Grossman & Christensen on dialing 911

A practice that we have recently begun integrating into our kids classes (and it wouldn't hurt the adults either) comes from Grossman & Christensen's On Combat: The book talks about how your heart rate is sort of an indicator of stress level, and how as your heart rate gets close to peaking out, you lose find and complex motor skills and experience all sorts of interesting perceptual phenomena, such as tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, and time dilation. I'd heard most of this before, though not this thoroughly presented, but they took it a step further and gave an example of the importance of these phenomena - dialing 911 while under extreme stress.
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Think about it. It is a fine motor skill that requires tactile and visual feedback - all things that are degraded when under acute stress, and it is a skill that you probably haven't ever practiced (how many times have you dialed 911 in your life?)
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So, the practice, suggested by Grossman & Christensen, is to place the students under some stress (breakfalls or kata or burpees or something) and have them intersperse bouts of that stress with repeatedly dialing 911 on an un-plugged phone. We added to this a short lecture about when you should dial 911 (whenever something really bad happens and there is noone around to help you) and we not only make them dial, but state their name and their emergency.
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Grossman & Christensen's book, On Combat, is not only chock full of great info on psychophysiology of extreme stress, but great exercises and suggestions like this. Things that make you slap your forehead and think, "Why didn't I think of that?" Highly recommended reading. If you're interested, please consider purchasing the book from my Amazon link below - they'll throw me a little kickback if you do.

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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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Look out for those Windsong guys!

I had a weird dream last night. I dreamed I was walking somewhere near Nick's Windsong Dojo and as I walked by a van a guy in the van pointed a long gun at me. I took the gun from him but as I pointed it at him, he said, "Um, er... Scuse me, I just found that gun lying on the sidewalk and I was wondering if you could tell me what kind of gun it is?" I didnt know, so we examined it and determined it to be a pellet gun so I gave it to some passer-by.

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Then I went into Nick's dojo but found that it was an interdimensional space, sort of like a Tardis. It was much bigger on the inside than the outside. There were roads and temples and groves and ampitheatres all inside the dojo. We had a meal but nobody would give me a beer to drink with my meal and somehow I got stuck outside the dojo on the edge of a grassy cliff when I went looking for the fridge.

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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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Uranage with a leg assist

What a fabulous, amazing technique! Kirby-san, I thought you'd enjoy this, but be warned: if you ever do this to me and I survive, I will kill you. (I think this technique may be illegal in competition anyway - under the new judo rules you can't grab the pants leg...)

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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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Otoshi-Guruma

I know y'all are frothing at the mouth in anticipation - waiting to find out what next month's thematic focus will be here on the Mokuren Dojo blog. Well wait no longer!
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June is Otoshi/Guruma month

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That almost certainly has more meaning to aikido and judo folks already familiar with these terms, but I think other martial artists will find a lot of material of interest in the upcoming posts.
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As a basic intro, the word otoshi means "drop" and guruma means "wheel." These terms are very common in judo and Tomiki aikido technique names, but otoshi-guruma is more than that. It turns out that otoshi-guruma is actually a plane of motion for humans, similar to how the planes we usually think about moving in are defined by forward-backward, left-right, and up-down.
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Stay tuned for more on aikido in greater than 3-dimensions!

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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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Unbendable arm recap

This past month has been Unbendable Arm Month on the Mokuren Dojo blog. As a recap, January was relaxation month, February was posture month , March was ma-ai month , April was evasion month. This month I have written several good resources on the phenomenon and martial principle of the unbendable arm...

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• Unbendable arm in deashibarai and oshitaoshi
• Unbendable arm in deashibarai (or not?)
• Unbendable is a means - not an end
• Unbendable arm in karate-do
• Unbendable... foot?
• The unbendable arm is not a parlor trick...
• Automatically unbendable
• What type of motion is orenaite good for
• Why an unbendable arm anyway?
• The bent unbendable arm
• May is unbendable arm month

Stay tuned to find out what next month's theme will be here at Mokuren Dojo.

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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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Unbendable arm in deashibarai and oshitaoshi

The unbendable arm in deashibarai (that I hinted at in the previous post) is the same kind of unbendable arm you see in oshitaoshi (ikkyo) in aikido. It is not a downward snatching motion, as seen in the previous videos, but when uke's balance becomes disrupted somewhat, and he drops, tori's hand floats downward with uke until it locks into a downward-pressing unbendable arm. Uke drops and tori's unbendable arm holds him down. Check out tori's left arm in the following decent video about the time that uke hits the ground.

Now watch the following video of Kyuzo Mifune doing ashiwaza. Of course it's hard to be certain with this old, low-quality video, but it doesn't appear that Mifune snatches down to smash uke. Mifune does the sweep, and as uke falls, Mifune's arm that is hooked to the falling man extends and ends up straight. There are a couple of times in the video that the arm not only ends up in extension, but has power in it - thus the unbendable arm.

Hop back and forth between the aikido and the judo videos above a time or two, and you'll see the unbendable, downward-pressing arm that I'm talking about.

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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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Unbendable arm in deashibarai (or not?)

Here are a couple of interesting drills for practising deashibarai solo. And here's your trick question of the day - how can you reconcile the downward snatching motion at the end of each rep with the concept of orenaite (the unbendable arm)? Or can you? Or should you? Does orenaite play a role in judo? Stay tuned for my annswer on what this drill has to do with the unbendable arm.

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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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Tsubame gaeshi

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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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The Universal Human Phobia

Perhaps the most amazing concept in Grossman & Christensen's book, On Combat, is what Grossman et al have termed The Universal Human Phobia - interpersonal violence.

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Grossman describes it this way. The most common phobia in the world is snakes. If you were to take a sack of squirming snakes and drop it into a room with 100 random people, as many as 15-20% would have a phobic-level response, meaning they would run screaming blindly. The rest of the people would do something intelligent, like move away or kill the snakes, or something.

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Grossman et al, in their research, have found that around 95% of the population has a phobic-level response to interpersonal violence. So, if you took that same room of 100 people and went in shooting and stabbing, almost all of them would run blindly. There would be virtually no intelligent response.

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This is amazing to me. Amazingly freeing to know that everyone has a phobic or near-phobic aversion to interpersonal violence. Somehow I thought it was just me, and it has made me feel lazy or cowardly for a long time. Somehow, just knowing that I'm not weird (at least not in this instance) is freeing and empowering.

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An example of what I'm talking about is the article I wrote a couple of years ago, titled, "Heroes," in which I talked about Delitha Ward and Kitty Genovese. On Combat sheds new light (for me) on bystander apathy. I'd thought that the bystanders in these cases were just lazy, evil, heartless, cowardly bastards - the scum of the earth. Well, per Grossman's Universal Human Phobia concept, it seems virtually everyone should be expected to act that way. (I understand that Air Florida Flight 90 was not interpersonal violence, but it seems that the same mechanism must be at work.) This really emphasizes to me the extraordinary mettle of people like Lenny Skutnik and Arland Dean Wiliams Junior, for being able to act in the face of such a horrific event.

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I said it then and I still maintain, "I pray that our training will prepare us to do something if we ever are forced to – not because I especially want to be a hero – but because that kind of apathy we don’t need in the world and that kind of hero, we do need."
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Thanks for the great lesson, Grossman & Christensen!

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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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Browser errors with Mokuren Dojo

Has anyone out there been having trouble loading the Mokuren Dojo blog? For some reason, IE fails to load it on two of my computers, but other browsers, like Chrome, load it beautifully.

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Anyone else having problems like this?

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Anyone having trouble with the feeds?

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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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The problem with warrior wannabes

I don't think it's a bad thing for people to want to be warriors. It is a noble calling. The problem with warrior wannabes is they often want personal power instead of wanting to commit themselves to sacrificial service. Consider that throughout history and across cultures, warriors were considered to be a form of servant. Quick examples from Wikipedia:

Samurai is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan... was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society... the terms were nominalized to mean "those who serve in close attendance to the nobility,"

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The term [chivalry] originated in France in the late 10th century; based on the word for "knight" (French: chevalier...)"... From the 12th century onward chivalry came to be understood as a moral, religious and social code of knightly conduct. The particulars of the code varied, but codes would emphasize the virtues of courage, honor, and service.

...let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. (Luke 22:26;ESV)

So, the problem with warrior wannabes is not that they want to be warriors, but that they don't know what it is that they want to be. I wonder how many people would jump on the warrior bandwagon knowing it meant expending your life in servitude.

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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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Gedanate, maeotoshi same thing

Regarding Sensei Strange's excellent ongoing discussion of floating throws, following are two decent videos of a couple of techniques – one is classed as a floating throw – maeotoshi. The other is a center-striking technique – gedanate. I tend to think of these two things as the same thing – both floating otoshi throws. The only difference is whether your near leg ends up behind uke where he can trip over it, or in front of uke blocking him from stepping out...
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Gedanate at Nick's Windsong Dojo in OKC


Strange Aikido ukiwaza, including maeotoshi (starting at about 0:43)


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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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Warrior, doctor, teacher, farmer, mechanic

The other Day, Chris Marshall left a comment on one of my Warrior Spirit posts. I always get a kick out of his comments because he asks penetrating questions that make me think a lot before I respond. Chris commented...

I see no reason to hold warriors in higher esteem. There must be other, better metaphors to reach for. Doctors don't need to be "warriors", or even "peaceful warriors". Neither do teachers, farmers, mechanics...

Firstly, I have nothing against doctors, teachers, farmers, mechanics, etc... Those are noble, valuable callings - things to be proud of. But regarding warriors, simply put, the warrior is the only profession that civilization cannot do without. Grossman & Christensen's On Combat: actually addresses Chris' question directly, using some of his same examples (Hmmm, I wonder if Chris was setting me up for something by using those examples)...

...If we went a single generation without men (and women) who are willing to go out every day and confront evil, then within the span of that generation we should surely be both damned and doomed. We could go for a generation without the doctors, and it would get ugly if you were injured or sick, but civilization would continue. We could go for a generation without engineers and mechanics, and things would break down, but civilization would survive.We could even go for a generation without teachers. The next generation would have to play "catch up ball," and it would be hard, but civilization as we know it would survive. (page xxiii)

Regarding the ultimate value of doctors, a sensei once told me a (perhaps apocryphal) story once about Canada shutting down elective surgery one year and fewer people died that year but then they had a garbage strike and more people began dying from disease - the question suggested by the story, which is more valuable for civilization, a doctor or a garbage man?

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Another story to the point... I had one absolutely outstanding teacher in high school. He received the Teacher of the Year Award year after year. All his students loved his class and loved him, and he taught us much more than just the subject he was assigned. I was having a discussion with him once and I expressed the opinion that I thought it was a shame that teachers weren't paid more. He asked, "Why?" and I said something about kids being the future, and all that, to which he replied, "Well I don't think teachers should be paid more because unlike engineers and scientists and businessmen, teachers produce nothing of value for society." You could have heard a pin drop. I think I did hear my jaw hit the ground. He went on to explain, and the basis of his explanation was that children would (to a large extent) learn on their own and if a child wouldn't learn then there was nothing a teacher could do about it. There was more to it, but I don't think I could do justice to his argument in this short blog post.

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Anyway, of the examples given... doctors, teachers, farmers, mechanics, etc... All are noble professions and (I would argue) they all produce value for society. But none are indispensable for civilization. Without warriors, society would die of entropy in the form of destroyers (criminals, murderers, terrorists, etc...), and it would be a gruesome death and there would be nothing that a doctor, teacher, farmer, or mechanic could do about it.

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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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Taniotoshi as a variant of sumiotoshi

Sensei Strange is doing a very entertaining and instructional series over on his blog about ukiwaza - the floating throws of the Tomikiryu.  In my opinion, sumiotoshi is the archetype, or prime example of the ukiwaza in aikido, while ukiotoshi is the prime example of the floating throw in judo.

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But sometimes you can see the principle of a particular throw more clearly by looking at some other, seemingly unrelated throw.  For example, in his most recent post, Strange talks about sumiotoshi being properly thrown in the back corner instead of the front corner like ukiotoshi.  Check out the following video of taniotoshi.  This is a variation that Mifune was fond of demonstrating, though I couldn't find the video of him doing it on YouTube.  

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I think this throw is remarkable because it is, in principle, identical to sumiotoshi, but also because it emphasizes the 'dropping' nature of the otoshi even better than sumiotoshi.

Also, watch the following and bear in mind the dire warning it implies.  I recall a judo lesson years ago, in which Sensei Clif Norgard  asked me what technique I wanted to work on and I said, "taniotoshi."  Well, he let me know in no uncertain terms that we would not be playing with that technique that day because it was too dangerous.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the hell he was talking about.  What is so particularly dangerous about taniotoshi...

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Thanks, Sensei!

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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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