Saturday, December 08, 2007

Aiki randori day

Aikido with Patrick M. and Kel
  • warmup and ukemi emphasizing forward roll and slipping side fall
  • tegatana emphasizing keeping fingers together, the pulling feeling in stepping (i.e. moonwalk), and not making extra arbitrary motions to correct for imperfections in stance.
  • hanasu emphasiing releases #1 and #5
  • chain #1 emphasizing the shortcut - chudan aigamae to tenkan to kotegaeshi-kotehineri loop. We talked about letting the step release instead of releasing then stepping.
  • randori emphasizing slow, smooth, continuity, going with your reflexes to see if you win or lose.
  • we saw a lot of different instantiations of the goofy-foot backwards turn from tegatana (the next-to-last move)

5 comments:

  1. Hey, had a question for you, Patrick. In both Aikido and Judo I've been a little confused by the punching expected from uke.

    Coming from a Kenpo/Kung Fu/Karate background, I'm used to a variety of punches, like the jab, cross, etc. I don't hold them out there and I don't expect to follow through with my body weight unless I've got a good combo.

    I'd expect this is a pretty common question, but how do you train in Aikido or Judo's Goshin Jutsu for those kind of punches?

    As tori, I would be tempted to fake my own high straight blast in response and rush in low, or just fake high, roundhouse kick low, then grab high for grappling.

    However, if I'm gonna hold my punches out there long enough for somebody to train with it, I want to know how to apply that against what I know *I* would use in actual confrontation.

    Thoughts? I'm sure you've heard this one hundreds of times...hope I didn't make you roll your eyes. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. To be honest, there might have been just a LITTLE bit of eye-rolling there. ;-)

    As i understand it, the type of attack youre talking about is supposed to be a very basic thing. A beginner's training method.

    As you progress youre supposed to start being able to apply the principles to more varied attacks.

    In truth, this sort of progression often seems not to happen in a lot of aikido classes.

    also, the stuff you learn and think of as aikido, kotegaeshi, iriminage, etc...) is not the heart of aiki. all that stuff that uke holds his arm out to allow tori to do is just gravy. The heart of the thing is evade, avoid, offbalance, brush-off (kokyunage), etc...

    hope that helps. does that make sense?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'll come up with a post to clarify what I'm talking about and answer your question better. Watch for it in the next few days.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks, your reply makes a lot of sense to me.

    >In truth, this sort of progression often seems not to happen in a lot of aikido classes.

    I guess there's no way to know until I get somewhere with my practice.

    I'm studying under Sensei Gayle Fillman in northern CA and she's a really, really good instructor. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt in the first place, but she's *very* good at detecting your level of prior experience and adjusting her comments to fit.

    BTW, do you do practice with the Jo?

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  5. we have a fairly limited jo aspect to our aiki. Just a few basics around third dan. But we also do SMR jodo seiteikata for those that want more jo work. We've found that seiteikata is really a _very_ aiki thing. A very good adjunct to our aikido. In fact, one of my recent major breakthroughs in my aikido came as the result of a hint a 9th dan gave me regarding my jo work.

    ReplyDelete

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