Perception

Alright, Andy, ID this quote:

"Power without perception is spiritually useless

and therefore, of no true consequence."

Wow, it seems like forever since I practiced and since I blogged - even though we only missed one day.

Tonight we calibrated and worked on tegatana, focussing in on the action of the off hand during the pushes and thinking about how our brains like to make patterns out of the walking steps. We did a repetition of the kata deliberately changing the grouping of movements in our minds and the result was interesting - nothing quantitative and not better or worse, but different perceptually.

Then we practiced hanasu in kata mode and played with a couple of other motions that allow us to easily play with the sidestep during any direction change. That sidestep is something that I've had a hard time wrapping my mind around for the past few years but tonight I felt some progress.

In a sudden direction change we have to absorb our own momentum, which stops our motion and leaves us vulnerable. I've understood that part for a while. Tonight we worked on the hanasu#1 motion, the deashi harai stepping around the corner motion, and the omote-ura offbalance for nijusan. I felt that absorption of momentum spread throughout the extra weight shift of the side step. It was a pretty cool thing perceptually.

Then we got down to wakigatame night. Chain #3 was the chain of the night, so we worked on a couple of variations of wakigatame and a couple of variations of kotegaeshi that come off of hanasu#3.

Gary and Andy asked for more airfall practice, so we did forward rolls and small airfalls on the crash pad. Everyone did great and there was some improvement in everyone's motion, but Thank God for crash pads and for closed-cell foam in general, because I would have pretty much run out of students tonight if we'd been practicing on rice straw tatami.

We cooled down with suwari katatedori gyakugamae followed by kote mawashi, waki gatame, and kotegaeshi. Sort of a combo of some of the rokukata stuff and the suwari kotegaeshi from sankata.