No class tonite

Hey, guys, I need to miss tonight's class. I have to go listen to Whit sing at a Christmas program. Hope to see y'all Saturday.

Recruiting

I don't want a large commercial dojo. The benefits are outweighed by the headache. I am perfectly content to teach in a small, intimate environment. We are blessed with a nice place to learn with virtually no overhead expense. That is much of the reason that I teach for free.

But, having said that, in order to teach I have to have students. In order to practice we have to have partners. While Mokuren is not hurting for students, and the students we have are awesome people and great martial artists, we need a continual source of fresh minds and bodies in order to keep an optimal class size of about 8 to 10 adults.

I ask each of my students, in lieu of cash payments for lessons, consider actively and continually recruiting people for our aikido, judo, karate, and jodo classes.

I'm going to stop now, before I start sounding too much like those terribly annoying NPR pledge-begging drives that they seem to have about 15 times per year.

Part of chain #4

more Mokuren video - this time it's part of Chain #4.

Exhausting suburi

Talk about exhausting! I practiced jo suburi (repetitions) today on the first five kihon. The first four are no big deal - I've done thousands of reps of them and I have repped them in the rapid suburi fashion before. Number five is a combination of an overhead thrust and an overhead strike. This is exhausting when practiced repeatedly without dropping your arms below your shoulders. Today I did 25 left and right of each, and by the end of #5 my arms were floppy. For the rest of practice I did Seiteikata #1 - tsukezue. I have to keep telling myself that tomorrow's battle is won during today's practice.

Kudos

This is an impressive example of true karate and an example of what I wrote about earlier regarding appropriate use of force and taking a stand against evil. Kudos to these children.

Newsflash: Uke wins at suwariwaza

Today in tegatana there appeared another phenomenon that I'm having a hard time putting a finger on. It showed up in the two middle pushes - the ones with the up-down-up timing. They have a different rhythm than the down-up pushes and I'm not sure the cause. I think it might be either muscular tension in the upper back associated with raising an arm or it might be the mass of the raised arm raising the center of balance, causing the falling step to take slightly longer. In any case, we ran all the pushes 4-5 times and I'll still have to work on that a while to identify the essence of it. After tegatana we spun through hanasu and moved into the nijusan atemiwaza. Gedanate was working much better for me today, and I even got a good udegaeshi when we moved onto hijiwaza.

We focussed in on oshitaoshi (ikkyo) for the rest of class, working it from the spinning-apart relationship in nijusan, the four varants from the first chain, and an interesting suwari ryotedori variant - more on that later. We saw better success when tori followed the reboud instead of bludgeoning hs way through uke's head. For a few minutes in Chain #1 we had uke attack with the wrist grab + face strike and it was super obvious that the extra energy from the face strike was smearing uke much worse.

At the end of class we worked on the last suwariwaza technique from sankata - the scooping throw. This always appears to be a stupid technique because uke either sits there dumbly as if saying "ok, do the thing to me." or he stands up and jumps, so it's difficult to get the real feel of the thing. We worked on it today from uke's perspective. Uke's attack was to pin both of tori's wrists long enough to stand up and drag tori onto his face into an udeosae pin. If tori doesn't respond, he gets smeared. If tori resists with upper body strength, he gets smeared. If tori creates a ground path through his legs into the ground then he is able to throw uke back from him and rise to standing. If uke recovers from being thrown back, tori does the kata technique - the scooping throw. So, by having uke smear tori a few times, we got a more intelligent uke and a better feel fo the kata technique.

After class we had a formal rank demo for Gary. He demonstrated tegatana and both roles of hanasu (uke and tori). He did great and is now gokyu. We're looking forward to moving on up through the ranks and improving our skills!

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Eidetic learning

Now, this article is interesting. My instructor has talked with us about eidetic learning. That is, learning by carefully watching and imitating. Visual learning, particularly without auditory information being presented. This is a very traditional, very eastern concept and the old guys in Japan called it 'stealing techniques.' I don't think that 'stealing' in this sense carried the negative connotations even though one story has it that OSensei would never let Kyuzo Mifune watch his classes because Mifune was such a genius he might have been able to 'steal' Ueshiba's techniques.

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Most westerners, myself included, prefer to learn using a mixed method of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic information. But there is a lot to be said for being able to watch a physical performance and not only gather enough info to understand what is going on but to be able to organize that information in such a way that will be consistent and useful in your own mental model.

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These ideas about how to teach martial arts mostly came from feudal Japan and Okinawa in an era where knowledge that one man kept from another was power. It has been said by some modern business reengineering brainiacs that knowledge is not really power - knowledge shared is power. "But," you may protest. "What if they take your knowledge and use it against you or sell it for a profit and don't give you the money or..." Well, as F.M. Alexander (another 20th century genius) has said, "Any man can do what I've done. They just have to do what I've done."

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Knowledge hoarded stagnates and feeds upon itself, becoming corrupt. Knowledge shared is power. You can't steal what is freely given. But eidetic learning is a skill worth developing.

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.

Fast is really slow

Tegatana: short steps, balls of feet. We worked the evasions with a knife-wielding uke and got to explore that "fast/slow" phenomenon. It showed up remarkably well last night, as we did the shomenashi attack several times then switched to the fast-looking tsuki attack, then switched back to the shomenashi attack. When we switched to the "fast" attack, it was really very slow, and when we switched back to shomenashi after getting used to the "fast" attack, tori barely had time to evade. Amazing how slow "fast" is and how fast "slow" is.

Hanasu: kata mode. I also got to play with Kristof as my uke and I did releases from the 2 nijusan offbalances. Interesting play - sorta emphasizes that the techniques that we do are really just releases that occur from various places on those two paths.

Nijusan: I demonstrated all of nijusan twice with Kristof as my uke and then Kristof demonstrated the atemiwaza with P4 as his uke and P4 demonstrated the atemiwaza and hijiwaza with Kristof as uke. I showed them a little different timing for gedanate - similar to the timing for #8 (hikitaoshi) or #10 (wakigatame). seemed to work a little better. #9 (udehineri) is not exactly right the way we're doing it but it's not really far off and I havent gotten around to working on that one yet. Part of the coolness of the hijiwaza (6-10) is that this is where we begin demonstrating the various pins. The students need to be sure to follow these techniques into the ground and apply the pin - particularly in kata mode.

Chains: we did a #4 chain in which we got to play with kotegaeshi and kotehineri a lot. This is one of the coolest of the chains for me.

Yesterday was Kristof's birthday, so we cut off class about 20 minutes early and went to have a party with the Parkers and McKenzies.

Tenkanashi

Now we really start to pick up speed in tegatana (mentally - not physically). The previous two moves were pretty basic, and while this one's not really a monster, it is an altogether new thing. The third motion in the walking kata, tenkanashi, is a combination of two fundamental moves - nanameashi (the diagonal step) and a hip switch, which will be isolated later in the kata. Tenkanashi is also fundamentally different forward and backward, whereas the previous movements were the same regardless of the direction.
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To do tenkanashi forward, you turn off a leg, fall diagonally forward to that side, and as that foot is landing turn the leg inward as close to 90 degrees as you can. The following recovery step happens as your body turns. Imagine evading a lunge and turning to face the attacker. As such, tenkanashi is the fundamental evasion used in aikido. Shomenashi and wakiashi automatically become tenkanashi whenever tori is presented with an attacker to center on.
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Tenkanashi backwards breaks the rule of thumb established earlier in the exercise that whatever direction youre moving the closest foot moves first. To tenkanashi backwards, you relax the close foot and begin falling backwards (almost as if sitting down) then the opposite foot moves into place and the first foot becomes the recovery foot. Try it a few times moving the near foot first and you quickly find that nobody has the range of motion in their hip to inwardly rotate the front foot enough.
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As the fundamental evasion in aikido, tenkanashi deserves a few minutes of paired practice in each class. Face uke at maai and as uke starts his lunge, tori slips out of the way using tenkanashi and puts hands up between his center (face) and uke's. When this exercise becomes commonplace, put a rubber knife in uke's hand and all of a sudden tori has a new perspective on the value of tenkanashi. Alternately, use the fast-looking lunge punches or lead jabs from karate as flavoring for this drill.

Wakiashi

The second motion in tegatana no kata is called wakiashi. It is the most basic, atomic level motion in the kata and in the system. It should really be the first motion in tegatana because it is the simplest as well as being a prototype for the more complex taisabaki like nanameashi (diagonal evasion) and tenkanashi (turning step). From a starting point with feet side by side under your hips, you turn one leg off, fall to the side about one hip-width, put that leg under your hips, and recover the second leg back under your hips. There are no turns or arm motions or anything else. Wakiashi is just a sidestep.

Shomenashi or nanameashi

The theoretical core of aikido is avoidance of force and the tactical skill that makes that possible is taisabaki (body displacement). The first several motions in the first kata in the system are simple taisabaki, in which the student visualizes an opponent approaching and steps off the line of attack. The first of these motions (shomenashi) is interesting because originally it was done as an attacking motion moving straight-forward from the starting position (hence the name - shomen means forward), but now it is done as a diagonal evasion offline, so actually the name of the motion ought to be nanameashi (diagonal step).
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An interesting thing appears when you break down this motion slowly. If you stand with your feet side by side on a line and try (slowly) to fall straight forward with your center then catch yourself by putting one of your feet under you, you'll find that it is impossible to fall straight forward (90 degrees to the starting line). You will always get a little bit of sideward motion toward the leg that is moving. If you move a little faster then it is possible to fool yourself into thinking that it is possible to move straight forward, but if you slow back down and look at it carefully you will see that the only way that you can move straight forward is to pre-load the off foot - i.e. to make two motions. It is important to differentiate stepping from falling because falling is more efficient and faster and more powerful than stepping. So in this way, the embusen (kata performance line) serves as a check as to whether you are stepping or falling. if you end up moving straight forward then you're stepping instead of falling.
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A similar thing happens in the first turn (and all the other turns) in the kata. It turns out (pun intended) that you cannot turn 180 degrees and end up on the same line you started on. If so, you are stepping (pirouetting) instead of falling. So, when doing the any of the 180 degree turns, watch to see that you end up off the line you started on.

New sankyu

Today in class we warmed up slowly because of the frigid mats, skipped ukemi practice, and moved into tegatana. We focussed on small displacements, weight bearing on the medial two knuckles of the balls of the feet, and on falling offline. We got to play with an interesting phenomenon - it isn't possible to fall straight forward without getting off the line. Because our legs are hanging off the sides of our hips, any time we lift one in order to fall forward we get at least a little bit of sideward motion. This hearkens back to my earlier post on some of Rudolf von Laban's and Lisa Ullmann's ideas about three-dimensional motion. It's interesting that it shows up so prominently in tegatana no kata.

We spun through hanasu and played for a while with #2, emphasizing not premeditating the technique - starting off as in #1 and letting uke force you into #2. From there we got to experiment with shihonage and sumiotoshi as uke responses to the motion of #2.

Andy's uke was unable to attend today, so we did his sankyu demonstration by way of each of us doing about a million repetitions of oshitaoshi, udegaeshi, hikitaoshi, udehineri, and both flavors of wakigatame. These we did in kata mode with the pins on the end. Andy has perfectionist tendencies, so I was concerned that he would feel cheated or inferior for not having done a formal rank demo with folks watching and etc... But, talking to him afterwards, he seemed to handle it well. He has the proper amount of time in grade, is improving (dramatically) on his gokyu and yonkyu requirements, and is able to reproduce the sankyu techniques without much trouble - and those are the requirements for the rank. The formal rank demo is mostly gravy. The things that Andy especially needs more work on are the same things that plague me these days - gedanate and udehineri. But, we're going forward together!