The most aiki-like of all techniques

Whoa Nellie! Another unexpectedly cold day in the dojo. We had Mytchi and Richard McKenzie, Rob, Kristof, and myself. It was so cold I thought we'd break if we had to hit the ground, so we took tegatana apart and practiced each move separately, repping it many times to warm up a little bit. we did shomenashi, wakiashi, hipswitch, forward and backward pivots, and the "washing the mirror" exercise. Then we moved into hanasu for several reps and then focussed on hanasu#2 leading into the"who's uke now" part of chain #2 where we get to practice shomenate, wakigatame, gedanate, and ushiroate. This went well for a nice, long practice, and then we moved into the nijusan version of ushiroate for several minutes. At the end of class, we worked on the "wrong sided" shomenate from gokata and the "aiki brush-off" from sankata. To me these two things feel like the most aiki-like things that exist within the program.

Richard wants to see some video added to this blog of the basic stuff - like tegatana and hanasu. I'll work on filming some of that stuff this week and see when we can get it up.