Tonight, after ukemi, tegatana, hanasu, and nijusan 1-5, we worked on gedanate for most of the class. Gedanate is a monster for me - I can do the junana version and I can hit gedan in the chains and in randori, but I can't get the niusan version. No real revelations for me tonight, but I did get to experiment with it a good bit. It came to mind that in the koryunokata they call several things 'gedanate' that look nothing like the basic version. Their only resemblance is that they finish with a push against some part of uke's lower body - i.e. the knee. I've always considered gedanate as a 'push with tori's lower body' technique, but perhaps it is a 'push uke's lower body' technique instead...
For the rest of class we briefly worked on another branch of chain#2. The part that contains maeotoshi, hikiotoshi, and sumiotoshi. This is currently my favorite of the chains. When we got to the first sumiotoshi I heard Kristof suck in a breath in surprise. Then he turned around and caught me with a sumiotoshi so perfect that there was no massive cartwheel ukemi - it just turned my knees off where I stood and I dropped like I was shot. I can tell it would have been a really great sumiotoshi night, but Mama was screaming that the pizza was ready, so we put an end to the aiki practice...
Pat, I'm guessing your Dojo is connected to your home or you have the best dojo in the world because it has a pizza oven in your kitchen!
ReplyDeleteFor us non-aiki folks you might have to explain what some of the terms mean (well, just me).