Needles and lava

Click here for details about the Aiki Buddies Gathering at the end of the month.

Tonight was just Kristof and me for aikido. We ran thru the tegatana and hanasu in kata mode then worked a lot on a #9 chain motion as a lead-in to kote taoshi and gyakugamaeate and gedanate. We ran these at a pretty good pace until I for one was glistening. Then we spun thru the atemiwaza from nijusan, settling on ushiroate. We used ushiro as a good cardio workout and a good ukemi practice. We cooled down from this with some suwari ryotedori kokyudosa (sitting right under the airconditioner.) That's my kind of cool-down!

Vincent and Whit showed up for Judo and while Vincent was dressing out and warming up I introduced Kristof to another concept from his Ukrainian aiki syllabus - a yokomenuchi shihonage done by stepping in to jam the attack by hammering the bicep then guiding the hammered arm into shihonage.

Vincent and Kristof worked on uchikomi while Whit and I worked on kokyudosa. He did great and loved it, but it didn't take but a couple of reps before he insisted on livening it up by visualizing pushing each other over onto razor sharp jagged needles sticking up out of the mat. These needles were marked by a small white piece of paper that we would aim uke toward. Uke would have to fall properly then writhe and gag and hang his tongue out and we got style points for good death throes. Perhaps next time we'll practice throwing bad guys into a pit of boiling lava! After we'd punctured each other through the shoulders and rib cages several times we played a good round of toe-stomp randori while Kristof and Vincent practiced advancing deashi and retreating hip throws moving in a line down the mat.