Ukewaza and ukemi - most valuable skill or useless time-waster?

In karate, we were often exhorted not to get into the block-counterattack game because it is a never-ending, un-productive loop.  He attacks, I block, I attack, he blocks, he attacks, I block...
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We were told that "blocks are not just blocks," that it was possible to destroy an opponent with a block. but we never got much instruction beyond, "Don't just block."
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This can be interpreted several ways, including...

• Blocks are actually strikes to the attacking limb.  I never personally got a ton of mileage from this paradigm, but I know people who did.
• Blocks are actually odd-looking strikes, like using a rising block as an uppercut to the corner of the opponent's jaw.  I got more mileage from this idea than from crushing an incoming strike with a block - but it's still kinda limited.
• Blocks can unbalance the opponent and eliminate their ability to continue to attack.  (kuzushi). This one made the most intuitive sense to me, but how do you learn to use blocks as kuzushi other than just practicing for years until you happen to transcend?

I think Kenji Tomiki had a good answer to this puzzle.  It is found in an exercise that some folks call shichihon no kuzushi and other groups call wrist releases.  

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Typically these exercises are done with uke grabbing tori's wrist and tori doing the off-balance or release but our instructors assured us that they could be done just as easily with tori grabbing (or striking) uke.

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So, if you are a karate guy looking for a way to make your blocking techniques all that they can be, check out the interwebs for "shichihon no kuzushi" or "tomiki aikido releases" (and watch with an open mind because it will not look like the karate you are used to.).

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P.S. One last tidbit to blow your mind.  The Japanese term for what we call "blocking techniques" is ukewaza, meaning "receiving techniques."  That is the same uke (receiving) as in ukemi (receiving with or through the body).  Think about that one for a minute.  Karate guys consider receiving techniques to be useless, while in many judo and aikido groups, ukemi is considered to be the most important skill and the most valuable self-defense.

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Learning 1-2 karate kata could help you even if you're not a karate guy!

One of the things that can seem alien to a karate guy beginning in aikido or judo is the idea that each of the kata in judo and Tomiki aikido involves two people - tori (or nage) and uke.  All of the kata moves are actually done on an actual person's body.  There are no solo kata in judo or aikido.

Parallel evolution

When I'm filtering around the interwebs looking for things of interest, I prefer to look for the commonalities between different approaches rather than the differences.  For instance, I figure that if I look at how an aikido guy does a particular thing and how a karate guy does a similar thing then the truth might likely be somewhere in the middle.

Why tanto in randori but not in practice?

We have been told often by our aikido instructors that Tomiki's aikido was particularly aimed at randori - that is, developing a way for aikidoka to pressure test their skills with a viable randori system.  And I do think that is characteristic of Tomiki's aikido... to a point.

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But go with me down this line of thought...

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Tomiki was out to come up with a way for aikido guys to do real randori - not taking turns being uke for each other, but both guys trying to apply aikido skills at the same time against a skilled player.  To make the game interesting and productive, Tomiki had to get the players to give each other real attacks because aikido guys when they don't want to be thrown by other aikido guys stop exerting and withdraw their energy. So he made uke's attacks count for points.

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But why did he put the foam knife into the mix?

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Why not leagalize punches, like in a karate contest? Aikido folks deal with punches.

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Why not a shinai, like in kendo? Aikido folks deal with swords.

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Why not a padded stave, like in the old-style European quarterstave matches still popular around Tomiki's time?  Aikido folks deal with jo staves.

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Heck, those pre-war aikido guys even played with bayonets like in jukendo - why not have randori matches against a guy armed with a juken?

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What is it about the tanto that of all the weapons that the old aikido guys played with - what made tanto particularly suitable for randori?

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And if tanto was so particularly suitable an instrument for the randori that would be central in Tomiki's aikido, why is the tanto not more prominent in the rest of our practice?

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What I mean is this - we learn all of our aikido empty handed against empty-handed ukes who are making empty-handed attacks.  Then at some point the tanto is thrown in almost as an afterthought - a little bit of knife evasion practice, some junana with a knife, and a pretty minimal nod to tanto skills in a couple of the Koryu no kata.

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If randori (with a knife) is supposed to be so central to our aikido, why don't we do all of our training from day-1 with knives? Ukemi with a knife, taiso (tandoku and sotai dosa) with a knife, junana and owaza and urawaza with a knife, suwari with a knife... Tanto Everything Aikido.

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True, there's nobody telling us we can't practice that way - but (almost) nobody does practice that way.

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Another sort of aside - I wonder what would happen in a tanto match if you gave both guys a foam knife and allowed both guys to score with the blade or with aikido techniques?  Or maybe a hybrid of tanto randori and hat randori where either guy could score with the knife, the hat, or aikido techniques??

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Patrick Parker
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Mode-switching and switch-flipping

Toshu randori in Tomiki aikido is a strange beast.  I do not think it teaches us what we think it teaches us.

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It seems at first glance, that toshu randori would be similar to sparring in karate.  But it is not.  Randori cannot be a contest of both folks attacking to see whose attacks succeed and whose fail because that tends to lead to clashes that are not what we're looking for in aikido.

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Likewise, you can't have both guys playing the gentle, receiving, flowing role to see who has better skills at the soft aspects of the art - if both guys play that strategy then nobody does anything and we might as well sit down and share a spot of tea.

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For us to practice aikido skills, we have to have an attacker - someone playing the role of uke so that the other guy can practice being tori.  The tricky part about toshu randori is that both guys would like to be tori, so they have to either trick the other guy into being uke or find a time when he is in that mode.

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To avoid the nobody-does-anything problem, Karl used to advise us "always attack."  When in doubt, attack.  But then to avoid the everybody-always-attacks sort of clash and to actually get some aikido done, one of the partners has to switch gears in mid-attack from attacking to flowing/blending/receiving mode.

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That sounds like I'm saying someone has to choose to be uke and take a dive.  I'm not.  Funny thing is, the guy that is more adept at flipping the switch and can more smoothly and more completely take the role of receiver usually ends up being tori.

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So, that is what I think toshu randori teaches us - it develops skill at identifying when your attack is going to be insufficient and switching to receiving mode so that you can ride the other guy's attack until it is your turn again for a more decisive attack.

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Toshu randori is a mode-switching, switch-flipping practice.

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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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Judo rank vs. karate rank

When I was digging through Wikipedia for information for that last post about karate ranks I noticed an interesting thing.

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When you read through any of the articles on the famous big-name judo guys, almost all of them contain pretty extensive detail about when they received each of their ranks.  for instance, 

After 15 months of training, Mifune achieved the rank of shodan ('beginning dan,' indicating 1st dan ranking) in Kodokan judo,[2] and after the remarkably short time of four more months, nidan (2nd dan).[2] Through timing and speed, Mifune quickly gained a reputation, and was never defeated at the annual Red and White Kodokan tournament.[2] By 1912, he was ranked rokudan (6th dan) and an instructor.[2] He was already being called the 'God of Judo.'

and...

Tomiki was one of the early students of the founder of aikido Morihei Ueshiba, beginning in 1926, and also of Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo.[2] In 1928 he obtained 5th dan in judo and in the following year he represented Miyagi Prefecture in the first judo tournament held in front of the Emperor—this tournament became the All Japan Tournament the following year. From 1936 till the end of the second world war he lived in Manchukuo (Manchuria) where he taught aikibudo (an early name for aikido) to the Kanton army and the Imperial Household Agency. In 1938 he became an assistant professor at Kenkoku University in Manchukuo. He went on to be awarded the first 8th dan in aikido (1940) and an 8th dan in judo (1978).

But when you look at the articles about the big-name karate guys (Shimabuku, Egami, Harada, Itosu, etc...), trying to find info about their ranks, it's mostly absent...  There could be several reasons for this relative lack of info...

• Maybe it took a while for the karate guys to adopt Kano's kyu-dan belt rank system.
• Maybe karate was at that time more of a rural thing and they weren't as interested as the cosmopolitan judo guys in record-keeping.
• Maybe this was just a curious oversight on the part of the Karate authors at Wikipedia.

Or maybe this suggests a real difference between judo folks and karate folks in how they think about the rank thing.

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Patrick Parker
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Jump-ranking (sorta) in karate

While we are on the subject of ranking, there is an interesting story about the history of Isshin-ryu karate-do.  I don't know where it falls on the spectrum from absolute truth to apocrypha to pure B.S. but I've heard this piece of 'history' from several sources over the years.

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The story goes that Shimabuku trained a bunch of American GIs during wartime and having earned shodan or nidan they left Okinawa and brought Isshin-ryu to the United States (that much is mostly fact I think).  Some years later, it seems, his students organized a trip to see and train with Shimabuku, and the Master, knowing that these were all dedicated students that he might never see again, issued them certificates for each rank up to Roku-dan (6th degree black belt) with the understanding that they were not to claim those ranks until they had proper time-in-grade and practice.

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Effectively, Shimabuku promoted his inner circle - the folks that would become the Isshin-ryu demi-gods from shodan to rokudan.

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Again, I don't know how much of this tale is true, and I don't intend this to scandalize the Isshin-ryu folks.  Shoot, the most skilled karateka I've ever met and laid hands on are Isshin-ryu folks.  I just thought the story was interesting while we were talking about ranks and jump promotions.

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Where we've been - where we're going

Lately I've been thinking about where I've come in the last 30 years or so, and where I'll be going in the next few - so I started putting together this timeline...

30 years ago

• In High School
• Didn't know karate or any other martial arts existed. Didn't even know who Bruce Lee was.
• A friend invited me to the dojo and I've been there ever since

25 years ago

• In college
• Karate guy, pretty good competitor - ranked 2nd in Mississippi and 3rd in Louisiana. Specialties included reverse counterpunch and an incredibly sneaky arcing outside crescent kick.
• Beginning to get an idea of diminishing returns with modern karate (at least for me)
• Beginning to try out aikido, judo, and hapkido

20 years ago

• Graduating from college
• Soon to start my first dojo in Southwest MS.
• Met two major influences on my aikido and judo - Karl Geis and Mac McNease

15 years ago

• Back at college, teaching aikido and judo there

10 years ago

• newly married
• young children
• back teaching in Southwest MS
• after Katrina - moved the dojo to my home and started mokurendojo.com blog
• starting to work with my oldest son on some judo falling

5 years ago

• getting ready to switch organizations
• starting to travel to teach seminars

NOW

• About to graduate oldest son from kids' class to adult class
• Over the last 18 or so years or so I've had about a dozen of my students make it to black belt
• This summer I expect to promote my first sandan (3rd degree black belt) student in judo
• Need to get a new mat surface for the dojo - soon

5 years from now (ca 2020)

• oldest son graduating High school - He should be shodan
• next 2 sons should be well into the adult class
• next 2 girls should be in the kids' class

10 years from now (ca 2025)

• All my sons will be graduated from High School, oldest may be graduated from college!
• 3 sons should be black belt and older daughter should be approaching shodan
• Younger daughter should be getting ready to graduate into adult class

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Patrick Parker
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Men - the vertical cut

One of my practice principles at Mokuren Dojo is that if we make uke better then tori will have to become better.  I think it's a good thing for folks to take some boxing or karate, and if it's available, some kendo or kenjutsu, because if uke gives us sorry attacks, our responses to those attacks will be sorry.

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So, in our autumnal focus on tachidori, we ought to pay a bit of attention to how to make a proper vertical cut (menuchi) because that is the majority of what we are responding to in the basic tachidori.  Following are some good exercises for menuchi.

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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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Patrick Parker
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The Walk - 4 - shomen tegatana

The Walk (as we usually do it) may be divided into three sections - footwork, pushes, and turns.  In our dojo we commonly practice 3 footwork movements, 4 pushes, and 5 turns.  Previous articles on the three footwork movements can be found here - nanameashi, wakiashi, and tenkanashi.

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The first of the four pushes, shomen tegatana, is a direct forward movement of the hand to face-level.  This movement illustrates several of our fundamental movement principles or preferences or heuristics...

• Same-hand-same-foot - whenever the right foot moves, the entire right side of the body moves with it (arm, hip, leg) and vice versa.  This is not universally applied this way in aikido, but it is a pretty good rule of thumb for power transfer.
• Another way of thinking about same-hand-same-foot is to conceptualize it as stuck-hand-stuck-foot.  Imagine, in this first exercise, that uke has grasped you by your left hand and has anchored it in place.  This heuristic says to anchor your left foot to the ground and throw your right arm-hip-foot at uke.  So, whichever side is stuck, that entire side is stuck, and whichever side is free, that entire side is free.
• Unbendable arm - Notice this does not mean, "straightarm." The arm is gently curved, but during the power transfer the arm does not bend because this either cause you to use arm muscle to generate power or it acts as a shock absorber.  Whatever shape the arm is in at the moment of power generation, it locks in that shape and the weight of the body drops into it.
• Ki hand - different practitioners form their hand to deliver power different ways.  We usually pull our fingers back to deliver with a palm heel.  Tomiki seems to have preferred to do this action through a kite, or spear-shaped hand.  Some folks (like the above film) choose a handblade sort of inbetween the spear and the palmheel.  Interestingly, Gichin Funakoshi, father of Shotokan karate-do, made this shomen tegatana the first four movements of his 10-movement Tennokata (Universal forms) - he just did it with a fist. In any case, the hand position is not arbitrary.
• Arms and center move together - This is a heuristic that is probably somewhat peculiar to our dojo and those near us.  In theory, you want your arms to move in synch with your center.  This means that you don't want your arms rising when your center is dropping.  One practical reason is because, if you raise an arm as you drop your center, and that arm encounters resistance, it drives you into the ground and tends to stop you.  So, we are kind of particular about drop-stepping wherever we are going to move and then raising the arm with the recovery step.  Whether you take this idea to these extremes or not, you want your arms and your center moving in a coordinated fashion.

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 ____________________
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Why I like Yoshinori Kono's jo work

A few days ago I forwarded this video to a bunch of my friends with a note saying, "Check this guy out, I really like what he does."  Several of them were unimpressed, and had some good comments, like,

• he is working too far inside ma-ai
• no power behind his strikes
• his ukes don't appear to know what they are doing

...so I thought I'd write some about why I do like his aiki-like jo work.

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First, I will readily admit I'm probably biased because of an old article I read about this fellow - Perceptual warfare in the classical Japanese martial arts.  This perceptual approach to aikido (etc...) feels right to me - I get the same feeling watching Ueshiba's later films of him doing magic.  Osensei was operating within the domain of his ukes' perceptions (inside their OODA loop), and that's what Kono appears to be getting at.

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In all martial arts (that I've seen) there appear to be different factions and cults based on different preferences or attributes.  You can take a dozen students and teach them the same stuff at the same time and you will end up with a dozen different arts in a few years, because each practitioner has individual preferences and filters and attributes that they  use to interpret the art.  Some are stronger, some are faster, some are better at receiving while others are better at attacking, etc...  For example, within the world of Japanese karate-do, you see Shotokan, which sort of epitomizes the cult of power.  They are strong and linear and they make their karate work through strength. Then you have Shotokai, which is the same set of material taught by the same original teachers, but now they more epitomize a cult of timing.  They take a  more soft and flowing approach.  (Sure, these are generalizations, and real karate masters make use of both strength and timing, but the generalization holds I think).

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With respect to jodo/jojutsu/aikijo, you see the same sort of differentiation into styles or cults.  Some folks are all about mechanical precision and power, while others are all about timing and flow.  Nick actually brings these aspects together in an interesting way in his jodo training matrix video...

I suspect this is what we are seeing in Kono's video with respect to power - in his preference to work in the perceptual realm, he is concentrating on speed and timing at the expense of power.  So, he is demonstrating an interesting thing about one facet of the big picture - how to develop the speed and timing necessary to work on uke's perceptions.

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(but as a side note...speed is power... so they tell me...)

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Now with regard to his working inside ma-ai.  That is a problem from my point of view too, but I think it is understandable for a couple of reasons.

• He is obviously working from the background of speed and timing, and in my experience, superfast practitioners love to work inside ma-ai, where they can disorient slower guys with a flurry of motion before the slower guys can react.  I probably enjoy that aspect of Kono's work particularly because it is so opposite of my personal preferences and style.  I avoid inside conditions like the plague unless I can cripple uke with kuzushi or get behind him.  So this seems exotic, like something that could benefit me.
• He is also obviously showing pieces of motion instead of fight-ending waza like we're used to seeing.  As such, I suspect his ma-ai is contracted for the sake of getting some clear video of what he's doing.  The camera has him and uke confined to a smaller space.

And as for his ukes being incompetent.  I don't much to say about that because just about everyone in the world is more competent with weapons than me.  But Morihei Ueshiba made his ukes look pretty dumb too, which suggests that Kono may be on a similar track as Ueshiba.

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Kids in aikido?

I really enjoyed this video demonstration - especially the segments of kids practicing aikido - real aikido - not watered-down aiki warm-up kids primer aikido. 

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Coming up through the ranks we were assured by our instructors that aikido was not for kids because it was too dangerous.  They justified that opinion with a couple of reasons, like wristlocks putting growth plates at risk and lack of maturity=lack of control... but I suspect that opinion was based more on their personal lack of interest in teaching kids than in some sort of objective fact.

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When you look at it, kids practice judo and karate and BJJ and boxing all the time without depopulating the world.  Why shouldn't we be able to train kids in aikido.

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I've been thinking for a while about how to do kids aikido classes.  Still thinking about it...

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Jita Kyoei - my investment in you

I drill this into my judo kids - when we are warming up I ask them (among other things), "What's your main purpose for being in judo class?" and the answer that I expect is, "To make everyone else better."
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Jita Kyoei - mutual benefit - you and me both win - you and me going forward together - everyone shines together.

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But it's not just kids that need drilling on this.  It's adults too.  And it's not just students, but sensei too.  And it's not just judo, but aikido and karate and... every other discipline.  Jita kyoei is not our natural state.  We far too often and far too easily fall into me-my-mine mode when we should be in we-us-ours mode.

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Sometimes we have to put our own desires and agendas secondary to those of others.  Sometimes we have to stand and wait, in our strength, for slower weaker less experienced others to catch up. As we become stronger and higher-ranked, this should happen more and more often and to an ever increasing degree because there will be more people needing to catch up farther to get to the point to where they can help us.

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There have been times when this dynamic has frustrated me as a teacher.  Sometimes it seems like the higher-ranked folks don't make any progress because we're always starting over with the white belt material, but I think this is probably just my me-my-mine hanging out.  As a teacher (sensei or sempai) I make you better so that you can lift me up later.  Rising water floats all boats sort of thing.

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But what about all the students that will never get to my level?  Shoot, most won't ever get a black belt.  Jita Kyoei still applies!  Even though you might, realistically, never get past the hand-holding stage in judo or aikido.  Even if you move around the world and I never see you again, I am still increasing the capacity of people in our society - people who are doctors, lawyers, carpenters, mechanics, teachers, fathers, mothers...  People who could use a dose of ju and aiki - but more importantly, people who could use a dose of jita kyoei in their lives and careers.  

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I build you up, you build up a bunch of people, they build up a bunch more folks, and eventually some of those folks are bound to build me up somehow, whether in martial arts or some other way - even if it is just that I get to live in a society full of capable, mutually beneficial citizens instead of a society full of me-my-mine drones.

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Jita Kyoei is my investment in you.

[photo courtesy of Nocopol_TO]

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Thoughts on aikido atemiwaza

I've said before, several times, that atemi (striking) is a vital part of aikido - at least aikido that is done as a martial art or self-defense.  Remove the strikes from aikido and it becomes an especially boring form of modern dance.

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But I've also said before, atemi is probably not what you think of as a typical martial arts strike.  Even bloggers as dumb as Sensei Strange have figured this out. ;-)

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It turns out there are about 2 different ideas about striking in martial arts - 

• percussive impacts intended to cause severe structural damage - what you think of as karate and boxing strikes.
• non-percussive bumps and pushes intended to distract and disrupt the opponent's balance and posture - like you may see more often in jujitsu and aikido

There are plusses and minuses to both kinds of striking techniques.  Whichever one you favor, you can certainly find some justification for it - but whichever one you favor also has some potential problems to consider.

• Percussive atemi is direct and intuitive and fairly quick and easy to learn.  Percussive strikes can also end a fight very quickly.  So boxing and karate may be a shorter path to quick self-defense than aikido atemi.  It also makes you feel powerful to be able to defend yourself with your fists - so that may appeal to some folks.
• But in a litigious society, percussive atemi may create legal entanglements.  I know a fellow that was blind-sided and managed to collect himself enough to lash out with a hook punch, breaking his assailant's jaw.  Even though there were witnesses and it was a clear-cut case of self-defense, the assailant still sued.  It may be more defensible in cases like this to be able to say, "He attacked me and I was afraid so I pushed him away and I guess he fell down."  Pushes also look more innocuous to witnesses than do skilled-looking punches.
• Punching is a higher-precision activity than pushing or bumping. Pushing someone is a much grosser motor skill than punching, and is a much more easily retained skill under pressure than punching properly.
• Pushing is a more automatic, autonomous response than punching.  If you push against a mammal, they tend to push back automatically, whereas, surprised people often have to collect themselves a bit to prepare themselves to punch or kick.
• With punching, there is greater potential for self-injury.  That is largely why boxers tape and pad their hands.  People that fight with bare fists tend to get their hands cut up if not broken.  These particular injuries don't often occur to people that fight open-handed.
• There is less potential for control with percussive strikes.  Since there is no way to know just how much force you need to put on someone to disable them, the common strategy is to generate maximal force and apply it to the opponent's weakest spots.  This means greater potential for injury and less potential for control.

From reading those bullet points, I'm sure that you can tell that I personally favor the non-percussive aikido-type atemi.  It's no skin off my back if you disagree - I'm sure there are a lot of kick-punch folks that could beat me up.  But per my analysis, the benefits of non-percussive atemi clearly outweigh the benefits of percussive atemi.

What do y'all think?

photo courtesy of Germaine

Want to discuss this blog post? 

Come find me on Facebook at my Mokuren Dojo FB group 

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

New to judo at age 40!

I got this great question in the email this morning!

Hello Patrick, ... I don't study any martial art right now but I'd like to sometime in the near future. I'm a hefty lad and in my 40's. I'm thinking of taking up judo once I drop some more weight and become a bit stronger and stretchier. Do you think this is realistic at my age and physical condition? You're about my age I believe so I thought your opinion would be worth learning. Thanks. New-to-Ju

Hi, New-to-Ju, 

Thanks for writing me with your question!  I love helping folks out however I can.

People in their 40's (and older) start judo all the time.  In fact, one of my instructors started judo when he was about 40 and was a state/regional champ by his early 40's.

I think that it is important that you shop around to find the club and instructor that best fits your personality.  Look at all the judo, aikido, and BJJ schools in your area (and even karate, taichi, kungfu, etc...), go watch 2-3 classes of each, chat with the instructors and discuss your age concerns with them.

It is probably most important that you find an instructor that you like and that your personality jives with.  Any martial art can be made intolerable by a jerky instructor or it can be made into an amazing experience by an amazing instructor.

Bottom line - of course you can start martial arts training when you are in your 40's!

Let me know if I can help you any more with your quest ;-)

Pat

Some additional resources related to starting a martial art in your 40's (or later) can be found right here!  http://www.mokurendojo.com/search?q=older

See also...

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Patrick Parker

www.mokurendojo.com

Aikido in tight spaces - Koryu Dai Ni

A frequent complaint about aikido is that it requires vast amounts of clear, smooth mat space for the aikidoka to move around and fly and roll across.  I suppose this is a remnant of the personal styles and preferences of some of the masters of prior generations in how they preferred to do demos.  But it is just not true.  Any of the techniques in aikido can be done large and flowing into projection, or small and abruptly throwing straight downward into control.

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The aikido we do (coming from Tomiki Sensei) was much influenced by Kano's ideas and interactions with Tomiki.  I've heard it said that one of Jigoro Kano's pet theories about physical education is that large motions are more appropriate for beginners and small motions are more appropriate for experts.  (Incidentally, Funakoshi said the same thing about karate-do.)  So, it would make sense that our preference for large flowing motion and projection was intended by the old masters to be appropriate for beginners.  But at some point you have to move beyond the beginner exercises (I think we generally have a problem with this in a lot of ways in our aikido, but that's a post for another day).

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Again, any of the material in aikido can be done short and fast and throwing into control instead of projection, but in Tomiki's and Ohba's curriculum (unsoku, then junana, then koryu-no-kata), one of the first places one sees much of this idea is Koryu Dai Ni - the second advanced kata.  The first three techniques sort of state the theme of the exercise...

• #1 - katatedori katagatame - is an interesting shoulder rotation trick in order to get sufficient motion without moving the feet much.  It is also a controlling action rather than a projection idea.
• #2 - ryotedori gyakugamaeate - is an interesting hip shift offbalance to induce uke to move his feet so that tori can step into uke's space.
• #3 - ryotedori iriminage - is an interesting direction change to solve the problem of when tori is unable to make uke's feet move on #2 .

Things you see here include innovative ways to induce kuzushi when tori cannot move his feet much.  I like to play these three techniques with uke and tori working in a taped-off section of the mat that is about 2 feet by 6 feet.  I like to designate the rest of the mat outside the working area as "poisonous acidic lava boiling over razor-sharp stalagmites" so obviously tori's goal is not to step in the lava.  ;-)   Adds some psychological incentive to try to figure out how to control uke's balance immediately upon contact without moving around too much!

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And once you get the feel of working these first three techniques with that confined-space, small footwork, powerful hip-switch feel, it is fun to begin to spread that feel out into the ushirowaza and yokomenuchi attacks in the rest of Koryu Dai Ni and from there into the rest of your aikido.

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Spurt vs. long haul

Recently I was chatting with a local martial artist who has been doing kick-block-punch type stuff for longer than I've been alive!  Great guy!  Unassuming fellow.  Very interesting to talk to about a lot of subjects.  This fellow seemed like the epitome of a long-time martial artist.

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That same day I'd been talking to a patient of mine that had been on Okinawa in the military during the Vietnam conflict.  He was talking about signing up at the local villiage dojo to do some karate.  He said that the class was taught by an American and whenever anyone would come into the dojo this 'instructor' would start out their program of instruction by kicking the noobie around the dojo for a while, generally abusing the hell out of him, and demonstrating how much he knew and how little the noobie knew.  Well, my patient had been forewarned and when the instructor approached him for the first time, my patient told him right off the bat, "You'd better not try that because either you'll have to kill me or I'll find a way to whip your ass if you treat me that way."  I don't think they had a very long or fruitful martial arts relationship.

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Anyway, I got to thinking about the contrast between these two people - The American karate teacher on okinawa and the 40 some-odd year local karateka.

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In the martial arts, there are tortoises and there are hares.  Sprinters and endurance runners.

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Seems to me that the natural athletes that do martial arts in sprint-mode and use it as a way to place themselves above other people in a hierarchy of pain - those folks either burn out or get so broke-up that they stop after 5-10 years.  But a lot of the folks that are lesser athletes, or that have to struggle to integrate the principles the folks that couldn't care less about the rank or the hierarchy - those folks go on to be the life-long budoka...

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... and incidently, those are the guys that end up becoming the master teachers of the next generation because of the extreme attrition of the sprinters and the assholes.

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Tortoises and hares, sprinters and endurance runners.  I aspire to be the endurance-tortoise type martial artist.

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Putting the aiki in aikijo

So, I've been contemplating for a while - what is it that makes aikijo aiki?  For instance, if an aikido guy does a karate bo kata, is it aikijo just by virtue of the fact that it's an aikido guy doing it?  If not, why not?  Can one get better at aikijo by studying medieval quarterstaff manuals?

        

Seems to me there is a pretty distinct difference between aikijo and pretty much all other ways of weilding the stick that I've seen.  But even though it is distinctly its own thing, it's kinda hard to put your finger right on what is different.  I think it has to do with the body management and strategies that the practitioner is implementing with the stick.
             

Morihei Ueshiba did not teach aikijo - he did aiki, sometimes involving a stick.  He was doing aiki and then uke picked up a stick and Ueshiba was still doing aiki and he took the stick away from uke and swung it and he was still doing aiki, and uke grabbed the stick and Ueshiba was still just doing aiki as uke sailed off into the sunset.
           

Ueshiba, when asked, "What is aikido?" replied, "When I move around, that is aikido."  In other words, "You want to see aikido, look at what I'm doing right now - how I'm moving around."  - he was just saying something like, "My motion incorporates and serves as an example of those principles of aiki.

         

I guess all this stream of consciousness boils down to this - Our jo work must necessarily adhere to the same principles as our taijutsu in order to be aiki-jo.  The same principles must govern our stick work as govern our taijutsu (and our knife work, and our sword, and our pistol training...)

                

Ueshiba didn't seem to have a bulleted list of the ten (or however many) principles that make moving around into aiki, but here is a list that I came up with some time back that seems to serve pretty well...

• relaxation
• shizentai (posture)
• metsuke (eye control)
• ashi sabaki (footwork)
• ki-musubi (synchronization with the opponent)
• ma-ai (personal space and timing)
• move offline (the aiki-brushoff)
• orenaite (unbendable arm) and kite (ki-hands)
• kuzushi (off-balancing the opponent)
• atemi (striking the opponent down)
• osaekomi (suppressing the opponent)
• zanshin (remaining aware)

...and here is a much more extensive list compiled by someone much smarter and more skilled than me.
          

How much time do we spend going through the motions of the aikijo material or the Sankata jo material or the Rokukata jo material, blocking in the moves, trying to get the hang of the techniques (thinking technique instead of principle) and how much time do we work on trying to figure out how these principles of aiki govern the use of the stick?

                   

The aiki appears to lie largely in the strategy, but when we work with sticks (or knives) we tend to get stuck thinking tactically.

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com