Juntai releases and aikinage

Tonight we worked tegatana once then moved into hanasu, working it once fairly close to kata mode then shifting to juntai timing similar to what Whit and I are doing in this video. This is a neat exercise because it introduces the beginnings of chaining and uke learns that in order to give a good attack he has to keep trying to center on tori. Tori learns to recognize the line that he has to move off of each time. Tori also learns to treat uke centering on him as an attack. We worked through 1-4 using this type of timing.

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Then we moved into aigamaeate and aikinage, two of my favorite throws! Everybody got the hang of these things almost right off the bat and we used them to illustrate several principles. One of the things that aikinage illustrates well is the scalable nature of aikido. Aikido done properly causes tori to act like a mirror, reflecting uke's violence back onto him. So, aikido automatically scales itself appropriately to the level of violence tori encounters.

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The following is an example of Nariyama whipping the living sh__ out of his poor ukes using aikinage (the 2nd and 4th techniques in the following video). While I don't approve of abusing ukes, it does illustrate the point that aikinage can be easily upgraded from the gentle-but-effective, uke-friendly version we do the neck-wrenching, bone-smashing version seen here...

And my comments are not meant, by the way, as derogatory toward Nariyama. I think the following video amply demonstrates his skill with some very nice aikido without whipping his uke too badly (though the 2 ushiroate on the second uke are pretty harsh).