Near and Far in Aikido

Today's class was fun with some of the Hattiesburg group coming to do Aiki with us at McComb. We worked on hanasu emphasizing the idea of staying away from uke instead of trying to do a technique to uke and ending up shortening the encounter space. Then we worked on the tenkai kote gaeshi variation on hanasu #6. This also allows an extra measure of encounter space for safety. We followed this up by working on chain #3 exploring this idea of close and far with kote gaeshi and wakigatame. For the "cool" technique of the day we did suwari haragatame from kimenokata followed by suwari kotegaeshi from koryudaisan. For another instance of the idea of creating space and staying away from uke we "cooled down" with some Shirai groundwork.

[Update February 2010 - This sounds like it was a cat's breakfast of a class - disorganized and messy, but still fun.  I think these days I am better at identifying a common theme running through a givien class and selecting the Cool Ninja Technique of the Day to summarize that theme as we cool down.  At least, that's how I like to structure classes these days.  We have been working more on rank requirements (kata) and less on chaining for the past year or so.  I think this likely goes in waves, back and forth between chaining and variations as opposed to kata and rank requirements.]