Helpful handful; 3 most common hip throw mistakes

Photo courtesy of Mundoo

One of the distinctive features of judo is its many varied forms of hipthrows.  Judo has named hip throws from every conceivable grip with the thrower standing on two legs or one.  But despite teh amazing variety of hip throw techniques in judo, they are all doing about the same thing - planting a fulcrum (tori's hip) against uke's body, taking a grip somewhere on uke's upper body, and using that grip to spin uke around the fulcrum.

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When you are learning to do hip throws it seems like there are an impossible number of things to remember - where to put each hand, where to put each foot, what part of your hip to place against uke and where to put your hip, etc...  But it turns out that there are only about 3 things that you can possibly mess up with a hip throw.

• slippage in the grip - If you do not have a good, tight connection to uke's upper body then he can slip around in your arms and escape or your fulcrum might slip upward on his body, reducing your leverage and making the throw harder.  Whatever type of grip you are taking on uke, make sure to take all the slack out from between him and you.
• misplaced hip - your hip is the fulcrum that you will spin uke around.  Generally you want your hips lower than uke's, and you want to place the correct part of the hip depending on the type of throw (side of hip or back of hip) so that uke doesn't slip to either side.
• misplaced feet - you have to set your feet so that your weight and his is borne through your legs into the ground efficiently.  This generally means getting your feet closer than hip-width apart and making sure that your feet and knees and hips are all pointing in the same direction.
• I think you'll find, as I did, that the first of these three common mistakes is the easiest to fix - just take a tighter grip with less slack.  The second two mistakes take a lot of repetition and experience to correct such that you can step into uke and get the correct hip and foot placement on the fly.
• This is where uchikomi becomes most valuable - uke does not have to take a pounding for tori to learn to set his feet and hip properly.  In fact, only doing nagekomi when learning hip throws slows you down and punishes uke unnecessarily.  You can learn proper hip and foot placement much, much faster doing uchikomi and picking uke up to the edge of falling then setting him back on his feet.  Also, when tori is inexperienced at setting feet and hips properly, he has to apply much more force to uke to make the hip throw work, and this leads to more awkward, punishing falls.  Learn hipthrows using uchikomi and when you do start throwing nagekomi the ukemi will not be as bad.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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How to get kids to slap when they fall

I had another triumph last night at the kids' judo class.  This one was about how to get kids to slap properly when they fall.  We'd been through all the standard exercises - rock on the back and slap, sidefall and slap big, etc...  I'd told them to, "swing big," and "hit the mat harder than it hits you," and all that. But in forward rolls and airfalls, most of them would still either slap with the backs of their hands or curl the arms up against their bodies and then land on them.  I'd just about worn my voice out, telling them, "don't land on your arm!"

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Then it came to me.  I put a spotter in  to hold the hand of the lead (rolling) arm, and just before they would roll I'd have them give the spotter five with their free hand.  Each time they slapped the spotter's hand I'd say, "This is your slapping hand."  The fix was immediate and complete.  100% of the kids stopped landing on arms and started landing on their sides, slapping big, and slapping with their palms instead of their knuckles!

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There are lots of this sort of breakthrough in teaching martial arts.  Instructors strive for the right way to say it or demonstrate it to get the idea through the students' skulls, then suddenly the students get it perfect, as if you'd just now told them the right thing to do for the first time.  One of my instructors long ago liked to say, "apparently the speed of sound is different for everyone because I've been telling you this same thing for years and my words have just now gotten to some of you."

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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Immunization against being thrown

Photo courtesy of Tcg3j

Have any of y'all noticed that in a room full of aikidoka, the person that has taken the greatest amount of light, compliant ukemi is often the hardest guy to throw against his will?

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That's just the way it works.  Some instructors have suggested that taking thousands of light, compliant falls for a specific throw is a lot like being immunized against that throw.

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That's part of the reason that we practice with partners instead of opponents and why we preach for uke to be compliant (there's other reasons too).  Even if you're not learning anything else (but you really are), then you are at least learning:

• how to survive being thrown, and
• how not to be thrown when you don't want to be

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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Questions about innovation in aikido

Photo courtesy of Can3ro55o

Is aikido perfect just the way it was handed down from Morihei Ueshiba? Was Ueshiba's magical aikido transmitted to your teacher and on to you with perfect fidelity?

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Where does the innovation in the art come from? That is, who is in charge of innovating; every individual aikidoka? the mid-level instructors? only the greatest masters? Who owns aikido, along with the rights to preserve or change it?

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In what other form of art is the object to faithfully reproduce the master's skill and performance?

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I don't know what your answers are - I'm not even wholly sure what my own answers to these questions would be, but the traditional Japanese answer is shuhari - the three-stages of learning

• Shu - to keep - your object is to learn to copy your master's skills with as perfect a fidelity as possible. This stage generally lasts to some rank around shodan (first black belt)
• Ha - to break - After about shodan, you are given progressively more freedom to adapt the art to your own body and personality and preferences, while staying within the confines of your master's system and framework for the art. This stage generally lasts from about nidan (2nd black belt) to godan (5th black belt) or longer.
• Ri - to leave - Eventually you are expected to transcend your master's understanding of the art, creating your own personal expression of what the art is. Many practitioners never get to this level, but if they do, it is typically after rokudan (6th black belt).

What do you think?

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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Stake standing seems to be tadasana

Lately, Mondays have been my day to post a yoga idea.  Here's what I've been thinking about and working on lately - actually it's a martial arts/yoga crossover.

What got me thinking more about this standing introspection thing is Rick's repeated insistence that the Stake Standing practice found in some Chinese internal martial arts had benefited him in other areas, including relaxation within his martial arts techniques.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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Explode early or ooze?

Photo courtesy of Simmr

For years now (nearly 20), one of my main ideas in newaza with respect to escaping hold-downs has been to see the hold coming and to explode into the proper escape technique just before the opponent got completely into it.  Of course, I could still do the technical, methodical, high-leverage, maximal-efficiency escapes, but I was taught and I have been teaching that the escapes happen best when you pull the trigger just before the holder gets set. And that's a pretty good way to teach escapes.

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But it's been working differently for me lately.  Lately I find more and more times when I don't see the hold coming and he's pretty well settled before I can pull the trigger on the escape.  In these instances I'm finding that my strength is not as explosive as it once was, so my age-old strategy has been getting me bogged down under people.

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But I've still been coming out on top a lot of the time - just not by exploding early.  I have found that I have been having good success controlling the top man's position so that I'm not taking as much punishment, and using that time to relax, take a breath, let it out, find the weakness in the hold, and start oozing or rolling or sliding toward that weakness.

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Different strategy for me - been having good success with it.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
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Posture facilitates relaxation

One of the best ways I know of starting to relax in the context of martial arts is to get your posture working properly.  Here is an article I wrote some time back on correcting posture starting at the feet, since that's where we directly interact with the largest force (gravity) and the largest object (the Earth) in our lives.   Following are a couple of good videos about getting posture working rightly starting from the shoulders.  Matt A. at Ikigai turned me onto the Esther Gokhale video some months ago, and I've really found it helpful.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
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Can you rise and fall at the same time?

Photo courtesy of ISAFMedia

One of the strangest phenomena in aikido (and judo and karate, etc...) is the motion of the Center of Gravity (COG) of the body as we move around.  Consider this example...

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From a natural, upright, relaxed posture (shizentai), take one sliding step (tsugiashi) forward a couple of feet with the left leg, then bring the right leg up under your center.  During the first part of this step, as your left leg is moving, is your center of gravity rising or falling?

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Falling, right?  Sort of...  But it's also rising at the same time!  How can your center of gravity be both falling and rising at the same time?

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As you take the first part of that step, your center of mass (approximated by the knot of your belt) gets closer to the ground.  voila - your center is falling!

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But as you separate your legs to take the step, your knees and the bottoms of your feet get closer to the top of your head.  This means the mass of your legs is moving upward, floating your center of gravity along with it.  Your center is no longer approximately under your belt knot - it has risen some.  Voila - your center is rising!

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Rising and falling at the same time!  Now that's odd!  But what does it mean in a practical sense?

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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Rob Redmond's Folk Dances of Shotokan

In case you've somehow missed out, Rob Redmond has made his very informative and detailed Folk Dances of Shotokan book available for free to download as a PDF.  If you are interested in karate kata, this is a valuable resource with a unique and interesting perspective.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
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Lenten Challenge at Mokuren Dojo

Rick at Cook Ding's Kitchen has issued his yearly Lenten Martial Arts Challenge.  The challenge is to work out every day during Lent - no exceptions - no excuses.  I figure to ramp up my yoga practice from nearly-daily to daily, and I am also going to ramp up my aikido walking kata practice from my current 4-5 reps/week to 2-3 reps/daily.  As a guide to my walking kata practice, I'll be going back to my list of 100 Terrific Things to Try in Tegatana, and focussing on each of the hints for 1-2 reps.

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I don't figure to bore y'all with the daily details but I'm liable to update y'all every so often in addition to maybe posting insights that excite me about the walking kata whenever they come to me.

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Anyone interested in taking Rick up on his Lenten Challenge?  Hop on over there and check it out.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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The 10-minute rule for exercise

Face it, we hate to exercise - otherwise 2/3 of us wouldn't be overweight and 1/3 of us wouldn't be Type II diabetic and 3/4 of us wouldn't be sedentary and half of us wouldn't die of heart disease.  Exercise is pretty low on most folks' list of things to do today.  But we have to get some regular exercise if we don't want to face that long, slow, painful decline.

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I have this guideline for the particularly bad days when I can't convince my mind to kick my butt into gear.  I call it the 10-minute rule.  I do my exercise routine for 10 minutes and at the end of 10 minutes I decide whether or not I feel better.  It almost always works, at least for me and at least for the exercise modalities that I prefer (yoga, judo, aikido).  It's pretty easy to find something in the first ten minutes that is so stimulating that it motivates me to keep going.

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And on those days that it doesn't work - just don't exercise.  I figure if your mind and spirit are so out of it that 10 minutes won't pique your interest, you need rest more than exercise.  And if nothing else, you just got ten minutes of exercise, which is more than 3/4 of the population will get today!

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So, some on!  You can do it for 10 minutes!  Then you can decide if you want to do some more.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

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Six qualities of a master

Eric Pierson posts a lot of exceptional material on his blog, but I think this was the most intriguing post I've seen there for a while -

The Six Qualities of Painting

• To display brushstroke power with good brushwork control
• To posses sturdy simplicity with refinement of true talent
• To possess delicacy of skill with vigor of execution.
• To exhibit originality, even to the point of eccentricity, without violating the li(the principles or essence) of things.
• In rendering space by leaving the silk or paper untouched, to be able nevertheless to convey nuances of tone.
• On the flatness of the picture plane, to achieve depth and space.

- "Lu Ch'ang"

If I may take the liberty of rephrasing this in the context of aikido, I'd say that six cardinal qualities of masterful aikido (perhaps not the only six) include -

• demonstrate the art with both power and fine control
• embody simplicity, economy, and efficiency in effective techniques
• demonstrate refined, gentle, lightness-of-touch within a vigorous practice
• exhibit eccentric originality, but still be recognizable (by other masters)
• convey nuance through restraint - not just appropriate action, but appropriate inaction
• convey the depth of the infinite potential of the art within the finite system

The fourth quality is really the one that wowed me the most. Notice that in my refinement of the wording I made eccentricity necessary for the master, rather than merely a possible extent of the master's creativity. The art of a true master is at once eccentric, exciting, unpredictable, amazing, unexpected, and challenging!

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A band director once got to lecturing us about how to play masterful jazz. He said that the trick is not in the sounded notes, but in the rests (quality #5). He went on to play a given piece with subtle variation in the rests, illustrating his point.

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As a last point to think about, notice that several of these qualities represent spectra, or sliding scales - powerful but controlled, gentle but vigorous, eccentric but familiar, active, but resting. The master of an artform optimizes all these sliding scales in every moment - in every instance of the art.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
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Yoga - standing vs. groundwork

Photo courtesy of Angela

I much prefer seated yoga, or groundwork over standing yoga. I suppose both are necessary for a well-rounded practice, but the seated yoga has always felt better for me. It's as if the standing practices are an exercise in breaking my body like you'd break a horse to subjugate its will to yours, while the seated yoga might be likened to gentling or whispering a horse (not that I really know anything about that either).

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Anyway, I still try to get 2-3 days of standing practice per week, but I look forward to the seated days.

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
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Nasty driving conditions for class time

It might not be 3 feet of snow, like some parts of the nation have gotten in the last few days, but southerners suck at snow and ice driving, so be careful.

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I figure y'all probably have sense enough to NOT show up for kids' judo and adult aikido tonight, since it's been sleeting since mid-morning and we expect snow beginning midafternoon and intensifying after dark, maybe accumulating as much as 2-7 inches.

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If you do show up, I'll be there and we can have class, but come on, martial arts are about self-protection anyway, so play it smart and stay at home and I'll hope to see you Saturday or next Tuesday.

 
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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
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