Kid's judo

Kid's judo with Whit, Mason, and Knox

• warmup, ukemi, hopping interspersed with ukemi using the exercise ball as a form.
• attacking the turtle with a cross-face turnover and with the roll into rear seated guard from the beginning of the meatgrinder.
• push back to base repeated over and over is a cool ground mobility skill. Sort of like backwards low-crawl.
• crawling man randori.with emphasis on keeping rolling, shucking the opponent off, and pushing back to base.

The Nitty Gritty truth

I just stumbled across a quote that floored me. I don't know how many of you like bluegrass music, or the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, but this is the truth about art in general and it applies to martial arts as fine art forms as well. This is the spokesman of the band, I guess the 'lead singer', in the introduction to the song, Precious Jewel from the album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Pay attention...

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Now I'll tell y'all a little secret of my policy in the studio, and I find it is true. I believe it is true most times. Whenever you once decide that you are going to record a number, put everything you've got into it because... Don't say, "Oh, we'll take it over and do it again... Because every time you go through it you lose just a little something... So let's do it right the first time and to hell with the rest of it.

Who is with me on this one? Who can say that they understand what he is saying in relation to martial arts, or kata, or... pretty much all of life?

Promote Three - Keepin' it going

Time again for the Promote Three feature. This time I’m featuring three blogs that have impressed me because of the authors’ stick-tuitiveness. These guys get the ‘keepin-it-going’ award. I think the following three blogs deserve honors, traffic, and link-love greater than they are getting:

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Nathan at TDA Training gets it again this month for managing to keep his training and his blog going, and even expand things a little by offering free classes for veterans and hosting the Martial Arts Blog Carnival on his blog next month. And all that in the face of a move to another state and all the lifestyle upheaval that carries with it. Great job, Nathan! You’re an inspiration.

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John over at JohnDo – The Way of John. Not only did John move to another state fairly recently, but he managed to harass his ultra-busy roommate into continuing to teach him aikido and judo. Even with a very small space, couches for mats, and wooden spoons for practice knives, they kept on practicing. John finally managed to get some mats and a larger practice space – and what did the have to contend with then? His roommate-instructor graduating and moving off. So John has taken over as club instructor and has not only kept it going but has grown the club. That’s fantastic dedication!

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Andy at Andy’s Epic Ramble. John can’t get all the credit for keeping it going. Andy, one of my most dedicated students (who would regularly drive 90 miles one way to class), just moved down to Orlando and is working out with John, learning Johndo. I’m impressed with Andy’s desire and stick-tuitiveness. Keep it up!

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And as an added bonus, starting this month, each month I will move the three Promote Three winners to the top of my blogroll. You get first position, above the fold linklove in addition to kudos from me! That change in my blogroll will be in effect by tonight.

Gaze angle in multiple attacker randori

A few weekends ago I taught a seminar at Starkville and we talked about and worked on the importance of metsuke (proper gaze control). We demonstrated and gave some exercises to work on how to slow down the speed of the conflict by keeping the gaze angle constant on a fixed place on uke. In order to be able to do this when uke is facing away from us and in order to be ale to get that “far mountain gaze,” I told tori to always look through the center of mass of uke’s head, as if burning a hole with laser-vision. (Bet you didn't know that turkeys were masters of metsuke, but anyway...)

Chops made the observation that this change in perceptual speed is likely part of why multiple opponent randori is so fatiguing. We’re forced to switch gaze angle from one attacker to the next to keep track of them. Good catch, Chops. Sure enough, we do tend to screw ourselves up and wear ourselves out by switching back and forth from one uke to the next. I’ve been thinking about how to minimize or at least reduce these gaze shifts.
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Consider this article from a while back about tenkan ura forms (turning backward movement like in most of nijusan) giving us a wider view of what is going on around us before we commit to smearing uke. What if we can make use of this to reduce shifts in perspective. Let’s try this…

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Everybody in class gets an uke and finds a place on the mat. Uke stands still while tori fixes his gaze on uke and then walks around uke outside ma-ai keeping eyes burning right through the center of uke’s head. Pay attention to what you can see in your peripheral vision without ever changing gaze angle. Now do some techniques from nijusan keeping your eyes focused on the center of his head but attending to what you can see in your peripheral vision. Now add a second uke at walking speed and see if you are able to keep track of the uke you are not dealing with by making these tenkan ura motions.

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I think you will find that your peripheral vision is actually enhanced by this strategy. You see, peripheral vision only picks up motion – not shape. So a relatively motionless uke in your peripheral vision would be invisible to you. But by turning in a circle with eyes fixed on a point, we’re moving our field of vision without ever changing gaze angle, thus making everything in our peripheral vision move with respect to us. So we can see the second uke even better when we are turning backward.

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Try that out, Chops (and everyone else), and let me know how your mileage varies.

Vigorous judo tonight

Judo with Rob

• ROM and groundwork cycle as warmup. The groundwork cycle was a lot more freeform and ranged across the mat almost like no-resistance ground randori. Cool.
• Three flavors of ukigoshi. Good nagekomi. Lots of airtime and mat pounding followed by light standing randori emphasizing ukigoshi.
• Newaza randori. I think I was the bear tonight. My ground mobility was particularly good tonight and Rob just had a hard time. Take away lesson: you have to keep your butt in motion., or if you're going to rest, get an assymetric grip on the opponent, get him offbalance and make him bear your weight. Then you can rest.

Aiki with Rob

• Suwariwaza and Hammi handachi from Sankata.

CSSD with Rob

• basic cuts (1-12 and the abbreviated 1-2-3-4-5-12), a Modular pattern, and some stick Crossada. I can see how I could become comfortable with the system but it sure sucks for me right now. Ah, the joys of being a newbie!

Attention Martial Arts Bloggers

SWOT yo’ Blog

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Chris at Martial Development recently challenged us to examine ourselves and confess to a handful of personal weaknesses as a personal development-type thing. I think this is a great idea and something that I occasionally do (though I'm not really into publishing the results of my navel-gazing). In fact, this is such a good thing that I think perhaps Chris does not go far enough with this. Personal weaknesses are only part of the picture.

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One great tool for the sort of self-examination I’m talking about is called SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. SWOT is a structured way of doing a systematic overview of an operation for strategic planning purposes.

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I am challenging y’all to SWOT yo’ Blog! Here’s how:

• First you have to have an Objective. Some goal you want to accomplish. I recommend you use SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound).
• List a few of your Strengths. Things your blog has going for it that will help it toward your objective. Be honest. Sometimes it is harder to write down good things about yourself than to admit to weaknesses. I recommend listing roughly 3-5 strengths.
• List a few Weaknesses of your blog. Challenges that are internal to the way you are blogging that might hinder the attainment of your objective.
• List a few Opportunities that exist within the environment (not within your blog itself). Chances you might have or conditions that might exist for you to approach your objective.
• List a few Threats in the environment that might hinder your progress toward you objective.
• Brainstorm a few SO Strategies – think of several ways that you can use your blog’s Strengths to take advantage of an Opportunity in the environment.
• Brainstorm a few ST Strategies – think of several ways that you can use your blog’s Strengths to reduce the risk or potential impact of a Threat.
• Brainstorm a few WO Strategies – think of several ways that you can reduce or overcome your blog’s Weaknesses in order to take advantage of an Opportunity in the environment.
• Brainstorm a few WT Strategies – think of several ways that you can reduce or overcome your blog’s Weaknesses in order to reduce the risk or potential impact of a Threat.
• Now, you have a list of several strategies! Things you can do to move toward your objective. Directions you can go with your blog! You might pick the strategy that seems easiest or choose the one that seems most likely to succeed or pick the one that you think will have the biggest impact, but pick one and GO DO IT!

SWOT yo’ Blog!

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How about a little linklove to sweeten the deal? You don't have to publish all your dark weaknesses or tell the world all your secret strategies for blogospheric domination, but if you SWOT yo' blog and drop me a note telling me what you thought of the exercise and a little bit about what you learned, I'll post a link to your blog at the top of my blogroll - front-page above-the-fold linklove!

Controlling the encounter distance

In a couple of articles in the past few months I’ve written about perhaps the most fundamental rule of aikido – ma-ai. The basic gist of this idea is that you never let someone within arm’s reach of you without beginning to act. If you let them build a base of support within arm’s reach then they can attack faster than you can respond. I demonstrated this with the funny Trinity video as well as the Emil Boztepe video. Here is a video of a guy playing with some aikido throws and one of the things I was most impressed with was his skill at maintaining the encounter distance, forcing uke to leap at him. Before nearly every encounter there is at least a little retreat, forcing uke to commit.

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But in a book I was reading recently, Mastering Jujitsu by Renzo Gracie and John Danaher, the authors made the impressive point that in all the history of UFC, no fighter of any style had ever been able to control the encounter distance in order to remain standing and separated against an opponent intent on taking the conflict to the ground. In other words, if either fighter wants to go to the ground then that is where the conflict will take place regardless of the other fighter’s skill or intent to maintain ma-ai. To me, this further implies that no fighter has ever been able to prevent an opponent that intent on clinching, since a standing clinch is mostly prerequisite to a throw/takedown.

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But Gracie & Donaher’s observation works both ways in a self-defense situation. Consider this interview in which he talks about covering the hands and strategically retreating (two tactics that are commonly against the rules or simply impossible in ring-fighting). Gracie and Donaher suggests (albeit in a round-about way) that it is virtually impossible to stop an aikidoka from covering (a type of clinch) and retreating per the above interview. Indeed, we have found covering and retreating (what I call aiki brush-off) to be a spectacularly effective strategy in randori against judoka, modern-arnis guys, and other aikidoka. In fact, one of my students told us a story just last night about reflexively brushing off an attacker on the street and sailing him 8-10 feet.

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The bottom line: you can’t engage the enemy and control the encounter distance both at the same time. In order to control the encounter distance you have to be actively and strategically retreating (i.e. aiki brush-off). If you can do this while covering hands to damp out the attacker’s potential to hurt you, you can learn to be very effective in self-defense very quickly.

Working up to a cool scoop

Aiki with Patrick M., Kel, and JP:

• Ukemi emphasizing matching the line across the back with the line of the fall and practicing slowly enough that you can catch errors.
• Walking emphasizing the third pushing motion, the first turning motion, and the last turning motion. Especially the idea of matching the rise and fall of the center with the rise and fall of the arm and using the arm to clear a path for the center to sweep into.
  Hanasu #1-4 emphasizing watching for uke switching from ayumiashi to tsugiashi just before the attack and using the first offbalance to force uke to shift back to ayumiashi.
• Chain #7 working our way through kaitennage, hikitaoshi, oshitaoshi, and tenkai kotehineri with special emphasis on the idea of switching from push to pull and from front to rear of uke and synchronizing hands with feet.
• Cool ninja technique of the night was a variant of kohonage similar to the fifth standing technique in the following film. This was definately cool - but it blew everyone's minds so we went back to the zero-distance tenkai kotehineri from sankata. It conveyed the same idea and made more sense to everyone.
  
  

Ukigoshi and gearing ratio

Considering ukigoshi, if you look at uke and tori from above you can imagine them as gears turning together. One typically has to turn faster and farther than the other, thus creating different forms of throws. For example, sometimes tori turns a lot while uke doesn’t turn much, creating the big hip throws like ogoshi and koshiguruma. In other instances, tori turns a little as uke spins around him, creating different hip throws, like ukigoshi and haraigoshi. Most often it is some middle condition, with tori and uke each making some part of the turn. This variation in the turning speed of the two ‘gears’ is called gearing ratio, and you can get more info on that at wikipedia.

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With that in mind, you can define about two basic forms of any koshinage:

• Catch uke stepping forward. Step to the side just as his front foot plants, pulling him into offbalance. Turn your hips backward into uke with a backstep, loading him and throwing.
• Catch uke stepping forward. Step to the side just as his front foot plants, pulling him into offbalance. Pull uke’s lapel side 90 degrees to get him to step with the other leg. Load him onto your hips and throw as he turns the corner.

In the first form, tori makes all the turn as uke hovers in offbalance. This is the form classically taught in uchikomi, with tori pulling with the left arm and turning in to catch with the right arm. This is also the form taught in amateur wrestling – called something like ‘the back-step’. In the second form above, uke makes part the turn as tori makes the other part of the turn. As tori is turning to the left, uke is stepping with his left foot, taking up the slack.

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Both forms are decent beginning ways to learn the thing. I alternate between them in my teaching. I often teach the back-step technique as kubinage instead of ukigoshi or ogoshi – but that’s just a preference thing. There are many variations, but they mostly tend to fall in a spectrum between these two basic forms. In randori situations you have to find the right middle-ground between these two basic forms on the fly. That is just part of the art of the thing.

Right hand of the Devil

Now this is fun! But there is a lesson in this for us. Here is a great example of why you don't let someone within ma-ai distance if you can help it. In this range their hands can move faster than you can react. I figured Dojo Rat and Nathan would enjoy this clip...

Taking over the world!

YEAH, Baybee! I'm in the big leagues now! In addition to having a few of my articles picked up by Aikido Journal over the last couple of months, I've just now had an article picked up by Reuters through Blogburst. Black Belt Mama told us a week or two ago that she'd entered syndication the same way and I was jealous of her well-earned, fabulous success. Now I'm in the BBM syndicated super martial arts blogger club. Just the latest step in our top-secret plot for world domination!

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If you want to see my articles that have been picked up and re-published so far, they are:

• I am thankful for my first martial arts lesson
• At the risk of being called a heretic...
• Attack of the living dead
• The best self-defense there is

SMART Goals

In a previous article I wrote about re-thinking your goals whenever you find techniques are not working for you. When this happens, you are likely thinking wrongly about how to approach the techniques. Specifically, you may be trying to accomplish the wrong goals. Instead of trying harder physically, re-think your goals.

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The overall goal in aikido is about self-defense. This does not mean beating someone else up, rather surviving violence intact. As Mike Denton puts it…

Aikido is not about 'winning' or finishing your opponent off, but rather about being able to disengage from a chaotic and violent situation as quickly and safely as possible.

With that overall objective in mind, it is possible to define better performance goals. An acronym that is used in business and personal coaching is SMART.

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A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

• Specific – what exactly would be an acceptable outcome to you? What do you not really care about? Your flexibility or slack in the way you do the techniques exists among the things that you don’t really care about. You can’t sacrifice tactically if that means you don’t accomplish the essential outcomes but you can sacrifice tactically in the areas in which you don’t really care about the outcome.
• Measurable – how can you tell if you have achieved your goal? Is your measure objective or subjective?
• Attainable – Your essential goals must be things that are within your power to control. Something that is possible to practice safely.
• Realistic – Your essential goals must be things that are within the realm of normal physics and biomechanics. It is smarter to base your essential goals on the natural rather than super-natural (regardless of what you believe about the super-natural). Your goal should promote tactics that reliably generalize to most of the population of potential attackers. Your goal should be based on probabilities instead of possibilities.
• Time-Bound – You have to be able to execute tactics to move you toward your goals within real time. This means that your goals should promote tactics that make use of natural motion and gross motor skills within the opponent’s OODA loop.

Example: Kotegaeshi as a big fall. If tori gets the idea that in order to succeed at kotegaeshi, uke has to take a big fall that looks just like the instructor’s model, this is not SMART. It is not specific because you don’t know how big a fall uke has to take for tori to be a success. It is not measurable because you never know if the fall you just saw uke take was big enough. It is not attainable because it is not within tori’s power to control how uke reacts to the throw. It is not realistic because it is totally outside our experience to think that you can throw something as heavy as a person with that type of motion, and it is not time-bound because it often requires relatively precise leverage on the wrist and you are forced to plant your feet to exert into the throw – stopping your motion and taking you out of uke’s OODA loop.

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So, kotegaeshi as a big throw is a recipe for frustration. Without a compliant, skilled uke tori will never make that throw match his ideal of it.

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So, how do you make a SMART goal for kotegaeshi…

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Specific: tori should remain safe throughout the whole motion and uke should end up in a condition of unbalance with his arm turning outward in a gaeshi motion. Uke might fall down because of this but tori doesn’t really care if or how. Measurable: did tori get hit? is uke’s balance broken (this is a tough one to measure objectively)? Is uke’s arm turning outward? Attainable: staying safe, getting kuzushi, and holding uke’s wrist twisted are within tori’s ability to a great extent. These actions are largely related to things tori does as opposed to how uke acts or reacts. Realistic: it doesn’t take supernatural thinking to expect uke to stay safe, get an offbalance, and hold uke’s arm. Timebound: now, instead of exerting hard to throw uke thru the air, tori can relax and keep moving, acting to stay within uke’s ooda loop. These goals can be accomplished with natural, gross motor tactics.

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So, defining kotegaeshi as “tori safe, uke offbalance, holding uke’s wrist turned out” is SMARTer than defining it as some subjectively large fall out of a wrist-twist.

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The moral of the story is the same as in the previous post, “The mind drives the body. The body obeys the mind. Change your mind and you will change your performance.”

I am thankful for my first martial arts lesson

Recently I read an autobiography of Harry Truman. Perhaps not #1 on your list of Must Reads, but this was really interesting. I got it on a library discard shelf for 10 cents. You can probably find it under its original name, Mister Citizen, but it was also republished as Harry Truman Speaks his Mind. Reading his reminiscences of his childhood put me in the mood to write a childhood reminiscence. I'm sure y'all are not interested in 99.9% of my childhood, but this brought to mind my first martial arts lesson...

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I was about 16 years old and, as I've said before, had no clue about what martial arts was about. I'd never watched any martial arts movie or even heard of Bruce Lee. A buddy got me into TKD by telling me it was, "like boxing but you kick people." Well, I still remember one of my first couple of lessons. Instructor, Pat Little, had us standing after a workout one day and he told us to hold our arms out to the sides, make fists, and imagine that we were holding buckets in each hand. Heavy buckets. Five gallon buckets filled with water. We were told to imagine the weight as unbearable. He walked around us talking to each of us as we held our arms out. Pretty soon we were all convinced that there was no way we could hold up our arms. One by one we began to surrender and collapse.

After a couple of minutes rest and shaking it off, we repeated the exercise, but this time the verbal cues were different. We were to imagine strings tied to our arms holding them up. Imagine that our arms were hollow and weightless, filled with helium. Cool breezes blowing upward helping us hold. Soft pillows propped under our arms so that it was no effort to hold them up at all. You guessed it. We all sustained the posture much, much, much longer the second time.

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So, what was it about this simple, almost trite, demonstration that was so memorable, even so many years later? This was perhaps the first time I'd heard the moral of this exercise and had it so clearly linked to a practical, physical thing: "The mind drives the body. The body serves the mind. Change your mind and you change what you are physically able to do."

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And that is one of the most amazing things about the martial arts. Learning to change how you think about your circumstances in order to change the circumstances in your favor.

If it isn't easy, re-think it

Rory at Chiron just published a great article about the attitudinal difference between amateur martial artists and professional use-of-force folks (Rambling About Amateurs; Tuesday, November 20, 2007).
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He makes the point that the professional and the amateur in any field think differently about their domain of practice. This reminds me of something the late, great, Mac McNease told me, “If there is something in judo that isn’t easy for you to do then you’re not thinking about it correctly.” I thought that was profound and I still think it was perhaps the most profound lesson I ever received about Judo. It might even apply more in aikido than in judo.

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In aikido, if you disregard ukemi for the sake of argument, then there is nothing athletic about the system. If you are able to walk at a normal pace and push and pull with your hands hard enough to shut a heavy door then you are sufficiently athletic to do 100% of aikido. Virtually every adult on earth can do good aikido effectively, and if you can’t then you’re not thinking about it correctly.

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I’ve found over the years since that lesson from Mac and after I realized that there is nothing athletic about aikido, that it almost purely a mind game. Mental and attitudinal factors, as Rory puts it, are of primary importance - maybe even sole importance. All the magical aikido is simply a physical reflection of getting your attitude straight and getting your mind working right.

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So, if you are working on something and can’t do it, start re-thinking your goals and strategies. A lot of times you are working toward a faulty goal – something that is out of your control anyway. How are you applying the fundamental principles to your strategies to move toward your objectives? Is there one piece of the thing that is not working right? If so, work slower, break it into smaller and smaller pieces until you find something you can reproduce then start re-building it toward the whole thing. Is there a point in the process where the pieces don’t fit back together? If so, take it apart again and re-think it.

If it is not easy, you’re thinking about it wrong!

Re-think it.

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Stay tuned for a follow-up article about how to get your goals straightened out in aikido.