. Scan time has to be minimized and your system has to be relatively light so that it is not too hard to pick up (to teach and learn).

Promote Three - Keepin' it going

Time again for the Promote Three feature. This time I’m featuring three blogs that have impressed me because of the authors’ stick-tuitiveness. These guys get the ‘keepin-it-going’ award. I think the following three blogs deserve honors, traffic, and link-love greater than they are getting:

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Nathan at TDA Training gets it again this month for managing to keep his training and his blog going, and even expand things a little by offering free classes for veterans and hosting the Martial Arts Blog Carnival on his blog next month. And all that in the face of a move to another state and all the lifestyle upheaval that carries with it. Great job, Nathan! You’re an inspiration.

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John over at JohnDo – The Way of John. Not only did John move to another state fairly recently, but he managed to harass his ultra-busy roommate into continuing to teach him aikido and judo. Even with a very small space, couches for mats, and wooden spoons for practice knives, they kept on practicing. John finally managed to get some mats and a larger practice space – and what did the have to contend with then? His roommate-instructor graduating and moving off. So John has taken over as club instructor and has not only kept it going but has grown the club. That’s fantastic dedication!

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Andy at Andy’s Epic Ramble. John can’t get all the credit for keeping it going. Andy, one of my most dedicated students (who would regularly drive 90 miles one way to class), just moved down to Orlando and is working out with John, learning Johndo. I’m impressed with Andy’s desire and stick-tuitiveness. Keep it up!

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And as an added bonus, starting this month, each month I will move the three Promote Three winners to the top of my blogroll. You get first position, above the fold linklove in addition to kudos from me! That change in my blogroll will be in effect by tonight.

Vigorous judo tonight

Judo with Rob

• ROM and groundwork cycle as warmup. The groundwork cycle was a lot more freeform and ranged across the mat almost like no-resistance ground randori. Cool.
• Three flavors of ukigoshi. Good nagekomi. Lots of airtime and mat pounding followed by light standing randori emphasizing ukigoshi.
• Newaza randori. I think I was the bear tonight. My ground mobility was particularly good tonight and Rob just had a hard time. Take away lesson: you have to keep your butt in motion., or if you're going to rest, get an assymetric grip on the opponent, get him offbalance and make him bear your weight. Then you can rest.

Aiki with Rob

• Suwariwaza and Hammi handachi from Sankata.

CSSD with Rob

• basic cuts (1-12 and the abbreviated 1-2-3-4-5-12), a Modular pattern, and some stick Crossada. I can see how I could become comfortable with the system but it sure sucks for me right now. Ah, the joys of being a newbie!

The Bourne Aikidoka

Here is a good example of one phenomenon that I talked about at the seminar this past weekend. In these film clips the point of view changes rapidly from one angle to another to create the illusion of hyper-speed motion. Notice that even when Bourne is just standing still holding a gun, the camera jiggles a little bit, creating an illusion of motion and urgency.

Well, the same thing happens in aikido. If tori allows his eyes to flit from one place to another, it changes his point of view. Not only does this spoil tori's sense of distance and angle, but it makes the conflict appear to take place at hyper-speed. We worked some randori with one partner assigned to lock his gaze on the center of mass of the other one's head while the other partner was instructed to constantly shift his gaze from his partner to the nearest corner of the room. Everyone agreed that this shifting of gaze angle and focus was not only disorienting, but it was physically exhausting because it seemed like the randori was going so much faster.

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...

Discovery Channel's Last One Standing

The Discovery Channel has come out with an outstanding series called Last One Standing. The premise is that these six athletes from the U.S. get to travel to various remote villages and train with the natives in the indigenous warrior games, after which they get to compete against the tribe's enemies. Tonight the episode (perhaps the pilot?) was about this ethnic wrestling style in Brazil. One thing that really interests me is how the game of grappling changes when you change the ruleset. Well, in these contests, there were three ways to win:

• get your opponent in a rear control (i.e. rear bearhug)
• get your opponent's back on the ground
• get control of one of your opponent's legs

It looked like the rules were loosely enforced, I guess based on whether or not the fight was interesting to the observers and referees. For instance, there were instances of someone getting a single leg pick and the match continuing into a double leg pick and bodyslam similar to teguruma. There were also instances where legpicks were broken and didn't stop the fight.
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Three of the Americans were such noobs that the Chief disqualified them from the competition to keep them from embarrassing his village. The three that fought did pretty well.
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I would have liked to see a good collegiate wrestler pancake some of these natives and I would have liked to see how a BJJ guy would have fared naked in the dirt with greasy body paint and alien rules. And I'm not picking on the BJJ guys, I just think it would have been interesting to match some Brazilian JJ guys vs. these Brazilian natives.
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Next week's episode is about Zulu stick and shield fighting. In the trailer I saw a clip of several stick-wielding natives chasing a white guy down in the bush, apparently whipping him for turning and fleeing. I aslo saw a guy's head laid open to the skull with one of these canes. Should be good watching...

Kime no kata

This kata is not generally encountered next after Goshin Jitsu but it is the Kodokan's ancient self-defense form, whereas Goshin Jitsu is the modern self-defense forms. Kime no kata (The forms of decisiveness) are pieces of old jujitsu systems that Kano pulled together as judo was coalescing in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The coolest thing about this kata to me is the repetitiveness. You will notice that the same core set of unarmed combat principles are applied to empty handed kneeling, knife kneeling, standing, standing with a weapon, etc... This really drives home the idea that these ideas are good regardless of the situation. You will also notice that these ancient forms have a distinctly different flavor to them than do the modern forms. A different feel. Kime no kata is about combat decisiveness, whereas Goshin Jitsu is more about self-defense.

Mental judo for kids

Tonight at kid's judo we had all five back from last week. Three more of them had their AAU memberships and one more had a uniform, so I fugure these five will stick and be a good core group.

We warmed up with throttling on cue to the words hajime and matte. Then we did forward roll, face fall, left and right side fall, and back roll. They universally did better at forward rolls today. From here we continued warming up with the kds running continuous laps of running, skipping, hopping, laterals, and galloping as I sat on the side. On each lap I would pull one kid out and I'd do a teguruma to them so I could get them used to being spun through the air. Teguruma is also a great way to do assisted breakfalls with kids so that you can lower them into the right position and they can work on slapping the ground properly. I'll try to get a little film of this excellent exercise on the blog soon.

After warming up we worked again this week on the kneeling kubinage into scarfhold and then played some combatives games, including kneeling knockdown (newaza randori) and standing pushing/pulling wars. Lots of fun.
At the end we worked on silent listening and you know what? the kid that had some challenges with some of the physical stuff did the best of any of them with the mental game. That was neat to see. I'm excited to be able to teach these kid's how to do a physical thing but also to be able to show them how to work their minds too. This is going to be fun.

What is it about grappling?

Rick Fryer posted a good comment on my last post. He reminded us that you don’t want to grapple with a guy who has a knife. I agree. Of course you don’t want to grapple with (or even be near) a knife guy. The guy in the video says that. The idea of teaching to defend against a knife is nearly ludicrous because you can’t afford to screw around with knife guys. It’s such a good weapon it makes virtually anyone mortally dangerous.
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But the point that the guy in the video made that was so interesting to me was that there is something about grappling that seems to bring out the warrior spirit in people. They are not teaching soldiers to grapple; they are explicitly involved in fostering the warrior spirit in these soldiers. This is because, as he puts it, we don’t win wars by grappling, but we win wars by being warriors (my paraphrase).

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So, what is it about grappling that fosters the warrior spirit?

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Grappling instills a willingness to get down and dirty and closely involved with things that inspire primal terror (i.e. being immobilized and choked, being dominated and forced to submit, being in peril of broken joints, the possibility of grappling with a guy who might have a knife, having your every action make your situation worse, impending total anaerobic fatigue, etc...)

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It is this willingness to engage the enemy even under conditions of terror that defines courage, and grappling instills this ethic better (in my opinion) than stand-up fighting styles because the student of stand-up fighting is allowed to hold out the illusion that it might just be possible to achieve a nice, clean, hands-down victory. It is this stand-offishness, this unwillingness to dirty oneself for the cause that seems antithetical to the warrior spirit.

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This seems to me the basis (besides friendly competitiveness) of why Marines and Army guys ridicule Air Force and Navy guys. Marines and Army are stereotyped (or maybe archetyped) as the guys that are willing to get dirty to win a war, while the Flyboys and Navy guys are portrayed as stand-back, technological fighters or as bus-drivers for the real warriors. Well, in this world of advancing technology, it is easy for the Marines and Army to develop this same creeping stand-offishness and lose part of the warrior spirit. Has anyone seen, for example, the Newsweek some years back about the new generation of electrically-fired rifle that will shoot timed, exploding bullets around corners?. So it seems the Marines and Army have instituted this jujitsu grappling training to nurture that old-style jarhead/grunt ethic of willingness to engage in the mud.

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And that is what I think the guy in the video is talking about that makes the video so interesting to me.

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.