Sudden kataguruma thought

Leave it to Chad to bring up the one throw in the whole syllabus that I understand least. We'd just finished a miraculous workout in which we investigated the otoshi and guruma throws in judo. I'd assigned him some open-ended homework of looking at all the things in the judo syllabus that are named either otoshi or guruma and figuring out why they are named as they are. He chimes in, "What about kataguruma?"

Well, first off, kataguruma is NOT my throw. I can barely get the iron cross variant from nagenokata to work on someone half my size. I have a variant that I can throw to some effect occasionally in randori, but it is not really a guruma. It is more of a home-grown taiotoshi with a shoulder in the mix as a fulcrum.

Guruma throws tend to make a very distinctive fall for uke as he rotates in two planes - head-over-heels, and around a vertical axis through his body. It very much resembles a cylinder rolling on its axis as it turns end over end. Kataguruma has this fall when thrown properly.

Part of why kataguruma is so confusing an example of otoshi vs. guruma is because it is typically taught with a parallel offbalance down the line of uke's feet. This offbalance is typically associated with otoshi throws. In this case. tori offbalances as if to throw an otoshi and as tori compensates with the rear foot he gets lifted in a guruma throw.

Last night I had a sudden thought regarding this. Often, the otoshi-guruma thing makes more sense to me when I can find the otoshi variant of the guruma that I'm studying or vice versa. In this case, what is an otoshi that is thrown from nearly the same position and timing as kataguruma? I think it is tsurikomigoshi. I'll need some time and skilled ukes to play this idea, because kataguruma and tsurikomigoshi both intimidate most ukes, but I think that playing for a while with these two throws in a compare and contrast type practice will help to clarify why kataguruma is a guruma.

Hikiotoshi uchi

Today, Whit and I played some Jodo. First I practiced Kihon #1-4 solo form, loosening up the stiffness from the judo abuse I took 2 days ago. Then Whit held a sword for me while I practiced the jo side of hikiotoshi uchi (kihon #3 - sweeping the sword aside). It was a good day - nobody got a broken hand. After I did hikiotoshi a while, Whit wanted to try and I held the sword while he did the move. He held the stave in a quarterstave-type posture with one hand at the center of mass and the other hand halfway to the end. He couldn't lift the stick in the typical honteuchi posture so he derived the quarterstave grip spontaneously and you know what? Hikiotoshi worked GREAT for him! It was pretty cool. After Jodo we had a footrace up the hill to the stop sign and even that was fun (even though Whit won). Then we planted an oak tree at Nanna's house.

Passing comment

Chad made a sort of passing comment yesterday as we were discussing various judo textbooks. He said "Did you notice that Mifune 'rewrote' the gokyo in Canon of Judo?" "Nope," I said, and we went on. But that is just the type of comment to make my INTP act up, so today I dug out my copy of Kodokan Judo, which has the 1920 gokyo (throwing syllabus) in it and Canon of Judo, which has Mifune's (1960) interpretation of the gokyo. Sure enough - they're vastly different. How'd that slip past me these years?
.

This piques my interest because of a conversation I've been having with several of my betters about the rationale behind the gokyo. Why are kyo1 throws grouped together and why are they generally taught before kyo2 throws, etc... I've made the point that practically nobody teaches the entire gokyo and fewer instructors still teach it in the order that it is presented - but still I've wondered for a long time now if we're losing something by not teaching it in the order that it was handed down to us from Kano through the Kodokan.
.

But now this. Mifune, one of only a handful of men to ever earn Kodokan's 10th Dan rank, had his own gokyo. This suggests several possibilities:

• Mifune might have been missing the point of the gokyo along with the rest of us.

• Mifune might have known something that the other brainiacs at the Kodokan didn't.

• The order and groupings of the gokyo might actually be arbitrary and meaningless.

None of those really feel like a satisfactory answer to me...

Mighty fine judo session

Today we had Sensei Chad Morrison of Akari Judo visiting. We had a great session in which we worked on the otoshi-guruma idea in several different ways. We warmed up with two variants of osotogari which illustrate the main ideas of otoshi and guruma. From there we moved into a melange of ukitoshi, taiotoshi, sumiotoshi, hizaguruma, and ashiguruma because these are the throws with which I can best illustrate the ideas. We were getting miraculous otoshi throws, which, on the off chance that they didn't work, they set up a miraculous guruma or a different otoshi. We particularly got a lot of mileage out of otoshi-guruma combinations of hiza, uki, tai, and sumi.

In exchange for the otoshi-guruma info, Chad showed me several interesting groundwork tidbits, including a very, very cool entry into groundwork from uchimata that is essentially similar to the Granby roll made famous by wrestling coach Billy Martin of Granby Street High School in Norfolk, VA. Makes sense that Chad would bring up the Granby roll, as his dojo is only about 90 miles from the epicenter of Granbyland. It was super-cool!

We had an impromptu randori session, in which I mostly held my own but failed to get the advantage before he wore me out and pinned me twice in quick succession. Chad is very good on the ground. The tables turned somewhat when we moved to standing, as I was more comfortable and I got a couple of falls out of him. All in all great fun. I tried to talk him into moving to Magnolia and he tried to talk me into moving to Richmond, but alas - no success on either side.

Thanks, Chad, for coming to play and thanks to his lovely new bride for letting us play for a few hours.

Stab the foot

Today I was working with Mytchiko on distancing. Mytchi is legally (though not totally) blind due to retinitis pigmentosa so a while back I assigned her some open-ended homework of trying to figure out how to improve her sense of distance. Here's what we came up with. Mytchi carries a 52" cane that happens to be exactly twice her arm length, which means she can use it to measure ma-ai. My suggestion to her was to carry it constantly and play a distance guessing game everywhere she goes. Choose an object and walk to two arm lengths from it (ma-ai) and then measure with the stick. Repeat liberally until your distance sense improves.

Another game that we played was "stab the foot." In which tori holds the cane and focusses on uke's face. Then on each step uke takes tori tries to stab uke in the top of the foot with the cane. The secret is this - during a certain part of the gait cycle the foot has to be directy under the center (under the face). I could stab the foot very often. Mytchi was slightly less accurate, but a little practice will fix that. I also advised her to work on identifying which side of the foot the cane lands on when it misses the foot.

Another thing we worked on... Mytchi complained that in crowds people would occasionally 'accidentally' kick the tip of her cane out from in front of her and it was disorienting. I showed her a jodo technique (#6 seitei kata) in which tori holds one end of the stick with the other end resting on the ground in some indeterminate place off to the left of the body. It really doesnt matter where the other end of the stick is but kata specifies that it slants off to the left. Anyway, during the evasion tori brings the near end of the stick to some predetermined point that is the same every time - like the solar plexus. This puts the rest of the stick into a standardized position so that it can be easily and conveniently grabbed with the free hand. This worked great for Mytchi. As I would kick her cane out from under her she'd smoothly retract it to her shoulder and get control of it with her other hand.

It's pretty cool working with Mytchi because it forces me to reexamine how I define fundamentals like ma-ai. Always working with "sighted" people lets me get into a groove that Mytchi breaks me out of. I also enjoy helping her improve her "OM" skills. That's "Orientation and Mobility" for those that don't speak "low vision." I get a kick out of working with Patrick M. for the same reason - his left arm forces me to rethink what is the core of aikido and what is gravy. And that is a very good thing to know.

The "really lost" wrist release

Last night was a good class with Patrick M., Kristof, and myself. We got a little bit farther into the ukemi with the turn-side and turn-back rolls. The rolls are looking better. It’s time to start getting much deeper into the airfall preparations in ukemi. In tegatana we explored the relation between the size of back steps and our ability to stay on the balls of the feet with heels slightly brushing. With a larger than normal back step,the heel lifts, leaving you balancing on the balls of the feet. Ever so slightly less stable.

We repped hanasu a couple of times, including some practice on Patrick M’s off-side. He was doing great releases with that arm and it brought up the topic of the “really-lost” wrist release. Not the two that begin yonkata – those are just “lost.” This is the “really lost” release. There comes times when tori’s or uke’s grip begins to fail, giving us the choice of losing contact or holding harder and harder. The harder and harder option is a particularly bad one, so the solution (the release) is to switch hands as the grip fails. This is a form of release that does not appear in hanasu or junana – but it occurs in randori and in the chains. And it is an important release skill. Anyway, with Patrick M’s reduced range in his off-side, he gets into that “really lost” release situation earlier and more often than the rest of us. So he provides a great reminder of a skill that some of us can forget to practice sometimes!

We played with Chain #2, getting into the forearm pushdown. We played with some variants of this, including doing it with just the wrist and doing it with wrist and head like the entry into aikinage. Then for the “cool ninja technique of the night” we did the gyakugamae ate out of sankata where uke grasps tori’s upper sleeve in gyaku stance and tori binds the arm and rotates behind him, pulling him into gyakugamaeate. Worked great and was a lot of fun.
At the end of class we did Nijusan 1-10 and then emphasized techniques #1, 4, 8, and 13. #1 because it is the basis of everything and #4, 8, and 13 because they seem to be an example of a slightly different timing than the others. These seem to occur slightly earlier in the ura (outside) path.

Men - kote - do - tsuki

Last night, Whit, Knox, and I worked on the first sword kihon – men kote do tsuki – basic strikes. This exercise basically consists of setting up cues so that when tori sees an opening he strikes it. When I’d drop my sword to the right, Whit would take one big step in and gently touch me on the top of the head with his sword. When I would drop my sword to the left he’d step in and do kote to the lead wrist. When I’d pick up the sword he’d alternately step in and touch my right abdomen or he’d twist the sword slightly and thrust into the center. Whit got the hang of all four basic strikes and got pretty good at responding to random cues from me. Knox got the menuchi (head cut) and the kote (wrist cut). It was a lot of fun.

Seitei Jodo at Mokuren

Of all the experts in the world at Jodo - I'm not one of them. But I want to write about Jodo today, and, as Dorothy Sayers put it so aptly,

That I, whose experience of teaching is extremely limited, should presume to discuss education is a matter, surely, that calls for no apology ... Bishops air their opinions about economics; biologists, about metaphysics; inorganic chemists, about theology; the most irrelevant people are appointed to highly technical ministries; and plain, blunt men write to the papers to say that Epstein and Picasso do not know how to draw. Up to a certain point, and provided the the criticisms are made with a reasonable modesty, these activities are commendable. Too much specialization is not a good thing. There is also one excellent reason why the veriest amateur may feel entitled to have an opinion about education. For if we are not all professional teachers, we have all, at some time or another, been taught. Even if we learnt nothing--perhaps in particular if we learnt nothing--our contribution to the discussion may have a potential value. (Sayers, The Lost Tools of Learning, Oxford, 1947)

Anyway, I'm not an expert at Jodo, but I have practiced it for the most part continuously for the past 12-15 years, so I have thoughts that I'd like to express not so much to enlighten others, but so that perhaps someone who is more expert could educate me further.

If there are any serious problems with Seitei jodo as a system, they are two:

First there is no system of randori that allows experimentation against resistance while maintaining safety for the participants. I have some ideas on how to correct this, but perhaps I'll mull it over a few years before I try to get a partner and put that into effect at Mokuren.

The other potential flaw in the system is relatively minimal education for the sword-wielding partner. We are currently working on this at Mokuren. We basically have an informal study group playing with with various sword exercises in an attempt to get at least a little more comfortable with the sword half of the equation. The exercises we are playing with include the kendo kihon (basics) and kata set as well as the tachiwaza (sword-using) and tachidori (sword-taking) techniques from Aikido's Koryunokata. I figure we certainly won't become swordmasters working on this, but if the sword man becomes even a little more comfortable then his jo-wielding partner will have to become sharper too.

So, If there is anyone around Southwest Mississippi who would like to play (safely and reasonably) with sticks and (wooden) swords with me, drop me a line.

Japanese vs. English

Subcultures are defined in large part by their specific use of jargon. The martial arts world is rife with this and aikido is probably worse than other martial arts, because it has at least two different commonly-used systems of terminology for naming techniques(Aikikai and Tomiki).

I realize that one of the best ways to irritate my readers is to use terms that only a select few of the in-crowd understand. But the problem with not using the Japanese is that often a complex thing has been given a name that happens to be Japanese. In some cases, I can give the English in parentheses, like when talking about the oizuki (lunge punch) technique, but in other cases, like when referring to gyakugamaeate, there are several potential English translations ranging from literal (reverse-posture striking) to loose (the outside face push), none of which convey the idea of what is being discussed. To stop in each post and write the paragraph that it would take to give an approximate meaning of gyakugamaeate would be onerous.

So, to help out all those who I have irritated by using Japanese terminology, here are a few guidelines that I will attempt to follow from now on when posting on here:

• When something has a widely-used English term that is both concise and evocative, I will use the English, maybe followed by the Japanese in parentheses. For instance - the guard (dojime gatame)
• When the concise, evocative English term does not exist, I'll use the Japanese terminology, often followed by a loose English translation in parentheses. For instance - yama arashi (one-armed shoulder throw combined with a leg sweep).
• When I'm specifically talking about Aikikai techniques or when I think the topic might be particularly interesting to my Aikikai buddies, I'll use both naming systems as I understand them. For instance - gyakugamaeate is roughly the same thing as sokumen irimi nage.
• When I can, I'll provide links to pictures or video to clarify especially problematic terms, like gyakugamaeate .

Thanks to my friends who have told me that my use of Japanese terms bugs them. Please keep reading and leaving comments and let me know if I get better or worse ;-)

I'm looking forward to naptime!

Aiki class this morning had a good attendance. Myself, Bryce, Andy, Patrick M., Mytchi, and Kristof. Whit and Knox helped us warm up then mstly did their own thing in the corner. We worked tagatana as a group, then Andy helped Mytchi individually with it. We worked hanasu then chain #3, delving into the transitions between kotemawashi (nikyo), wakigatame (gokyo), kotegaeshi, and gyakugamaeate (maybe called sokumen irimi nage??). After this, everyone watched as Patrick M. did his sankyo deomnstration with Bryce as his uke. He'd practiced with Andy as uke but by this time, Andy was not feeling well, so Bryce filled in. It was an interesting experience for both partners because Bryce got to experience some interesting one-armed variations of nijusan - particularly #6 and #8. Also, Patrick got to experience a really excellent uke that he was not used to (not to knock Andy - he's a great uke too). It was a good demo and we have another new sankyu.

We broke for breakfast for a while and then Bryce and I did some jo and sword work. We worked the first three techniques of jodo (honteuchi, gyakuteuchi, and hikiotoshi) in solo and paired forms. Then we did some of the basic kendo forms, including men-kote-do-tsuki (basic cuts), harai men (the clockwise deflection), and kote suriage men (the counterclockwise deflection). We finished up with suburi men (repeated cuts).

Thanks to Bryce for coming to play with me this weekend - and extra special thanks to his wife, Mary, for letting him come play. I look forward to seeing y'all again in three or four months during your spring break.

Funky Rich and DJ P3

This is a set of clips from Rich's Sandan demo at the October 2006 Aiki Buddies Gathering in Magnolia, MS. No, it is not the 'disco dojo' footage of P3 that everyone is clamoring for, but I think the music conveys the gist of the weekend.

Knackered

This weekend, Bryce Lumpkin (aiki shodan, judo shodan) came in from Florida to spend a couple of days working out with me on aikido and judo. Andy Sims showed up to help us work through this stuff. We started this morning with tegatana - no big surprises from anyone there. Then we got into hanasu. Bryce immediately brought up some interesting points for us to work on. His extension in #6 and #8 was much better than my students are generally getting. (This is the same lecture that Dr. John Usher had for us at the October ABG.) On the other hand, Bryce had some different ideas from my students on #1 and #3, and perhaps got a few hints on getting these two releases to actually release properly. This involves making release #1 have more of the release feeling that most of us get with #3. This led us into the chains and we worked on most of the main parts of chains #1 and #2 - for hours.
.

After breaking for lunch and watching an instructional DVDs we worked our way through all of junanahon kata- the fundamental aikido techniques. We started out reviewing the two patterns or paths of movement that appear in nijusan, reviewed the small steps concept, and spun our way through the kata with each player repping the technique for a while and without too much crying or gnashing of teeth.
.

I proposed, hinted, and nudged Bryce and Andy toward the idea that we should cover Bryce's judo questions tomorrow because we were all teetering on the brink after the HOURS of junanahon kata. But Bryce was afraid he'd be stiff and wimpy tomorrow - so we reviewed all the hip throws of the judo syllabus with some hints for catching them in randori and some hints for teaching them to beginners. As payment for the hip throw knowledge, Bryce let me use him as uke for the stuff I'm going to spring on Chad Morrison (judo shodan) next weekend in our special weekend workout. We worked taiotoshi (by this time we'd pulled out the crash pad), ukiotoshi, and hizaguruma. I was trying some of the stuff that I've been studying from a DVDs for a long time and tonight was the first time I've been able to replicate some of it! It was uber-cool!
.

But now I'm knackered and we start again tomorrow at 9:00...

Kotegaeshi and etc...

Tonight was another low-energy day because I have been sick for two days - lost 12 pounds yesterday (I'll let you use your imagination). Anyway, it looks like it was about a 30-hour bug and I'm much better now - just drained. We worked on tegatana with small steps, using the side step to calibrate the length of the diagonal steps in tegatana. We then played with the evasions and offbalances with partners, concentrating on these calibrated steps. Worked really good.
For a while, we played with the second half of owaza jupon - mostly so that I could get some reps on my favorite kata but Andy was getting some good practice too. We worked mostly on the shihonage, ushiroate, and kotegaeshi from this kata and it went well. Andy was smearing me with shihonage and I was getting a good kotegaeshi. This led to Andy and I working on kotegaeshi a good bit and talking about using the wrist control to control uke's posture. We got to work on the owaza and nijusan versions of shihonage and kotegaeshi. These roughly translate to omote and ura versions of these two techniques.
We used this work on kotegaeshi as a lead-in to chain #1 and we reviewed all of the first half of the chain (1a) a couple of times and then jumped into the second part that contains the shortcut through chain #1a and then branches off into kotegaeshi, kotehineri, and tenkai kotehineri. Andy was flowing better than I was tonight.
By this point I was waning, so we cut class short and I made it up to Andy with spaghetti and a movie.

The magic in small steps

This morning we worked on Tegetana, dissecting the first turn and making sure that if you start with the balls of your feet on a line then you end up moving slightly off the line as part of the turn. This is an indicator that you are falling instead of stepping (a good thing). We also worked on bringing the small steps idea and the feet-under-center (as opposed to center-over-feet) ideas into this technique.

After tegatana we practiced the evasions some with partners, emphasizing small evasions. We worked on seeing how small a step wecould take and still be out of the way. From ma-ai, uke has to take a large step to hit tori and tori only has to take a small step to evade. This gives tori a lot of extra capacity or freedom that he can use to his advantage in several ways. We played with several offbalances emphasizing these smallsteps and Andy was throwing me onto my knees during the first step.

In hanasu we got into some ofthe principles and ideas surrounding and leading into chain #1, including the separation step and seeking the neutral place between #1 and #5. These worked well and we got to explore oshitaoshi, udegaeshi, hikitaoshi, udehineri, and kotegaeshi in this first chain.

In nijusan, shomenate was working like magic when we emphasized the small steps. I ran through 1-10 with Andy as my uke but he only got through #5 nijusan - but that was my fault. The humidity was so terrible and my out-of conditioning condition from the holidays made me a wimpy uke. I promise to return to better condition soon, and hopefully it won't be this humid for another long while.