A beautiful day in the neighborhood

It really is a spectacular day in the neighborhood. about 65 or 70 degrees rising into the mid 80's, spring has sprung, birds chirping, grass is green, etc... The only downside is the pollen. But that's not the kind of neighborhood I wanted to talk about.

Techniques in the martial arts do not exist in some kind of random distribution. Certain techniques live together in neighborhoods. A goodly part of our aikido practice involves these flow drills that we call chains in which we explore neighborhoods of techniques that live near each other. Today we walked around in neighborhood #3 and got to meet and chat with wakigatame, kotemawashi, oshitaoshi, kaitennage, gyakugamaeate, and gedanate. it was a pleasant little neighborhood party.

We did some randori and Patrick M. has improved his posture and timing a lot this past month or so. Afterwards we worked on udegaeshi and Patrick M. had this wonderful, miraculous variant that knocked me down most every time.