Killing fields

Killing field is a military science term describing an area through which an enemy is forced to move where they will be exposed to your power. Examples might include a fortified beach like Normandy or the mountain pass at Thermopylae.
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Basically a cattle chute.
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But the term applies in interpersonal conflict too, so where is the killing field in aikido, judo, and karate, for instance?
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I refer to the space in front of uke and within his reach (inside the boundary of ma-ai) as the killing field.  So, if you are in front of the opponent and you are close enough for him to touch you then you are standing in the killing field.
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Occasionally I will refer to this as being "between his arms" or "toe-to-toe."  Traditionally we called this, "within ma-ai" but that is sort of esoteric-sounding and does not have any of evocative connotations for western students.
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If you stand inside the killing field then it is likely that the opponent can do something to you before you can respond. But life happens, so you cannot avoid the killing field, so what is the best way to handle it?

• You have to have your strategy defined and your tactics drilled before you get into a killing field because you cannot think and plan while under fire.
• Do not stand still inside a killing field.
• Attack the attacker in order to reduce his capacity (kuzushi upon contact)
• Move as quickly and efficiently as possible (tai-sabaki) while in the killing field.
• Move through the killing field to the opponent's flank (shikaku ) if possible, or retreat and regroup outside the killing field (push back past ma-ai)

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Get some jo in your aikido

I read it somewhere - not sure where - that the old jodo guys said that it was relatively unimportant to correct students on the things that go on in the middle of the kata.  He was saying that the really important thing to get right was the beginning and end of the kata.

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This jives to a large degree with what little teaching I've had from SMR jojutsu guys - they were very peculiar about the beginnings and the ends, and they seemed perhaps slightly less interested in the in-between actions than I was.

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They were emphasizing principle over tactics - the intangibles - ma-ai, kamae, metsuke, zanshin.  By paying close attention to the beginning and to the end of the encounter you get reinforcement in these intangibles.

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You see this same sort of attention to beginnings and ends in some of the pre-war aikido folks (like Tomiki and Shioda), and perhaps a little less in some of the post-war guys, though I have heard Doshu Moriteru Ueshiba speak on his videos about the importance of precision in setting up the conditions before each technique.

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In experienced jo guys there is a psychological (or dare I say, "psychic") pressure between them, as if there were terabytes of interaction being beamed back and forth between their eyes.  Because of the extreme consequences (jo or sword embedded in skull), neither partner dares break that line-of-sight communication until they see how it all works out.  I have found as an observer, it is easy to get drawn into and lost in that psychic communication between two good partners.  Often I have to make a concerted effort to watch their feet instead of their faces, or I won't know what happened after they are through with a kata.  

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There is value in carrying this type of practice with you when doing aikido taijutsu - (improvement of ma-ai, kamae, metsuke, and zanshin) but there is also potentially stupid tangents (e.g. the zombie attack, the no-touch ki masters), so beware the stupidity, but be aware of the potential value to your practice.

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Ma-ai and the blood circle

If there is one principle that is discussed and trained extensively, perhaps even obsessively, in aikido classes and some judo classes, it is the idea of ma-ai.

Ma-ai is usually thought of as a boundary around your body, the inside of which is defined as your personal space.  So long as uke is outside of ma-ai, he cannot touch you without first moving toward you.  If you allow uke inside your ma-ai then you cna potentially be attacked without having time to respond.  Typically, ma-ai is thought to be the length of your arm plus the length of the attacker's arm, but this distance can flex a bit under various circumstances.

Despite our tendency to obsess about ma-ai, it is easy to get lax in your thinking and practice.  This is something that you have to watch out for in your practice.  A good way to instantly remind everyone about ma-ai is to put a rubber training knife in uke's hand (or in tori's).  You dont have to change anytihng else about the practice, but as soon as someone is holding a knife, ma-ai becomes more obviously important.

A very good expression of ma-ai that is used by the Boy Scouts to teach knife safety is the idea of the Blood Circle.  A blood circle is a radius around the knife-user the length of his arm plus the length of the blade.  Obviously, anything or anyone within this radius is at risk of being cut if the knife-user slips.

At our house, my oldest son has reached pocketknife age, so we've been talking in terms of Blood Circles a good bit lately.  Today, he picked up a bokken to do some jodo, held it at arm's length and turned in a circle and said, "Look, Dad, A really big blood circle!"

I smiled, and promptly the jodo lesson of the day became an emphasis on the interplay between uke's and tori's blood circles.

[photo courtesy of Hani Amir]

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

BOMP - Ch 9 - The Power Paradox

This year we are discussing the Book of Martial Power (BOMP) on Saturdays.  

This particular principle plays a huge role in how you practice and how you perform your martial art.  Basically, The Power Paradox states, that if it feels powerful then it isn't, and if it feels weak but gets a big effect then it really is powerful.

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I usually think about this like this - The only way I can feel my own power is if it is reflected back from you.  If I apply power to you when you are totally incapable of resistance, then you will reflect almost none of my power back to me and I will not feel my own power.  But on the other hand, if I apply power to you and feel you resisting, then you are reflecting much of my power back to me.

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If you can learn to skillfully manipulate synchronization, ma-ai, and kuzushi, then uke will never be in a position to resist, and he will eat all of the power you apply to him.  You only ever feel the power that he doesn't eat because you mis-managed your synch, ma-ai, or kuzushi.

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I think this is why the haymaker (or as we call it the Redneck Punch) is so prevalent with untrained fighters.  When a haymaker hits, some power is absorbed in the receiver as damage, but a lot of power is reflected back to the puncher to be absorbed in the musculature of the chest and shoulder.  So, because of the feedback, the puncher feels like the haymaker is very powerful.  On the other hand, a straight punch executed correctly creates a very big effect in the receiver and does not reflect much power back to the puncher, so the puncher feels like the punch was weaker than a haymaker.

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True Power feels like weakness.  Power that feels powerful is weak.

[photo courtesy of Clover 1]

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Hugging the giant invisible gorilla!

So, tonight I was  using osotogari to teach the kids about personal space (ma-ai).  How do you teach a kid to define personal space?  I tell them to hold their arms out in front of them in a big circle, as if hugging a giant invisible gorilla.  That space inside their arms is their space.  They own it.  Anytime someone puts a foot down inside your space, you knock them down with osotogari.

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The kids were eating it up, and my smallish 6-year old was able to consistently knock down much larger 8-9 year olds whenever they trespassed! 

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We also got to talk to the older, larger, more vigorous kids about control - which I defined as doing just the right amount to get the effect you want - not splattering uke's guts all over the mat, but not being lazy either.

[Photo courtesy of twostoutmonks]

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Marine Corps ma-ai

A while back I was talking to a friend who had just been to visit his brother's graduation from Marine boot camp at Paris Island.  He had an interesting story to tell.  He said that if any of the recruits got within arm's length of a Drill Instructor, that the Instructor would deck the recruit!  My first thought was, "Cool!  Marine DI's enforcing ma-ai."

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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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Interactions: Posture and ma-ai

Photo courtesy of Postaletrice

I've mentioned before that posture affects ma-ai. Specifically, a wrestler's stance seems to draw the conflict in towards you, as opposed to a more upright stance, which seems to facilitate disengagement better. Here's another way of thinking about the same phenomenon.

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Get a partner and stand facing each other in natural, upright postures. Measure ma-ai (however you like to do it) - basically both people reach forward and stand so that your fingertips barely touch your partner's extended fingertips. Now, everyone keeps feet in the same place and hunkers down toward jigotai or toward a wrestler's stance. Measure again and you will see that you are well inside of ma-ai. It's likely that from this posture, uke can reach your wrists or forearms without moving his feet. Without moving your feet, you and your partner have broken ma-ai!

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This demonstration can be startling for some folks the first time you see it - it seems to mean that ma-ai is a fuzzy thing instead of an absolute thing. But when you think about it a bit, it's not so amazing. It just means that you can reach farther forward when you bend over at the knee and waist, using your butt as a counterbalance. But this does tell us a couple of important things about ma-ai.

• Ma-ai is not a spherical boundary around your center. Instead, it is sort of ellipsoidal or egg-shaped. Try this experiment - stand with your feet side-by-side and measure how far you can reach forward before you have to move your feet. Now measure how far you can reach to the side before you move your feet. Ma-ai is slightly larger to your front than it is to your sides and rear.
• Don't let uke crouch at ma-ai in preparation to attack. If you think that uke is just barely outside of ma-ai but you allow him to crouch in preparation, he's actually closer than ma-ai and he can spring across ma-ai before you can move. If you are watching for uke to move across that line before you react, you'd better react if he steps on the line and crouches! That counts as breaking ma-ai.

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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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Interactions: Ma-ai and the aiki brushoff

"What block would you use to stop a 400lb linebacker who was charging at you?"

This question was posed to me very soon after I started doing TKD as a teenager.  Even at that early point, I knew it was a trick question.  I knew that, "None.  I'd get out of his way," was the right answer.  Our instructor emphasized the wisdom of getting out of the way, but that strategy was pretty much left undeveloped in TKD.  Even though I could recite the right answer, I still got run over a lot.

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Later I got into karate and learned some more sophisticated angles and footwork and they expanded on this idea, saying,  "Wait till the last moment to get out of the way so they don't have time to adjust." It was better, but I still got hit a lot.

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Then I got into aikido and judo and we began a decades-long study of space and time in attacking.  We call it ma-ai, and every single aikido class emphasizes this principle.  I've heard folks say that the biggest difference between aikido and other martial arts, the thing that aikido emphasizes that other arts don't, is ma-ai - encounter  time and space.
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After I started this more rigorous study of ma-ai, I started noticing the difference between really masterful karateka and merely competent karateka, is that the masters have an amazing, precise understanding of ma-ai.  They absolutely know when they are within your reach and when they are not.  Same with judo - y'all ought to watch Rhadi Ferguson's Morotegari DVD to see how a great understanding of ma-ai (among other things) made him a master of morotegari.

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Ma-ai is the difference between aikido and not-aikido.  Ma-ai is the difference between masterful karate and basic karate.  Ma-ai is the difference between regional-level and Olympic-level judo.  Ma-ai is that important.

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But I think ma-ai is still left  mostly undeveloped even in otherwise very good aikido (and karate and judo) players.

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Back to the original question - the 400lb linebacker.  Is it sufficient to step out of his way at just the right moment but to stay inside his reach?  Is it sufficient to say, "Ma-ai is really important, really the most important aspect of aikido" but only apply your understanding of ma-ai to the time when the attacker is "over there," and not, "right here?"  Is it okay to pay attention to ma-ai only until you engage with uke?

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I don't think so.

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When we started emphasizing that tori wants to maintain ma-ai to the best of his ability, evade when uke breaks ma-ai, and push back away from uke to regain ma-ai, a whole new world of aiki opened up to us.  Maintain - evade - regain.

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I know that I sound like a broken record to my long-time readers, but the aiki brushoff is crucially important as the completion of the concept of ma-ai.  I would recommend (again) that you spend a month or so of dedicated practice on this idea of evade, push-back, and run away - and see what it does for your aikido (or karate).

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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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Kuzushi in your spare time

Photo courtesy of Gravestone

There is some debate in aikido and judo circles about the nature of kuzushi - whether tori has to specifically do a kuzushi to uke or whether uke is always offbalance and tori just has to figure out how to make use of it. I tend toward the second opinion, though I will readily admit that there are times when you do a specific thing to uke to make him lose his balance.

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It is also commonly said that aikido and judo are based on unbalancing the opponent, and this is so. I would, however, like to assert that if you are going to deliberately effect a kuzushi upon uke, then kuzushi is not the first, or last, or even the most important thing that you are doing. There is a lot of stuff that you have to pay attention to (like your own balance and movement and evasion and positioning) prior to ever getting to the point that you need to worry about doing kuzushi to the other guy.

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A while back Chiron had a note about discretionary time. That's what I'm, talking about. As you become more skilled at things like controlling ma-ai, evasion, taisabaki, positioning yourself in shikaku, etc... you get more and more discretionary time (I often call it 'slack' in my lectures. You can use that slack for many things, including kuzushi. So, in short...

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Kuzushi is something that you effect upon uke only in your spare time.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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Push back from a fight

Photo courtesy of Abolotnov

This month we've been talking about evasion - particularly in the context of aikido. Even if you evade out of the way of the first attack, if you are still within the attacker's reach (especially if you are in front of him) then you are in trouble. You have to evade off the line of attack AND try to regain ma-ai distance between you and the attacker. The easiest way to do this that we've found is what we call the aiki brush-off.

• evade off the line of attack as he passes ma-ai.
• put your hands between you and him, as in the cowcatcher maneuver.
• use your hands to push yourself straight back away from the attacker. Push against whatever presents itself - arm, face, chest, shoulder, whatever. Take a step or two backward to re-establish ma-ai.
• If you can't get back away from the attacker then all your cool aikido techniques come into play, as sort of a bunch of backup plans for the aiki brushoff.

Point is, you pretty much have to be trying to do the aiki brush-off to get those good, feather-light, smooth, magical aikido techniques to happen. If you are not at least trying to brush off of the attacker then you are probably trying to stand and fight within his reach and that is a recipe for disaster.

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

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Ma-ai month recap

March has been ma-ai month at Mokuren Dojo. We have paid particular attention to the spacing between partners and the timing of the attack. Following are several good articles that I have written during the past month on the topic of ma-ai (personal space).

• An introduction to ma-ai
• How to measure ma-ai
• You might want to measure every time during an exercise - this article sparked some good discussion/debate.
• You don't want to be so far from uke that you are comfortable - that's not ma-ai
• More details on how to measure ma-ai
• A good ma-ai exercise with a jo stave
• An exercise you can do every day, all day long outside the dojo
• And a general article about where ma-ai fits into the big picture of aikido

In closing, I'd like to refer y'all back to an article I wrote a couple of years ago about ma-ai. This is still my favorite ma-ai article on this blog, and it gels nicely with the above posts:

• Sneaking three inches

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Walking the stick

A good exercise to begin cementing the concept of ma-ai, as well as movement from the center, is what I call walking the stick. Take a jo stave and notice that it is probably fairly close to 2X your arm length. That is, a jo is about ma-ai length. Stand in front of your partner with the end of the jo on your hara - the pit of your stomach just below the knot of your belt. Your partner sticks the other end of the jo in his hara and you both take your hands off the jo.

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Now you have an absolute, explicit connection between your centers. Begin moving forward and your partner has got to retreat to keep from being poked. Start with slow, rhythmic tsugiashi and progress toward free-flowing taisabaki. Move forward, backward, left, right, turning steps, circles, etc... matching each others' motion in order to keep from dropping the jo or poking each other. Sometimes you lead and sometimes they lead. Sometimes we will do this exercise with a stick between centers and measuring ma-ai with our hands. This tends to make an even more rigid connection between centers and make it easier. For more of an interesting challenge, give each partner a full cup of water to carry (without spilling) as they do the exercise.

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In this exercise it is both partners' job to not let the jo drop and to not get poked. Both partners are actively trying to synch to the other.

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The aiki-handshake

Photo courtesy of OoohOooh

I've talked in a couple of posts this past week about defining and measuring ma-ai very precisely so that you can build up a good intuitive sense of that distance and so that you can ingrain the habit of stepping aside whenever someone is at that distance.  We talk about measuring precisely and doing it consistently, but as Kyle pointed out in a comment to that post, we actually use that ma-ai sense much more loosely in a more complex way when both players are already in motion.

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Suppose uke and tori start 15-20 feet apart and walk together with uke's job to stride directly through tori's center and tori's job to evade at ma-ai.  Because of the arbitrary distance apart and the random step sizes, a couple of interesting things happen.

• Just before he reaches ma-ai, uke is very likely to change his tempo or his weight balance.  He is planning a foot to stride through with and he has to get that foot positioned correctly when he is just outside ma-ai.  Otherwise his stride-through will be wimpy.  Look for that glitch in his footwork - it is a pretty reliable indicator something is wrong with the guy who is about to be at ma-ai (i.e. he is an attacker).
• Tori is unable to wait until exactly ma-ai to begin his evasion.  Tori calculates which step will take him past ma-ai and begins the evasion with that last step.

So, because of the element of randomness added by having the partners approaching, our use of the ma-ai instinct that we have built is broader and looser.  You still have to know how big ma-ai is, and you still want a pretty precise intuition about that, but you have a fudge factor of about 1/4 to 1/2 of the length of your step.  So, in that context, I would agree with Kyle and Strange that how we measure or whether we measure every time is sorta arbitrary.

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Which brings me to one of the best ways I've found to ingrain that ma-ai reflex and get additional practice at measuring ma-ai outside the dojo - The aiki handshake.  Go back for a second to the definition I offered earlier for ma-ai as the distance at which uke can first start affecting you - the distance at which he can casually lean in and grab your extended wrist.  This is also about the range for a handshake.  So here's the exercise:

• Make it a habit to shake hands whenever you have the opportunity.  Do it firmly, with eye contact and genuine feeling.  You will develop a good spatial sense and goodwill just by doing that.
• As you step in to grasp their hand, shift your feet slightly to the outside of the hand they are reaching for you with.  As you clasp their hand, turn their palm slightly upward and use your free hand to touch or clasp their elbow or upper forearm.  This is a natural, genuine handshake but it provides you some protection from their free hand and also reduces their leverage if they are the type to want to crush your hand.
• As the handshake dies out and you both release, use your contact on the elbow to gently and unobtrusively push yourself back outside ma-ai.  Hold your conversation from here - outside ma-ai.

I think you will find that this will build a fine, dynamic ma-ai sense as well as creating an intuitive awareness in you of what a genuine person behaves like at ma-ai as opposed to someone with ulterior motives.

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Ma-ai: palm-to-palm or fingertip-fingertip

Sensei Strange's ma-ai question from a day or two ago...

...the other day you mentioned finger tip to finger tip is incorrect. Why? I practice finger tip to finger tip, just because I feel handblade to handblade is actually too close. I feel Maai has already been broken...

Go back, for a moment, to swordwork. When you measure ma-ai in swordwork, you don't measure by touching the tips together - you cross swords by about a fist-breadth or 3 inches or so. This goes back (I think) to the discussion in The Sword and the Mind about 'sneaking three inches'. Uke wants to find the distance to attack from, where he can put his sword about 3 inches into you with one efficient lunge. Same thing applies to arms as well as swords. Uke does not want to lunge forward just enough to barely touch your body with his fingertips - he wants to lunge far enough to put his palm on you, representing a fist penetrating 2-3 inches.

Also consider, tori does not want to begin his reaction when uke is still outside of ma-ai because that makes tori's motion easier for uke to read and follow. Tori wants to define ma-ai as the distance where uke can first begin affecting him. At finger-tip to finger-tip, uke can, in no way affect tori. He is just too far away. But palm-to-palm represents the distance where uke can casually lean in and grab your arm if it were extended.
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There's also the subjective feel of the different distances. Measure fingertip-to-fingertip and put your hands down. Looking at uke at this distance tori is alert, but not especially anxious. Uke is also not particularly eager to attack because he can intuitively feel that the distance is too great. But let uke shift forward a couple of inches and all of a sudden tori can hardly contain himself because he knows he is right on the edge of his ability to evade if uke attacks. That's ma-ai - you want uke's presence at ma-ai distance to make you so anxious and alert that you begin your evasion at the first sign of motion from uke.
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So, ma-ai represents the distance at which uke first becomes an immediate danger to tori - but also a great enough distance that tori can still manage an evasion if uke attacks with maximum efficiency. That distance is generally closer to palm-to-palm than it is fingertip-to-fingertip.

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DMZ - Discomfort ma-ai zone

Photo courtesy of Teamworker

We usually think of ma-ai as a safety zone around tori - a comfort zone. Well, another way to think about ma-ai is as a discomfort zone. A line that as uke approaches, tori becomes progressively more uncomfortable, until at two-arms-distance, tori is so intensely uncomfortable that he unconsciously begins to shift off the line of attack and toward a more comfortable space.

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If you train a precisely-measured proper ma-ai sufficiently, your intuitive sense of ma-ai combined with your own sense of disomfort will make the off-line evasion and aiki brush-off a subconscious, automatic thing.

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You don't want to cheat yourself out of that discomfort. Train with it, let it be part of you and bathe in that discomfort.

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Measuring every time

Started an interesting conversation thread in the comments of the last post with Sensei Strange.  I don't think he's completely wrong, but...

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It seems (to me) that Tomiki got a lot of his ideas about kata construction and practice either from the ZNKR guys or from the same place that they got their ideas. If I remember my history rightly, the ZNKR guys formulated their new kihon and kata around the same time as Tomiki or maybe a little before. In any case, the Tomiki sword work in the Koryunokata (simple as it is mostly) bears a great resemblance to the ZNKR stuff. That influence (like measuring every time in kata and kihon) seems to spill over into the rest of Tomiki practice.

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Notice, for instance, in the kendo kata video below. They start an arbitrary distance apart, move forward, measure, do ipponme, then measure again after every technique and before the next.

Notice that the kendo kihon operate the same way...

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Measuring ma-ai

The first, and best way to begin developing a good intuitive sense of ma-ai (space, time, and distance) is to measure ma-ai at the beginning of every repetition of a partner exercise.  The way that we measure ma-ai is to stand palm-to-palm with your partner, both of you standing in shizentai (natural upright posture) with unbendable arms.

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Something you have to watch out for, though, is the tendancy to pay attention to uke's hand instead of his center.  Remember, after you measure like this, ma-ai is the distance from uke's center to tori's center - not the distance from uke's hand to tori's center.  I usually teach to measure, then have both partners drop their hands, take a breath and observe how far away your partner is, then uke attacks.

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Repetition of this measuring trick will instill a fine intuitive ma-ai sense, and this ma-ai measuring exercise is applicable in aikido, judo, and karate.

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Ma-ai month

Photo courtesy of Tommrkr

Having focussed on relaxation in January and posture in February, during March we are going to focus on ma-ai, or the time-space relationship between attacker and defender. Ma-ai is a principle that one hears preached upon in aikido and weapon classes all the time, and even though it is not as often taught explicitly in judo or karate-do, it is still vital that you have a good, intuitive sense of spacing and timing and the ability to control distance.

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As a first glimpse of how important ma-ai is in all martial arts - not just aikido and kendo - following is Genshin Hironishi Sensei's definition from the Preface to Karate-do Nyumon:

... literally translated, maai means "(spatial) distance", but in this usage it also evokes a sense of timing, or chance. Thus, it indicates both the space and the time it takes for and opponent's fist to reach one's body. In the practice of both kata and basics, there is a tendency to forget maai and become absorbed solely in the repetition of movements...

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Fast really is slow

From a balanced, standing position people can only move about 3 feet per second. That's any adult of relatively normal height. Shorter people move slightly faster, but over the course of one step the speed difference is negligable. This speed issue is essentially a physical constant related to gravity.

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We begin talking about this speed issue very early in aikido but it is a long time before students buy into the idea because we have this funny perceptual thing that happens where we pay more attention to faster moving things. So, somebody that waves their arms fast while they are stepping relatively slowly, looks like they are stepping fast. For this reason, fast punches look dangerous even though they can't land until the attacker moves his body within reach.

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One thing that has really improved my perception of this fast-is-slow phenomenon is paying special attention to the two ends of the attack motion. When uke starts to move through ma-ai we have to begin our evasion - so we spend a lot of time working on paying attention to movement starting at ma-ai. The other end of the attack movement is when uke's front foot hits the ground. My instructor has recently put out a couple of excellent videotape lessons on timing based on that front foot, and we've been paying a lot more attention to that front footstrike. The combination of those two practices has really improved my perception of that time-dilation effect. It's easier for me to see for myself that fast really is slow.