Patrick's ikkyu rank demo

Aikido with Patrick M., Vincent, Chris, and Hashan

• Tegatana while holding a full cup of water. We played this exercise twice, the second time faster, and I sloshed a little water on the second rep on some of the arm motions. That might indicate that my arms were doing something independent of my body, because my COM motions seem to be pretty well under control. I'll have to play that exercise a few more times and figure out what to think about that.
• Releases without incident.
• All of Nijusan with Patrick M. as tori and me as uke. He did great. I asked him what he thought were his strengths and weaknesses in aikido and he said that his faithful daily practice was his strength and the floating throws at the end of Nijusan were his weakness. Sure enough, he seemed more confident with everything before the floating throws, but that is to be expected because the floating throws are his current rank-level material. We probably ought to work on hikiotoshi some more, perhaps getting some other instructors' perspectives on how he can make that thing happen with one arm. But I thought it was all good despite the slight deficiency on floating throws. I thought that his oshitaoshi, hikitaoshi, and wakigatame were especially good. He has gotten good at finding the time to drive uke straight into the ground on those three. I thought he might also need some more work on kotehineri...
• The whole class worked on oshitaoshi, kotehineri, and kotegaeshi
• For the cool techniques of the night we worked on #9 and #10 of Ichikata, kotemawashi and kotegaeshi.
• Vincent called for more practice on the kaitennage that we practiced a week or so ago, as well as a tenkai kotehineri from a wristgrab. Both techniques that are found in his police training.

Dan Gable - it's personal

Dave at Formosa Neijia hit the nail on the head in this following comment to my previous post, pointing out exactly the topics that this book has me wanting to talk about.

...grappling is an intimate sport. It's not like standing back and hitting or kicking ...the tradition there is just so strong that getting second feels like failing...it may be an over-emphasis on the sport/winning aspect. Look At Dan Gable now. He's broken. Winning is fine, but is it everything? Are we going to gaze at our trophies from our wheelchairs?

Speaking of Dan Gable now, and gazing at trophies, check out this video...

It's personal

Mark Kreidler describing Dan Gable's mother...

Kate was every bit as hard-willed as one would expect a parent of Dan Cable to be...

"It was so hard on her," Gable says now... "She'd go stand outside the room when I wrestled, just go outside in the foyer. She'd come back to the door every now and then to look through the glass, but she couldn't stay in the gym.

Gable pauses, "This sport, it's a heart-wrenching sport...I'll be at the State Tournament this month, and I'll guarantee I'll choke up. I'll feel so good for the guy who is winning the championship - he earned it, it's finally there. But then you look over at the wrestler he just beat to win it, and that guy is crushed. And I just choke up for that guy. It's personal.

What is is about competitive martial arts in general and grappling sports in particular that seems to engender this kind of attitude... this type of identification of self-worth with performance outcomes? I can remember winning second place in the Mississippi State championships and third place in Louisiana years ago - but did I feel like a winner? No, I felt like a loser. Second or third best.

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The above quote comes from Four Days to Glory by Mark Kriedler. A study of the midwest wrestling ethos. I don't know that it really answered my question, but it was an entertaining read that certainly delves into the personal side of amateur wrestling in the parts of America where wrestling counts for a lot.

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If it sounds like something you'd like to read, please get your copy from my Amazon bookstore...

Rank tests this Saturday

Aikido with Patrick M., Rick, and Alan

• ROM, ukemi, tegatanaX2, hanasu #1-4 in detail with variations and emphasis on ping and brushoff.
• shomenate and variants, including 2-hands to the face (inside control) or the wrong-handed shomenate brushoff from gokata.
• dropping onto uke's front leg and hiding the head. Discussed not living here, but using the level change to stay safe and look for an out. Try thinking about this technique as dropping into a sprinter's start.
• ran through all of nijusan with Patrick M. once

Saturday will be rank test day. For Rick, gokyo demo - tegatana, hanasu #1-4, niusan #1-2. For Patrick M. ikkyu demo - tegatana, hanasu, all of nijusan.

Psychology of conflict

One of my students sent me this video on the psychology of conflict done by Richard Gannon. It is quite good - almost to a point stuff that we teach in aikido using different names. Very similar to a seminar that Steve Steed sensei taught in a seminar at our dojo in 1998. There are some subtle differences between this and what we are typically doing - but it is more similar than different.

Pins and repetitions

Aikido with Patrick M.

• ROM, ukemi, tegatana, hanasu
• shomenate, aigamaeate, gyakugamaeate - plenty of reps of each
• oshitaoshi, hikitaoshi, wakigatame - all paying particular attention to the pins on the end.
• Cool thing of the night: ryotedori countered by gyakugamaeate (nikata technique #2)

Embarassing Exercise Lesson #1...

Today I was discussing some training something-or-other with one of our trainers and I mentioned burpees. He asked me what that was and I tried (unsucessfully) to explain two or three times and then did one to demonstrate. My pants bound on my massively muscled thighs and the seam split across my bulging buttocks all the way from the waistband to the inseam under the crotch.

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The moral of the story...

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...Never demonstrate burpees while wearing slacks...

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...Never.

Lost cellphone

Hi, all, This weekend I lost my phone while watching Hulk in Hammond, LA. It was apparently picked up by some guys who gave my wife some lip about getting it back when she called it. So, we wrote that phone off and had the cellphone company suspend service to that number until I can get a new phone tomorrow.

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But the real downside is I lost y'all's contact numbers. If you are one of my regular contacts, please send me your contact info for me to plug into my new phone. Send your contact info to mokurendojo@gmail.com.

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Thanks,

Pat

Go Ronda, go!

I can't wait to see Ronda Rousey get Gold at Beijing! She just secured a spot on the Olympic team.

"No American woman has won an Olympic judo medal. Ronda Rousey may be ready to change that...

Rousey...needed less than three minutes to put away three outmatched players and win the U.S. women's Olympic middleweight (154 1-3 pounds) judo trials Friday.

Rousey, from Santa Monica, Calif., is the daughter of Ann-Maria DeMars, the only U.S. woman to win a world judo title. Her daughter's silver last year was America's first women's world judo medal since 1995.

To see Dr. DeMars' account of the trials, check out her blog.

The pre-requisites to do violence

In police training and violence theory there is this idea that in order for someone to violently aggress against you they must have these three things:

• the ability to hurt you
• the opportunity to hurt you
• the intent to hurt you

There is some flex in this theory. For instance, you can reasonably assume that almost everybody in the world has the ability to hurt you. Anyone can put a finger in your eye or trip you if you are not careful. Also, intent is hard to judge and people can hurt other people randomly without intent. But for the most part, the theory holds. In order for someone to do violence against you they mostly have to have ability, opportunity, and intent.

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It seems to me (and this may just be my perception or mis-perception) that most martial arts these days are overly focused on removing the opponent’s ability to hurt you as rapidly as possible. You can’t go to a martial arts class without hearing the old axe, “if they can’t see they can't fight, if they can’t walk they can’t fight, if they can't breathe they can’t fight.” There is this emphasis on disabling or killing by producing maximum damage as rapidly as possible.

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And that is certainly a valid, though maybe overzealous, method of dealing with violent people.

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But what about the other two legs of the violence tripod – intent and opportunity? We need to be working more on making ourselves the kind of people that other folks have no reason to intend to hurt (Romans 12:18), and we need to learn to disrupt the opponents’ opportunities to harm us. If people have no intent nor opportunity to harm us then it is not necessary to disable them. In fact, if you are very good at removing any one of these three prerequisites to violence then you are much safer and better off.

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Aikido seems to me mostly about dealing with opportunity. We are constantly shifting our position relative to the attacker to remove his opportunities to attack. We keep our distance, evade, brush-off, cover or clench to dampen his potential, push him away so he can’t reach us. Of course, while the student is learning to evade, avoid, and brush-off, he is learning all the old jujitsu tricks to create leverage to disable the opponent (remove his ability to do harm). Aikido, as a form of jujitsu, has the potential to seriously hurt someone, but typically that potential is held in reserve in case we are not able to stop the opponent’s intent or opportunity.

Why not a fusion of aiki and ju?

Dave Chesser asked me the other day, basically, “Since Tomiki aikido is supposed to be a fusion of aikido and judo, why do you not see folks do more judo techniques in Tomiki aikido competitions?” There is a lot going on there, but I think I can address some of it. First, you have to remember that Tomiki aikido is not a fusion of aikido and judo. It is an interpretation of aikido by a man who was a master of judo. So it is sort of aiki from a ju point of view. With that said...

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Judo techniques within aikido

There are some ‘judo techniques’ that are also part of the Tomiki aikido system. Going through the basic Tomiki syllabus, you see gedanate (called sukuinage in judo), wakigatame, and sumiotoshi, for example. These techniques are allowed in both competition systems and you see them thrown in competition pretty often in both systems.

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Aikido techniques that are not part of judo

Continuing through the Tomiki syllabus there are a lot of throws that do not occur in judo, at least in the context of competition. For instance shomenate (the frontal face strike) and kotegaeshi (wrist twist) and oshitaoshi (the arm push-down). Some of these are easy to explain – the judo guys never found a good, safe way to allow full power, full resistance striking in competition so they disallowed striking, or even touching the face. Early jujitsu competitions were rife with injury, so Kano disallowed all joint manipulation except for the elbow (the most stable joint on the body).

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The real mystery here is the absence of oshitaoshi in judo competition. Oshitaoshi is very similar mechanically to wakigatame, which occurs in judo competitions a good bit. Oshitaoshi is not disallowed in judo (it even pops up in judo kata) – it’s just not done in competition... I’d like someone to explain that one to me.

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Judo techniques that are not part of aikido

If you take out the several techniques that are in both systems, you find that there are a bunch of judo things that are just not done very often in aikido competition. Things like osotogari, hip throws, most footsweeps. Again, these techniques are (so far as I know) not explicitly disallowed in Tomiki tournaments, but they are just not done.

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I’ve touched on this topic before in various articles. Perhaps best in this one, But also in these…

• http://www.mokurendojo.com/2007/10/aikido-vs-judo.html
• http://www.mokurendojo.com/2007/10/another-difference-between-aiki-and.html
• http://www.mokurendojo.com/2007/10/goshin-jitsu-in-aikido-and-judo.html
• http://www.mokurendojo.com/2008/04/more-on-aiki-strategy.html
  

Eye of the storm

In moments of crisis the disciplined human mind works as a thing detached, refusing to be hurried or flustered by outward circumstance. Time and its artificial divisions it does not acknowledge. It is concerned with preposterous details and with the ludicrous, and it is acutely solicitous of other people's welfare, whilst working at a speed mere electricity could never attain. “Crab Pots” from A Tall Ship by Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

This rightly describes that mysterious time-dilation effect reported often by martial artists. I catch that sensation of time dilation, in which rapid motion appears leisurely, most acutely during aikido practice. I can even invoke that phenomenon at will (with pretty good reliability) in myself during aikido. The other place that I experience it more often than other situations is in newaza randori.

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There is this feeling of immaculate in-the-moment-ness during which the chaos and violence in the situation seems to diminish or even disappear, leaving me with the feel of strolling along with uke. Funny thing is this is often a one-sided phenomenon. Uke’s perception of time and violence seems to become enhanced as tori’s becomes diminished. Uke’s world becomes more chaotic and hellish as tori becomes calmer and moves slower. Some writers have described this as similar to the eye of a storm.

Good AM exertion

5AM judo/aiki with Rob

• groundwork mobility cycle X2 as warmup
• hizaguruma from the deashi bump
• newaza randori. I got Rob twice in various positional things and he ran me to a draw the third time. Good sweaty exertional judo.
• drilled legs-over escape from jujigatame. Rob brought up the point that omoplata might be a threat if you do legs-over from there. In judo you don't have to worry about that but it is something to think about.
• switched to aiki for a cooldown. repped owaza #1-4 many times into a crashpad and then did a handful of reps of owaza 5-10.

More fundamentals and randori with the new guy

Aikido with Patrick M. & Allen

• ROM, Ukemi
• tegatana with emphasis on concervative steps and upright posture.
• hanasu - releases #1 and #2
• evasion drills and aiki brush-off
• aigamaeate
• standing kokyudosa-like randori
• cool technique of the night - wakigatame starting from the inside like in shomenate. We even played this with a knife in uke's free hand and it works even better. cool.