Whispering - not breaking

As tough, sporty, martial arts folks, we have a natural inclination to push through discomfort or fear.  You often hear advice like, "Suck it up, Buttercup!"  and "No Pain, No Gain," and "Pain is weakness leaving the body."   It makes immediate intuitive sense that martial arts should be uncomfortable or frightening, and we think that we'll never make it very far in these deadly martial activities unless we suppress the fear and pain we feel.  Sometimes we feel that if it isn't frightening and uncomfortable it must not be very effective.

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When I was a beginner in judo just starting to learn ukemi, I was in a college club populated mostly by fairly athletic young adult males.  This population (including myself) is mostly dummies.  My approach to ukemi was to bull through and "Suck it up, Buttercup," because obviously, "no pain, no gain..." and all that.  I couldn't figure out why ukemi became more painful and more frustrating every single time I went to practice, and I couldn't figure out why the straight-ahead charging approach to ukemi wasn't working so good.

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It never occurred to me at the time that the gentleness and efficiency ideals of judo could also  apply to the learning of judo - and that those ideals should particularly apply to learning ukemi.  I was approaching learning judo like breaking a horse back in the bad old days (I was the horse being broken).  It took me a long time - many years) to figure out that learning judo could be approached like doing judo - that is, with gentle flexibility - like whispering a horse.

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We talk a nice talk about "Self-Improvement" and "Maximum Efficiency with Minimum Effort" and "Mutual Benefit," and then we grab uke and push and pull and twist and throw and crush and force him to submit. You even hear the nice talk every so often about ukemi being "the receiving of judo knowledge through your body," but then we grab uke up and bust his ass on the mat and grind on him and everyone wonders why uke is not "self-improving" and why he is not receiving the "efficiency" and "mutual benefit" ideals that we're always talking about.

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I think it is super-important - vitally critical - if we are going to attempt to improve upon the arts of aikido and judo as we pass them on to our students that we re-consider some things, namely..

• What should ukemi be like?  Should it be severe?  Could it be gentle?  Might it even be supportive or protective? 
• Can we approach the teaching of judo like the old dead guys said we should approach the performance of ideal judo?  That is, with gentle, flexible efficiency and an eye toward self-improvement and mutual benefit.

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Patrick Parker
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The hammer and the nail

Sometimes (not as often as you think) you are the hammer, and sometimes (much more often) you are the nail.

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I tell all my students that ukemi is the most important self-defense aspect of the arts that we do for several  reasons...

• Unless you are paid to be the hammer (i.e. police, military...) then you will trip, slip, stumble, and/or fall many more times in your life than you will get into violent interpersonal situations.
• Without constant ukemi, aikido tends to devolve into an ephemeral, cerebral game and judo tends to devolve into bad aikido.
• Ukemi is the most physical, most exercising part of judo.  It is good for your body (within sane limits) to hit the ground and have to rise back to standing over and over again.
• Ukemi is the aspect of the art with the most psychological leverage for personal change.  When you practice for a while you accumulate a huge number of instances in your memory when you made a mistake and then immediately hit the ground.  Feedback is dramatic and immediate.  Pretty soon you start to develop as an important core of your personality, "If I screw around I'm going to hit the ground and have to drag myself back up again."
• When there is no contact and no ukemi, we tend to descend into our own fantasies, but when actual energy passes between partners - that is, enough actual energy to overwhelm someone and knock them to the ground - the art remains based in reality.

Anyway, I've said most of that before here and there in this blog and in my classes.  What I might not have said as often is ...

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It is foolish to underestimate or dismiss another person who you KNOW has taken 50-100 falls a day, 100 days per year for some years and who is still doing it!  Sure you may not prefer to practice the way they do - maybe you're a judo guy and don't like the aikido stuff, or maybe you're a karate guy and think that you've honed yourself to the point that you could beat any judoka to the punch (as it were).  Maybe you have imbibed too much of your sensei's kool-aid about having the ultimate martial art.

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But for goodness' sake, when you look at another guy, who you know has interacted violently with the planet for some time now, do not let yourself fall back into that old, ignorant reflex of talking smack about how wimpy he is...

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That guy has been hit with a Class-M planet thousands of times and has gotten back up thousands of times, so he must have some potential.

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Patrick Parker
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Uke-centric nagenokata for kids

A couple of years ago I started a series of articles about re-examining nagenokata  from the POV of uke.  I had found that this approach was especially effective for teaching children, but it also seems appropriate for adults.

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I'd gotten as far as the first set (the three hand throws) but I got distracted so now I'm ready to return to that line of thought and that series of articles on uke-centric nagenokata.  The first articles included...

Uke-centric Nagenokata

• ukiotoshi
• seoinage
• kataguruma

Kataguruma was a bear to get working from this uke-centric POV.

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My current tack on training this uke-centric kata is going to be...

• work it in smaller pieces - break each technique into 2-3 steps and practice each step
• high repetition - rep each piece of each technique, then rep the whole technique
• work it in reverse - from the critical moment of throwing (which is the most frightening so they balk right at that moment), backwards toward the initiation of the technique so that when they do the technique for real they are so familiar with the end point that it is not intimidating.

So take ukiotoshi for instance.  The training will look something like...

1. standing in right shizentai with grips, kneel, position uke, uke does forward roll (repeat 10x)
2. starting in right shizentai with grips, tsugiashi backwards 3x, kneel, position uke, uke rolls (repeat 10x)
3. take grips, tsugiashi back, kneel, position, uke rolls (repeat the full technique 10x)

Uke's goal here is to demonstrate the ukemi associated with the techniques of nagenokata.  Tori's goal is to provide structure and support for uke's demonstration without disrupting uke's flow.

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We're also going to work on having tori (the spotter) kneel so that uke can roll nicely out of kataguruma.

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I think I have it worked out how to get the kids through the first 9 techniques (hand, hip, and foot techniques) using this uke-centric POV.  Stay tuned...

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Take the Damn Fall!

A couple of days back I received a pretty cool rant from a pretty cool dude.  Since I like to publish pretty cool stuff here on Mokuren Dojo, I asked if I could copy it over here as a guest post, and here it is...

A Kind Suggestion from a Bewildered Judoka: 

I don't need to tell you that many judoka neglect the study of ukemi. It is too often treated as a beginner subject, which is taught intensively for the first few classes as a white belt and maybe worked on sporadically until green, at which point the student is expected to take falls well enough to survive them. Here, the skill of ukemi plateaus, and it pretty much remains at this level until the judoka decides they are too old / too high rank to take falls any more, after which they forget it almost entirely. I don't like this paradigm, but I can accept it.

What shocked me, and I mean really dropped my jaw, was the realization that some very respected and competent sensei are teaching their competitors, from children upward, to turn out of throws and land on the stomach, or cartwheel out of them by extending a hand. Until a loophole was recently closed by a (for once reasonable) rules change, it was even favored among elite competitors to land in a "bridge" position on the heels and head, thereby avoiding back contact and ippon. Oh boy, where to start? 

If you look at the old film strips of Kano, Mifune, Nagaoka, Fukuda, and the other greats, their ukes always land on the back or side, even in randori. This might be minimally compelling, because the camera was rolling, and who would dare make an insturctor look foolish by carwheeling or turing out of a throw during a filmed demonstration or randori, particularly in Japan and back then? But, if these methods of falling are considered skillful, worth learning, even appropriate to include in the dojo curriculum, why not demonstrate them? 

Even in old films of shiai, and I mean competitive, brutal, win at all costs shiai, no one turns out. Had they just not thought of it? Is it so aesthetically displeasing that the formal Japanese of yesteryear couldn't bring themselves to do it? I would not guess so. Even Fukuda Keiko, until her recent death the final word in American Kata and a beautiful technician, was not above rough, wham slam inelegant randori in her younger days. If you doubt me, take a moment to see for yourself:  The falls aren't kata falls, and certainly no one is "letting herself be thrown" or "jumping". So why was this clever innovation in competitive ukemi not implemented earlier? 

I have some ideas: 

It is tactically unfavorable. Do a quick experiment for me: lay down on your stomach, and let someone sit in a kesa gatame position and hold you. They don't even need to get an arm around your neck, just sit nice and tight in the armpit and apply some pressure. You can't get out. Bridging is impossible from the stomach, as is shrimping, as is getting a leg up to pull guard or attempt a triangle or shove them off. Worse, from a (ghasp) self-defense standpoint, it is impossible to ward off blows with the hands, or mule kick, or gouge the eyes. You can't even curl up to avoid being pummeled. There is a reason the (sadly often more practical than us) bjj folks value taking the opponent's back so highly. Why on earth, when you've been knocked down by a throw, would you ever, EVER, roll to your stomach? If you say, "this is just for shiai, we wouldn't do this in a fight", I ask you to reconsider this sentiment. Shiai is a test of one's skill in the martial art of Judo. If you want to come out and say it's an end in itself, a sport done for sport's sake, that's a resaonble stance. But don't call it Judo. "Wrestling in pajamas with all the good leg throws taken out" might be a more appropriate name.

It risks injury. This is the obvious one. Falling on your front is bad news. Anyone who has worked with me knows that I love ukemi, and I take as much of it as possible, from all kinds of throws at full force and height. I will gladly take kata guruma from a six foot tori, and only bother with a crash pad if we're going to be doing it many many times. I'll take uchi mata makikomi all day, but I hate flat front falls. The back is just better engineered for taking a fall, period. When you fall on your face, there is no safe way except to eat more of the energy with your arms, because you can' exploit a slight curve to dissipate force as you can with a fall to the back. 

It is athletically exclusive. I'm probably going to catch the most flack for this, but I belive Judo is for everyone. While any able bodied person can learn ukemi, many are just not athletic enough to cartwheel or spin out of throws midair without serious and immediate injury. This is just an opinion, but I prefer randori and shiai to favor the player who does more skillful judo, not the player with the most gymnastic skill. By teaching your players to avoid a score when they have been legitimately thrown, your are teaching exploitation of what should be an irrelevant physical advantage. I've said this many times and I'll say it again, shiai can be a sport, but Judo is not. So, should players just accept that as soon as kuzushi has been done to, they are going to land on theirs backs and lose? No. I am not advocating "jumping" into throws, or taking kata style formal ukemi in shiai. There are many ways to block a throw before being launched and rotated. Everyone knows how to hip in and stuff a forward throw, but what about relaxing at a key moment and becoming unthrowably grounded, or better yet, accepting the kuzushi with so little resistance that you can step through it back to a favorable position? Mifune is the cannonical example of these skills, which are largely going untaught. Since I became intersted in Mifune's groudning ability, partly due to my Aikido crosstraining, I have developed the ability to "go dead weight" very briefuly and successfully stop larger, stronger, higher ranked players from throwing me. I'm not saying it's a magic bullet, but I am saying there are many defensive skills applicable before the opponent has exectued a throw. How about we teach defenses that apply while defense is safe and in the spirit of Judo, not attempts to dangerously snatch back a victory after the opponent has earned it? 

Finally, let me just say that proper Ukemi is offensively useful. I'm not talking about judo shiai, which of course ends at ippon, but in bjj, taking a clean, beautiful fall is advantageous. It some cases it creates separation between uke and tori which allows the recently thrown player to maneuver before the opponent is on top, and apart from falling into the fatal trap of being pinned on your stomach (see above), a good fall also insures that a player does not land injured, stunned, or with his breath knocked out. In a fight, a person on their back can mule kick with the full force of their legs and torso using the brace of the ground behind them, or post up and stand while maintaining their defense against kicks and blows.

So please, take another look at ukemi as the old-timers did it. They knew what they were doing, really.

Andre Goran is an enthusiastic martial arts nerd. He has studied Tracy lineage Kenpo, Judo, and Shodokan Aikido, and holds the rank of shodan in the latter two with Kaze Uta Budokai, as well as shodan in judo with the USJI. He currently lives in Philadelphia, where he trains at Osagame Martial arts under Ray Huxen Sensei and Alma Qualli Sensei.

[top photo courtesy of Isa Walde]

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Koshiki is king of context

We learn most of our domains of knowledge outside of meaningful context.  For instance, we learn to sing our ABCs long before we are taught the rules that make those letters work together to cue us to make sounds that make others think about trees or tables or whatever we are talking about.

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We do this in aikido too.  We learn several forms of falling and rolling that sort of resemble things we're going to have to do when someone throws us, but then there is a logical leap when we move up from doing solo ukemi forms to being uke for someone.  Our foundational ukemi practice lacks the context in which it will be used.  That does not make practicing back falls and forward rolls bad - it's a good way to do it.  Just be aware that there is going to be a contextualization process.

For the past month or so, we have been using this variant of an old Kito Ryu kata - Koshiki no kata - as a warmup and falling exercise.  It makes for a great falling exercise because...

• In each of the 21 techniques, both uke and tori are falling or dropping.  This is a mostly unfamiliar mode of practice for us because we are mostly used to pitching uke while tori remains standing.  Having to fall while connected to another falling person improves our situational awareness and it also allows us to get in twice as many reps as if we had one person falling at a time.
• It exercises the three most important falling skills - taking a knee, forward roll, and backward breakfall.  These three skills will save you from most aikido encounters as well as most falling incidents on the street.
• Because Kito was one of the ancient influences on both aikido and judo, the techniques in this kata can be considered sort of a proto-aikido or proto-judo.  The falling practice is surrounded by a bunch of motion that provides context for future aikido and judo practice.  It is sort of like a preview of what is to come in these arts.
• It provides a context for the student to understand the seeming paradox of compliant partner practice in a combative art. As kid in America, the only activities that we generally have as prelude aikido and judo are competitive sports like football or wrestling or baseball or karate - or else totally non-combative activities like dance.  This prior context makes learning to fight using compliant partners seem stupid to us.  This kata is sufficiently non-combative and dance-like that it does not stimulate the beginner students' desire to beat each other up, but it does exercise ukemi skills while developing a context for later practice - so it provides a context for understanding that aikido and judo, while being combative contact martial arts - they can be practiced in a compliant partner mode.
• It is really kind of fun moving with a partner and practicing falling skills in odd configurations without having to get our egos inflamed with winner/loser dominance games.  It is sort of like playing catch prior to a baseball practice.  My oldest son (12yo, alpha-male type, natural athlete) told me the other day that this has already become his favorite kata ever.

So, we are still in the midst of experimenting with this kata, but it looks promising to become a standardized warmup/ukemi practice for us in both aikido and judo classes.

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Turn ukemi on its head

I've stated on many occasions, my opinion that safe falling skills are the most important things we learn in judo and aikido and are probably the best self-defense anyone can learn.  Ukemi (falling) is a big deal.  

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But how do we teach ukemi?  If your class like most, then beginners spend a few minutes at the beginning of the first few classes working on rolling and falling before they are thrown into the deep end of the pool.  If your class is among the best, perhaps you make every student (new and old) spend a few minutes on ukemi during every class - before we get to the real meat of the class. See, even in classes where it gets a lot of lip service, ukemi is mostly relegated to a secondary role or a minor skill.

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So how do we put ukemi in its proper place in our training?

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One way (and I'm not sure I want to go this far, but it is one possibility...)

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How about in aikido, we make our basic pre-shodan curriculum consist solely of how to fall appropriately out of the most common 30 odd ways (8 releases, 17 junana, 10 owaza) that the other guy can push/pull/knock you into the ground?

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How about in judo, our pre-shodan curriculum could be how to survive 20-30 of the gokyonowaza?

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I mean - what if we take the emphasis completely off of teaching tori how to throw uke down, so that we make tori's role into a spotter rather than a thrower? 

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So tori's job would be to help uke get a proper offbalance (kuzushi), turn into a proper position (tsukuri) to spot uke, apply just enough force (kake) to make the thing go smoothly  and then help uke land right at the end (zanshin).

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The whole class could be an assisted ukemi class, with the following potential benefits...

• produce better ukes faster
• beat up uke less
• drag tori along for the ride - that is, tori would be passively developing the offensive skills and motions typically associated with the tori role.

I know... Crazy idea, right?

photo courtesy of DefenceImages

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Reflexive vs. responsive

The falling skill is not a reflex, it is a learned, habituated thing, but it does take into account (work with instead of against) true reflexes that take place when we slip or stumble.

Everything is all status quo from our body's pov, then something disrupts us (stimulus) and a bunch of reflexes happen (postural righting, extension, crossed-extensor, metatarsal kick, etc...) and while the reflexes are happening and we are beginning to fall, our mind has time to catch up to what is happening and guide the fall enough to minimize the consequences.

So, yes, the skill part of it is responsive instead of reflexive, as Rick pointed out in the last post. But the response is based upon, and works in harmony with reflex to the extent possible.

That is reflexive falling skill.

Reflexive falling skills

Some of my instructors in the past have liked to use the phrase, "reflexive falling skills." Saying that we strive to teach folks "reflexive falling skills."  But the word, "reflex" is used in so many common ways, aside from the actual physiological meaning, that it can be hard to tell what that means.  What is a "reflexive falling skill"

A common definition of reflex is an action that is performed unconsciously in response to a stimulus.  Some definitions add that reflexes occur rapidly, with little lag time between stimulus and response.  So, a reflex is:

• a bodily motion
• that happens automatically
• triggered by a stimulus
• usually very rapid onset

Often, when we are talking in the medical sense about reflexes, we're talking about hard-wired reflexes - the way God made your nerves hook together to make reflexes happen.  But that's obviously not what we're talking about in the context of falling skills, because we think that we can develop these skills instead of having to rely wholly on our congenital hardware.  The loose definition that we commonly use is really more like habituation, but the habit, once developed has the four characteristics of a true reflex listed above.

Human locomotion (walking, running, jumping, etc...) is a very reflexive thing.  It is hardwired into our lower spine.  To a large extent, all the brain does is says, "go over there," and reflexes, like tiny sub-processors, handle most of the details about how to get your legs and feet to go over there properly.

Similarly, we have some hardwired reflex actions that happen in response to a disruption in normal locomotion.  When we trip or slip or otherwise begin to fall, several things happen...

• we draw in a sudden breath
• the head draws upward away from the ground
• the arms extend, placing hands between body and ground
• the back extensor muscles contract, trying to arrest or slow the fall
• one leg extends forward, trying to arrest the fall

So, when you start to fall, your back and neck tries to get your head away from the ground, and your arms and legs try to stop your fall.  Getting back to "reflexive falling skills," we sould like to build our falling skills such that they take account of the normal posture (characterized by extension) that we reflex into when we stumble.

This is where I think many aikidoka and judoka (myself included) went astray.  We were taught to do forward roll by "make a circle with the arms, crouch to get closer to the ground, stick your head inside the circle of your arms, jump forward, and try to land right."  The problem with this is that this is a posture of flexion, which we never reflex into when we stumble, so it takes a long time and we take a lot of punishment trying to figure out how to translate our basic rolling form (flexion) to something that will save us when we are surprised into a reflexive extension posture.  The crouch-and-roll is not reflexive.

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____________________

Patrick Parker

www.mokurendojo.com

More examples of seize&freeze

A near-perfect example of the seize&freeze pheomenon that I've been talking about this week is hizaguruma (knee wheel) in judo.  If tori gets you into position for hizaguruma and you straighten your back or pull back against it, then your low back and hip muscles lock up (seize&freeze) and you break and turn over in the air pretty abruptly.  However, if you get into hizaguruma and instead of seizing and freezing, you relax your lower back - even to the point of slouching forward or laying your head on tori's shoulder, then your relaxed back and hip muscles facilitate a more complete range of motion and more often than not, you can pick up that leg and walk out of the unbalance.  It is uke's seize&freeze reflex that makes hizaguruma into a large, magnificient ippon. (See can't you find a YouTube video of a hizaguruma that stalls for an instant, then suddenly breaks and smashes uke.  I bet you can)

The same applies to deashibarai (front footsweep) in judo.  This throw most often results in a nice, low-amplitude sidefall for uke, but every so often someone does deashibarai and actually clears both of uke's feet into the air and uke drops like he was shot.  Times like this, deashi is not uke's friend.  So, how does someone end up getting both of uke's feet into the air when only sweeping the front foot?  That's right - seize&freeze!  Uke's foot starts slipping and he naturally resists by tightening up on his hip muscles. These suddenly-locked-up muscles bind the hips and both thighs into one big lump of meat and bone and the standing foot starts to slip and rotate along with the swept foot.  Seize&freeze has killed uke again.

 

When you get right down to it, I suspect that seize and freeze plays a major role in nearly every fall we take.  Take shomenate (face strike) - the most foundational thing in aikido - for example. This time, tori deliberately locks uke's spine and back by pushing upward on uke's chin until he is looking straight upward.  All of a sudden uke's entire torso is locked into one big chunk and his hip and leg range of motion is limited.  At this point, tori drops his entire weight forward through uke, throwing uke's locked-up body backwards and downward.  Shomenate done with proper spine-lock is a very severe thing.  Shomenate done without full spine lock usually results in uke fading back and absorbing or countering the throw.  

 

I bet once you get to looking for it, you'll find lots of examples of this reflex being the difference between you getting a marvelous ippon and uke shrugging off your throws.

 

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____________________
Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

The seize & freeze

I like to walk along the edge of sidewalks or on concrete bumpers in parking lots whenever I get the chance. Its just one more opportunity to play with balance and motion.  I suspect a lot of my readers play like this too - aikido and judo people tend to be like that.

Have you ever noticed, while walking on a balance beam or playing on a rocker board or balance trainer, there are times that your body completely seizes up to avoid falling.  You're moving along fine and suddenly something disrupts your balance (usually you misplace a foot) and your arms fly out to the side and you lean and freeze.  It is as if your brain figures if you continue moving then your position can only get worse, so you lock up to try to avoid the degradation. I have started calling this phenomenon,  "the seize&freeze."

Yogis, have you ever felt that same fear reaction during a balance pose in yoga?  I get that feel in triangle pose and in half-moon all the time, when I get my hips rotating properly then I tend to fall over backward.

Have you ever noticed that when your postural muscles seize and freeze, there is no avoiding falling?  The seize and freeze is like a denial of the inevitability of a predicament. Just like in my previous post when I talked about hospital patients who seize and freeze, locking up their torso in a fear/pain reaction, making it impossible to stand up.

Denial does not sound very much like yoga, does it? And denial does not sound very healthy in the martial context of aikido or judo either.

The seize and freeze is counter to the ideals of yoga, aikido, and judo because it is mindless and automatic instead of being voluntary and controlled. Feldenkrais talks in his books a good bit about the undesirability of mindless, automatic fear reactions.

What if we were to learn to safely and gently fall/roll out of those broken postures instead of doing the seize and freeze?  That way, all the places on the far side of the point of no return become part of the spectrum of that particular posture.

If we can eliminate the fear of falling out of a yoga pose (or any posture), then we can eliminate the seize and freeze fear reaction and make the ukemi just part of the exploration of that pose. This way, the pose becomes a whole range of postures and motions in and around and before and after the actual textbook photograph.  That should make your yoga more joyful and more flowing.

Interestingly, the same thing happens when walking along the edge of a curb.  If you get out of whack and can just take one more step instead of going into seize and freeze, more often than not, your balance will right itself - gently and without making a fuss, just walk out of the unbalance instead of submitting to the seize and freeze.

Fear - the mind-killer

Once I attended a therapy seminar in which the seminar leader taught us a truly miraculous technique for helping a patient rise from seated to standing.

She introduced this technique by pointing out that most patients that need assistance to stand are in pain and are afraid to stand up, and that a common reaction to this pain and fear is to take a breath in and hold it, locking the chest muscles, effectively making the entire torso into one massive, unmoving block of meat and bone. It's no wonder the patient can't rise to standing while locking their torso.

So, the solution is to get the patient to the edge of the seat with his feet under him, and get him rocking forward and backward. The rocking motion is soothing, it facilitates breathing, and it prevents them from locking their torso. Then, after two or three rocks, at the peak of a forward rock, you suddenly say, "look up!" And the result is the surprised patient looks up and sucks in a breath, and their respiratory accessory muscles almost fling them up out of the chair to their feet.  This technique works like magic!

It is the fear of the maneuver that prevents normal function. And the miracle of the technique is in using deeply-seated natural reflexes to bypass the fear reaction, facilitating normal function.

We want to learn a similar trick for falling. We don't want to have to prepare for the upcoming fall, to screw up our courage and suppress our fear and steel ourselves, because resisting the fear strengthens and solidifies it. We want to learn to fall out of positions that we naturally reflex into when we stumble, and we want to learn to use natural reflex actions (like a sigh of relief) to facilitate our fall.

Get your feet off the ground!

Ever heard (or been part of) one of those endless old debates, like how best to survive a freefall in an elevator?  Do you jump at the last moment or do you lie down or what?  I for one, think that it won't matter because you'll be disoriented bouncing around the floor and ceiling as you are free-falling, so you wont be in any position to jump or lie down.

 

Another of those famous questions involves the best way to get hit by a speeding car?  Lots of folks propose jumping at the last moment, so that you bounce over the top instead of getting hit in the legs and driven over.  This one makes more sense to me, though I bet you wouldn't be in very good shape after bouncing over the top of the car either.

 

A similar phenomenon happens in ukemi - especially for judo, and especially for throws like osotogari and taniotoshi.  It seems that the most common beginner falling problem with these throws is the desire to keep the feet on the ground instead of letting the throw clear your feet and turn you over for a nice landing.

 

In osotogari, for instance, Tori the Tank sails in and kicks the everlovin' shnot out of the back of your leg, and for an instant there, you're not sure if tori has enough to actually make you fall, so you strength-up and put some weight on that foot.  Problem is, even if Tori the Tank does not have enough oomph to throw you cleanly, he often does have strength enough to buckle your leg and crush you into the ground.  When this happens, he often gets his leg entangled with yours and falls on top of you in a heap of twisted, mangled legs.  I can think of nothing that makes me cringe in judo more often.

 

Then there's taniotoshi.  This thing is fairly gentle and soft when thrown by a proficient tori with a compliant uke, but as soon as uke sticks his foot and shifts weight onto it, there is this awful torque in the system that is a veritable machine for breaking knees!

 

The solution to both of these throws, and a lot of similar problems, is (listen up) uke, GET YOUR FEET OFF THE GROUND AND TAKE THE FALL!

 

The only way that you'll develop presence of mind enough to get your feet off the ground and take the fall when hit by surprise with one of these terrible leg-benders in randori or shiai, is to take a lot of falls like that during cooperative practice.  When you are doing nagekomi practice (trading throws) and you know ahead of time that you are going to be uke, then you know that you'd better GET YOUR FEET OFF THE GROUND AND TAKE THE FALL! 

 

It also helps a lot to add a couple of rounds of okuriashi falls -  just like in nagenokata - to your warmup/ukemi time at the beginning of each class.  Okuri is almost never a leg-bender (though it can twist ankles), but it can suffer from this same foot-stick, and this is a good chance to start learning to fix that foot-sticking resistance problem.

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Shomenate - foundation of aikido

Shomenate is the first "real technique" that we teach beginner aikidoka because it is foundational to the rest of aikido practice but also because it is just about the best fall-back self-defense technique there is. Here are a couple of hints to make the most of your shomenate.

• Extend uke's neck fully - Remember, you don't want to press horizontally backward on uke's face. Instead you want to use your palm under his chin to tilt his bead backward so that his spine is locked into an upward-looking position. This makes it harder for uke to attack you (he can't see you), it is disorienting, and it gives you tremendous leverage on uke's center through his locked spine. From this position you press horizontally backward through uke.
• Tori, extend your step through uke - You want to take a larger-than normal step through uke's feet with both of your feet. If you leave one foot back then you sap power out of the throw. Try to get both of your feet past the line of uke's heels. Try to get your second foot (recovery step) in there as fast as possible. This sort of feels like a hop, but not upward - your direction of travel is downward and forward between uke's feet.
• Uke, yield and fall - take a step back and sit down. Oftentimes if tori is nice to you, it would be possible to step back and not fall, but this can spoil your learning effect. You want to take this time to learn how to handle this fall so that it is not as severe, so ... take the fall!

 [photo courtesy of Ashley Rose]

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Top 2 ways to suck at randori

There are several great ways to absolutely suck at randori, and each one will to some extent slow your progress in the art.  But here are the two absolute best ways to make sure that you will take the longest time possible to become anywhere near proficient.

1. Try to win
2. Try to not lose

Assuming you don't actually want to suck at randori, the first of these is fairly easy to avoid.  You're not doing shiai (a death match) against an opponent in order to obtain a prize.  You are working with a partner toward the goal of both of you getting better.  No big problem there.

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But avoiding the second of these can be tricky.  In randori, you absolutely do not want to be defensive. You need to attack, even if it means you take lots of falls. You do need to retain enough of your senses that you don't endanger your partner needlessly - don't do stupid stuff - but do try to get your techniques working on him.

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How not to suck at randori:

One of the best ways to avoid the two traps above is for both partners in the randori to declare to themselves, "I will be the one to take the next fall."  Then you set out to find out what kind of fall it will be.  Of course, if your partner presents you with such an amazingly blatant opportunity that you just can't stand it, then you have to take the throw - that's part of that mutual benefit thing.  But then he gets up and you say to yourself again, "I will take the next fall."

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So the goal in randori isn't to get the other guy down no matter what.  Nor is it to keep yourself from having to take falls.  The goal is to get the opportunity to take as much good, varied ukemi practice as possible.

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Wow!  I set out to tell you the two best ways to suck at randori and I ended up telling you how to be the best you can be at randori.

[Photo courtesy of Andrea Vascellari]

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End the collusion by screwing up

A while back Aiki Journal reposted an old article about Ending the Collusion - the idea being to find a way to put a stop for uke jumping onto the ground for tori without regard for the effectiveness of tori's technique. The necessary compliance in ukemi always stands a chance of sinking to the level of collusion, so we must always be vigilant against this sort of fault.

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One great way to see if uke is deliberately taking a dive for you is to deliberately screw a technique up every so often. Stand still as uke attacks and see if he hits you or if he veers away on his own. Start a technique then let go and stop at some appropriate time to see if uke keeps going. Agree on one technique and try a different one.

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You probably shouldn't throw nasty surprises like this with inexperienced ukes - obviously dangerous situations could result. But as you gain more confidence and experience with your partners, check them every so often to make sure they are staying true to the practice. You don't have to do this very often to put a huge damper on the collusion.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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Ukemi from Tomiki atemiwaza

A couple of my kids doing some falling from several of the atemiwaza techniques from Tomiki aikido. I think it's pretty good for their first time trying these techniques - and the falling is pretty good too.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
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How is the forward roll structured?

Yesterday I mentioned that ukemi is a coordinated blending of structure and softness, form and pliability.  Today I wanted to point out several of the points during a forward roll where you need structure.  Basically, the places where you can't tolerate pliability in the forward roll include:

• Lead shoulder - if your body first hits the ground on your shoulder (sometimes you overturn and hit on your lats instead), then you want to make sure that you contact on the back of the shoulder, not on the top or point of the shoulder, as this is more easily broken.  The best way that I know to insure that you strike the mat on the back of the lead shoulder is to pronate, or rotate the entire lead arm inward and palm-downward as far as it will go.  This rotates the deltoid muscles of the shoulder over the point of the shoulder and locks the shoulder in a relatively stable position.
• Head and neck - as you contact the ground, you will need to clear your head out of the way.  The best way to do this is to look away and tuck your chin, as if trying to stick your nose into your rear armpit.  With the lead shoulder turned as detailed above, and the head tucked into the read armpit, your upper corner becomes very round.
• Abdominal control - as you roll across your back, you want to follow a path from the back of the lead shoulder diagonally across the back, passing the spine between the meatiest parts of the lats, to the side of the rear hip.  It takes fine coordination of muscular action in your abs and back, as well as slikked placement of your legs as counterbalances to make yourself follow this path every time.
• Landing position - As I mentioned in a comment in the previous post, there is difference of opinion on this point, but I teach the classical judo landing position with the upper leg bent with the knee pointing upward and the foot behind the lower leg.  The lower leg is mostly straight-ish and you end on the meaty, muscular part of your outer thigh and calf.  There are more specifics to this landing position, but the important point is to land with the upper leg behind the lower leg - not crossed over in front.

So, if you get those four points of structure in place, the rest of the roll before and between  and after can be relaxed and pliable and soft and you won't go too far astray.

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I want to make a little film in the next few days of a kneeling forward roll, because it's the best way to explain some of the little details of the abdominal control thing I'm talking about here.  Stay tuned!

(Photo courtesy of Camilla Hoel)

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
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Softness and structure in ukemi

Ukemi (falling) is an interesting coordination exercise. You have to embody a mixture of pliability and structure - and each at the right time. One of my favorite demonstrations of this involves a jo stick and a judo belt.

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The jo is the embodiment of structure - it is all structure and no pliability. Take the jo and drop it onto a hard floor. It hits and clatters and bangs and rolls around. Unless you threw it down really hard it's not likely to have been damaged because of its excellent structure. But it sure took a lot of abuse banging around on the ground. It's pretty obvious that if you were to make your body all stiff like the jo, you'd take a lot of abuse when you hit the ground.

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So, most everyone immediately thinks, "softness must be the solution." Try this - take the belt and drop it onto the floor. Sure enough - it lands with hardly a sound. The belt, in its softness and pliability is much, much better than the structure of the stick! You could throw the belt as hard as you possibly could at the ground and it wouldn't hurt it because of its pliability. But if you look at the way the belt lands you'll see it lands in loops and curls all in a jumble. Think about that for a minute and you realize that you wouldn't want to land on the ground with your limbs like that, all overlapping and tangled up, or else you'd end up doing things like hammering one leg with the heel of the other foot. So all-soft is not the solution either.

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You have to be soft at the right times and structured at the right times - and both qualities coordinated in the right proportions. That is the major trick in learning to do soft ukemi.

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Sean Ashby is doing an excellent series on Excellent Ukemi. I can hardly wait for the next installment. It has inspired me so much that I wanted to throw in a handful of points of my own. (I hope I'm not scooping him.) Head over there and check out his ukemi series, and then come back tomorrow for some of my thoughts on how you can develop this specific coordination of pliability and structure in your ukemi.

(Photo courtesy of Marius Zierold)

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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How to get kids to slap when they fall

I had another triumph last night at the kids' judo class.  This one was about how to get kids to slap properly when they fall.  We'd been through all the standard exercises - rock on the back and slap, sidefall and slap big, etc...  I'd told them to, "swing big," and "hit the mat harder than it hits you," and all that. But in forward rolls and airfalls, most of them would still either slap with the backs of their hands or curl the arms up against their bodies and then land on them.  I'd just about worn my voice out, telling them, "don't land on your arm!"

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Then it came to me.  I put a spotter in  to hold the hand of the lead (rolling) arm, and just before they would roll I'd have them give the spotter five with their free hand.  Each time they slapped the spotter's hand I'd say, "This is your slapping hand."  The fix was immediate and complete.  100% of the kids stopped landing on arms and started landing on their sides, slapping big, and slapping with their palms instead of their knuckles!

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There are lots of this sort of breakthrough in teaching martial arts.  Instructors strive for the right way to say it or demonstrate it to get the idea through the students' skulls, then suddenly the students get it perfect, as if you'd just now told them the right thing to do for the first time.  One of my instructors long ago liked to say, "apparently the speed of sound is different for everyone because I've been telling you this same thing for years and my words have just now gotten to some of you."

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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Immunization against being thrown

Photo courtesy of Tcg3j

Have any of y'all noticed that in a room full of aikidoka, the person that has taken the greatest amount of light, compliant ukemi is often the hardest guy to throw against his will?

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That's just the way it works.  Some instructors have suggested that taking thousands of light, compliant falls for a specific throw is a lot like being immunized against that throw.

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That's part of the reason that we practice with partners instead of opponents and why we preach for uke to be compliant (there's other reasons too).  Even if you're not learning anything else (but you really are), then you are at least learning:

• how to survive being thrown, and
• how not to be thrown when you don't want to be

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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