Tenkai kotehineri and more kokyunage

Aiki class this morning included Andy von Hattiesburg and two of Clan McKenzie, Richard and Mytchi. We warmed up and ran through tegatana and Andy mentioned that he was having some difficulty with a couple of the moves - the forward and backward turns - so we repped them a bunch each. Then we moved into hanasu and worked all eight, trading partners after each round. After running hanasu in kata mode several times we changed it up, having Andy close his eyes and follow the motion of the release rather than having tori choose and execute a release. Then we worked on using the various releases to walk out of wristlocks. Good sensitivity drills. Richard got some film of this and should be burning me a CD this weekend, so perhaps I can get some of these sensitivity/flow drills uploaded Monday or so. (So watch for it Dojo Rat;-)

I let Andy call the technique of the day and he called for tenkai kote hineri. We did this as a chain off of release #5 into the hineri. Once you get the lock,uke has a couple of typical motions that happen to try to relieve the pressure - he might turn his back to you, as if to do a spinning backfist, in which case, ushiroate is appropriate. Alternately he might bend forward at the waist to try to relieve the pressure, in which case the kata finish for tenkai kote hineri or hikitaoshi or oshitaoshi would be appropriate. Toward the end of class we talked and worked more on the aiki brush-off. This time, the form it took was Usher-san's fun ryotedori kokyunage. They got this working acceptably and we closed class by returning to hanasu 1-4, making them into kokyunage-style brush-offs.