Another good fundamentals class

This morning was surprisingly cool in the dojo considering the 70+ degree days we've been having for a couple of weeks. I think (hope) that there will only be a couple more 30 degree nights this spring and pretty soon we'll be back to broiling in one anothers' sweat here in southwest Mississippi. I don't like the heat but I HATE the cold.

This morning's class included 2/3 of clan McKenzie, Kristof, and myself. We worked on tegatana several times looking at potential applications for the moves in tegatana. This is sometimes an iffy proposition because tegatana is just a collection of general-purpose movements that reoccur in aikido - not really techniques. So, no one of these motions really has one definite application. Rather each movement can be reused in part or in whole in any number of situations. But, we went through all of them and gave 1-2 common applications as examples.

Then we worked on hanasu #1 and #2, melding into part of chain #2 where kotetaoshi and gyakugamaeate live. Everyone was picking up on these movements well when a tiny bout of randori broke out between Richard and myself, leading into the technique that I particularly wanted to work on today anyway - aigamaeate. We did aigamaeate with hanasu#2 as a leadin, holding the elbow with the free band and releasing the held hand and then using the newly-released hand for aigamaeate.