Crawling man randori

This is one of my top three favorite forms of randori for the kids (the others are chicken tail randori and zombie attack).  I particularly like this because the bottom man's objective is to not wrestle with the top man - rather to escape and flee to safety.  This is a mode that judo folks don't get to practice much because we are usually so tied up in grappling and submitting the other guy that we automatically re-engage after an escape even when that might not be appropriate (i.e. in a self-defense scenario).

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The rules are simple...

1. Bottom man starts on hands and knees.  Top man starts standing behind bottom man, with both hands on bottom man's back.
2. When referee calls "go" or "hajime" bottom man crawls across the mat to a finish mark while top man tries to grapple and slow or hold bottom man.  Bottom man is to avoid being drawn into a grappling match - rather escape and flee to the objective.
3. Top man cannot pounce.  Neither player may choke or jointlock-  it is a purely positional game.
4. If the action stops (top man holds bottom man) long enough to bore the ref, the ref may coach the bottom man or stand them up and start them over.
5. When the pair reaches the objective at the end of the mat, they switch roles and come back.
6. If one player or the other vastly out-ranks or out-sizes the other, the ref may throw handicaps to level the field (one hand holding belt, close eyes, no grips, etc...).

It is such a good form of newaza randori for the kids, I really ought to play it with the adults more too.

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More on men suburi

Ok, I'm belaboring the point and I know it, but here's some more video examples of men giri - how to make a vertical downward cut with a sword.  Last time we saw that there are some technical differences between men cuts done by different schools of aikido, kenjutsu, kendo, iaido, and jodo - mostly because they are trying to accomplish different things in their training.  So this time all the samples are from aikido folks.  We would expect to see more commonality.

Now, this next fellow looks like a raving lunatic dancing about and flailing the sword, but this is Shirata sensei - one of Morihei Ueshiba's close buddies and reportedly a pre-war badass.  For purposes of this discussion, ignore all the screaming and dancing about and look how clean and controlled his downward cuts are! (the sword swinging doesn't start until about 3:45)

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How to swing a sword

Time for another break from tachidori to look at uke's attack again.  Uke is primarily doing vertical men cuts in the tachidori, so the question comes up, how do you make a proper vertical men cut?  Turns out that it depends on who you ask.  Aikido guys have different cuts from iaido guys, and the kendo and jodo guys are subtly different from the others and from each other.  But you can see some commonality - makes sense - it's all humans cutting vertically downward with very similar weapons.  So my basic idea on this one is to pay most attention to the commonalities and try to make intelligent compromises when instructions differ.

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Sugano tachidori shihonage

So, what does tachidori teach us (besides how to take a sword from a swordsman (yeah, right)?  For one thing, it helps to show us what is the principle at the heart of various techniques.

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This particular tachidori shihonage, for instance, yells at me, "Don't get stuck in the Junana/kihon form of the thing - that's not shihonage.  At least, it's not the only shihonage.  Kihon shihonage is dressed in some nice clothes to make it presentable to beginners." 

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This shihonage is interesting to me because it is a more horizontal than vertical circle, and because it does not force uke down backwards (how uke falls doesn't define the technique), and because of the "Gimme that sword!" feel in tori in the end.

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Dan Penrod tachidori

Now this is a beast of a whole different color!  I really like this the best of any of the tachidori videos that I've posted this week.  This aikidoka has a lot to commend his performance...

• Tori is much smaller stature than uke - he is giving up far more with respect to ma-ai than would a larger tori but he still overcomes that disadvantage with relaxed but decisive irimi.
• Atemi, atemi, atemi!  Tori thumps uke in the solar plexus or side of the neck each time, further leveling the playing field.
• His technical range is larger than the 8-10 tachidori that everyone does - and the standard ones that he does do, he does in interesting directions after following uke for a step or two.  This demo has a distinctly randori feel to it.
• But what I really like the most is his relaxed demeanor.  No big deal, it's just a big guy swinging a sword.

Overall, this performance points at what tachidori could be - more than a nod to the past, more than just another set of 8-10 things to have to do for rank.  This is verging on randori with a sword (or stick).

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Personally I think a format similar to this, with foam bats or kendo armor and shinai, would be a much more interesting mode to play Tomiki aikido shiai in than the rubber knife thing.

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Chris Mulligan tachidori

More tachidori - much the same, but in this presentation you can see a couple of things more distinctly than in some of the other videos.

• This Aikidoka, for instance has a nice irimi with a gesture across uke's face indicating where he could insert an atemi, but also demonstrating that he is entering into the right space - sort of like a measuring stick.  A third possible benefit of this gesture is it helps to keep his hands out of the arc of the sword.
• Also shown is a beautiful explanation of the spinning sokumen iriminage (sort of a gedanate from a release 5 entry).  In many of the other films, this move looks like it's just a bit of fancy nonsense, but at about 2:00 in this film it is demonstrated beautifully with a sword-wielding tori. 

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Men - the vertical cut

One of my practice principles at Mokuren Dojo is that if we make uke better then tori will have to become better.  I think it's a good thing for folks to take some boxing or karate, and if it's available, some kendo or kenjutsu, because if uke gives us sorry attacks, our responses to those attacks will be sorry.

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So, in our autumnal focus on tachidori, we ought to pay a bit of attention to how to make a proper vertical cut (menuchi) because that is the majority of what we are responding to in the basic tachidori.  Following are some good exercises for menuchi.

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Hitohiro Saito tachidori

This is Morihiro Saito's son, Hitohiro Saito demonstrating the Iwama tachidori.  Again, this is much the same as the previous tachidori films - I guess that is to be expected because there are only so many plausible options when uke has a 3-foot razor-sharp knife. But this demonstration has a nice live-action tempo to it as opposed to the kata or teaching feel of the previous films.  There is also an outstanding guruma that took me by surprise in there.

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Morihiro Saito tachidori

Here is another very nice take on tachidori from Morihiro Saito.  These are much the same as the tachidori and jodori that Tomiki taught.  In fact, it's kind of interesting and surprising how similar these two sets are technically because of the time that passed between Tomiki and Saito (Tomiki was learning this stuff before Saito was born, and Tomiki was 8th dan in aikido before Saito began.)

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We always hear about all the differences between the earliest pre-war aikidoka and the post-war aikidoka, but what Saito is doing in his 13 tachiwaza is largely what Tomiki left us in the tachidori and jodori.

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Now, admittedly, Ohba was apparently largely responsible for the Koryu no kata - including the tachidori and jodori - and that would help explain the similarities because Ohba was studying with Ueshiba much closer to (but still prior to) Saito's time.  But Sankata (which contains the majority of the tachidori and jodori) is widely thought to be Tomiki's development - not Ohba's.

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In any case, Saito's performance here is lovely and interesting.

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Laser-focused autumnal tachidori

We have a small dojo space with limited headroom, so almost all of our long weapons practice (bokken, jo, etc...) is done outside on the driveway or lawn.  The only problem is it is usually scorching hot and 100% humidity outside in the summer here in southwest Mississippi, so summertime becomes our taijutsu (empty-hand) and tanto (knife) season, when we can practice in front of an air conditioner, and fall and spring become our taijutsu and long-weapons season when it is pleasant outside.  We don't quite hibernate in the winter-time, but that is our season to do more tandoku (solo practice) and much less falling while the mats and our bodies are cold.

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We've been doing this for several years this way, but our weapons practice has not been as focused and productive in the last year or so (or perhaps I've been paying more attention to it and have just realized how sorry we are in the past year or so ;-).  So I decided that this year for our autumnal long-weapons practice we would have a laser focus on one particular aspect or kata or facet instead of doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that and then not seeing it again for several months.

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So I asked Whit what facet of weapons he wanted to work on this Fall and he immediately said, tachidori! (Taking a sword from uke as you throw him!)    Really - the toughest aspect to practice outside (unless we drag a mat outside each day.  But you know what?  I'm up for it if he is!

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I figure for the next 2-3 months to devote all our outside weapons practice to tachidori and collateral skills (kihon, maybe some jodori, maybe even some sparring or kumitachi with foam sticks?).  

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Here is a list of the 9 Tomiki tachidori...

Tomiki Tachidori
Sankata

• men maeotoshi
• men shihonage
• men aigamaeate
• do oshitaoshi
• men hijikujiki

Rokukata

• men oshitaoshi
• men wakigatame
• men hineri oshitaoshi nage
• men kotegaeshi

And a couple of videos...

Sankata tachidori (starting at about 6:00)

 

Rokukata tachidori (starting at about 2:00)

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Mutual benefit with undesirables

Most folks in judo pay some lip service to Kano's two ideals  - as if they are mottoes that we are supposed to recite at the beginning of class and then never think about again.

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NO!  Kano actually intended to create an ever-increasing group of people who made best use of their strength and power in order to help improve each other's lives and society.  This is documented.  I bet you'd be hard pressed to find a transcript of a lecture by Kano where he did not mention improving society or mutual benefit or efficient use of effort and resources.

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This ideal is so much the foundation of judo that I've said it before and I'll say it again - Judo classes cannot function without all the participants buying into that ideal to a larger degree than just lip service.

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Here's a particularly challenging example of applying the judo ideal...

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What about when you have an undesirable partner or judo classmate?  Maybe he's a mat bully or a warrior wannabe, only out to learn to fight.  Maybe he's dangerously unpredictable in randori.  Or maybe he's lazy and wants to do 1-2 reps then sit on the side of the mat and chat. Or maybe he monopolizes your training time working at his pace on his material and you never get to work on your own stuff?  Or maybe you hate how his roughness infects you and makes you want to be rougher and rougher in a vicious circle.

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Whatever it is, this fellow is a pain in the ass!  Every time you work with him he agitates you more and you do your best to write that guy off as an asshole and find some other partner to work with in class and hope that you can avoid the undesirable until he eventually quits.

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Is this an application of maximum efficient use of power toward mutual benefit?  Obviously not - the undesirable partner is apparently not trying to help anyone but himself.  But are you using all of your powers to help this undesirable fellow improve himself?  Are you helping your other partners, who end up having to work with him?  And if you do succeed in ignoring him until he goes away, how are you going to help him improve himself then?

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Here's another thing to think about - from a practical self-defense perspective, what are we in judo to learn?  We are in judo to learn to deal with unpleasant, chaotic, unpredictable, violent people by means of gentle (genteel) grace.  So, this undesirable fellow might just be your ideal partner. 

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Sure, this is setting the bar high, and sure, you have to keep yourself and your partners as safe as you can, and it's not easy learning to deal safely and gently with violent people, but who ever got into judo to learn how to dominate only placid, compliant Milquetoast partners?
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And here's a crazy idea - What if we got so good at applying these ideals to control unpleasant partners with grace and gentleness that we could reliably and safely view real bad guys on the street as undesirable partners that need help to change? 

• I'm not claiming to be great at applying the judo ideal with undesirables, but I can tell you that the answer involves Kano's ideals of maximum efficient use of power toward mutual benefit.  
• I can also suggest that this skill is related to the verbal aikido idea.
• One place that I got a GREAT lesson on this is from Sensei Bob Rea's discussion on de-escalating your judo partners so that they remain in an optimal learning state-of-mind.

photo courtesy of Wikipedia

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Kano's two ideals for judo

Jigoro Kano (Founder of Judo) had two ideals upon which he based Judo.

• Jita Kyoei - You and me get better together.
• Seiryoku Zenyo - Make the best use of your power.

Of course, Japanese is notoriously hard to translate literally, so those are loose translations.  When I am talking about these two ideals to my kids' classes I try to put them in simpler terms...

• Jita Kyoei - You and me both win.
• Seiryoku Zenyo - find the easiest way (for me and you to both win).

...and to drive the point of those ideals home, I quiz the kids each time, "What is your main job in judo class?" The correct answer to which is, "To make everyone else better."  Often I'll ask each participant in the class, "What is your main job in judo class?" and make them acknowledge that they are here to help everyone else in the class get better and/or win.

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I don't do this just to have some nice morals to talk about to the kids.  The judo ideal is a super-important lesson, without which judo classes devolve rapidly into a fight club situation.  Judo classes simply do not operate when everyone is a mat bully who is out to get what he can get at the expense of the others in the class.

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Judo does not work unless everyone in the class keeps in the forefront of their minds all the time that their main objective is to nurture the development of the other participants.

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And this applies just as much to adults as to kids.

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And it applies to aikido (A.K.A. separated judo) as much as to judo.

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Stay tuned tomorrow for an article on perhaps the most difficult situation in which to apply these judo ideals!

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A society of guilt

A funny thing happened to me this morning.  Funny strange, not funny ha ha.  

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I was eating breakfast in the cafeteria at work.  My typical breakfast is usually something like a veggie sandwich from Subway or some yogurt with raisins and flax seeds - not because I'm some sort of granola-munching hippie - I just like how I feel when I usually eat like that.

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But today I decided I wanted scrambled eggs, a piece of sausage, and a biscuit so that's what I got and I was happily munching down when in walks the Dietitian from work and I was hit with an intense wave of remorse - as if the Breakfast Police were going to come check my breakfast against their master list and rap me on the knuckles with a ruler or something.

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None of the Dietitians at work ever do that sort of thing.  They are always pleasant and professional and positive. And I, having had just about as much nutrition training as they have, know I'd done nothing wrong.  But the guilt was still there.

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Reminds me of another curious interaction I've had with several people over the years.  

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Occasionally I'll run into a former student of mine and they will almost invariably act excited to see me and tell me how they were just telling so-and-so that they wanted to start back in my classes that very night!  It's amazing how every time I run into a former student they were already planning to come to class that very night!  It's like some statistical Twilight Zone or something.

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They never tell me, "Aikido bored me to tears," or "I decided to spend my time doing yoga instead of judo," or even "It's just not my thing."  They act like they are reluctant to hurt my feelings by taking responsibility for their own lives and leisure time.  They act like they are guilty of something.

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How is it that we have turned taking responsibility for our own health and activities into a society of guilt?

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Reading the dictionary

"Okay class, today we're going to read through the dictionary again, just like we do every day!"
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"Wooohooo!  Yippee!  Thanks, Teacher!  We love you!"
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We often compare the process of learning aikido to that of learning to write.  We start by learning to make various brush-strokes - diagonals and loops and that sort of thing (tegatana dosa), then we learn the shapes of capital and lower-case letters (releases), then we learn to spell simple words (junana) and harder words (owaza), and along the way we learn some rules about the structure of sentences (the riai within junana), and eventually we get to the point we can write essays and love letters and poems and stories (randori, embu).

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But who here has ever learned to write love letters by reading through the dictionary from start to finish over and over again?  Sure, dictionaries and encyclopedias and the thesaurus are useful tools in writing - but they are certainly not primary teaching/learning tools.

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Junana hon kata is largely organized like an (albeit short) encyclopedia of things that you can do in aikido - five common ways to hit uke, five things you can do with his elbow, four things you can do with his wrist, and three things you can do when uke is coming down from a peak in his walking cycle.  Sure, within each set there is a little bit of implied teaching on strategy - sort of "if this doesn't work, you can do this other thing." but this kata largely reads like an encyclopedia - lots of  "whats" and "hows" and not many "whys" or "whens."

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And this thing is our primary teaching tool up to about shodan!  We are learning composition (randori) by repeatedly reading through the encyclopedia (Junana hon kata) over and over again.  I don't think this would be so bad if we used Junana like it seems Tomiki might have intended it - as an aikido primer that we spin through a few times right at the beginning of our aikido careers to prepare us to jump into randori and Koryu kata.

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But what makes it worse is we actually stretch Junana out over the course of 2-3 years as a ranking thing.  That would be like saying that 1st graders have to read through the As and Bs of the dictionary for a year before they can become 2nd graders and get to read through the Cs and Ds. - it's not till 12th grade that we have all the tools we need (like Xylophone and Youth and Zither) that we need to actually write something cool.  Hell, we wouldn't even be able to write "See Spot Run" until 9th or 10th grade, when we get to the Rs and Ss!

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What do we need to begin doing composition (randori) early and to get there in an orderly, structured, pedagogical manner?

• a decent (but still small) vocabulary - maybe 1 or 2 techniques from each set of Junana
• some grammar rules about how to put things together - 2-3 releases and some hints about what techniques might follow each release
• some composition assignment rules - guidelines for safe and productive randori 
• and maybe a tutor would help - an uke that already knows what's going on in randori.

A couple of attempts that I've made at describing this problem and suggesting possible solutions...

• The urawaza was an early attempt at providing a step between Tomiki's primer (junana) and full-fledged randori, but they can tend to teach players to do half-hearted techniques so that they can be properly countered. Sometimes we still like to play with urawaza and here is how we solve the half-assed problem.
• JW Bode's practice of practicing each junana technique from each release is brilliant, but one potential problem is you multiply Tomiki's minimalistic aikido primer (15-25 techniques) into a practice set of 8 releases times 17 junanas plus some owazas = around 200 things to practice. 
• Something that I've been working on lately is creating a whole new primer - shorter and faster-to-learn than the Junana, containing a few techniques from each set in Junana, with each technique glued to a release or other common attack (as per JW above).  I think the new primer would have about a dozen techniques and I think this primer would be thoroughly teachable by about green belt (40-60 mat hours).

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Patrick Parker
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