Rank test as a teachable moment

We've got a new brown belt at Mokuren Dojo!  Today Todd did an excellent job at his sankyu demo.

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In this era of McDojos, what does excellent mean?  Well, I don't think that you have to be the ultimate master of all the Sankyu material by the time that you get your sankyu.  In that case nobody would ever be good enough to get a brown belt.  You should, however, be able to perform most of the material (4 out of  5 techniques or 80%) pretty good and you should be improving on all the previous material.

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So, any student in any demo will have better and worse techniques...

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I had an instructor one time tell me that they thought that tests should be teaching opportunities instead of torture or punishment.  Seemed like a pretty good idea to me, so today, when our "test" showed that Todd had a pretty good grip on all the stuff, but was weakest on Junana #9 - udehineri (A.K.A. kaitennage or udegarame nage) we spent nearly the whole remainder of the class time working that technique in several of its variations - from a punch, from a wrist grab, and the jodo udegarame where you thrust and uke grabs your stick.  Turned out to be a lot of fun working around and about that single idea.

[Photo courtesy of Peter Bekesi]

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Dreaming of wakigatame

My Latin teacher in high school told us that you never really know a language until you start dreaming in that language. Last night I dreamt that I was at some sort of martial arts seminar and the instructor kept building up to this super-mysterious technique. This amazing thing from historical European martial arts. Finally, when he showed the technique, it was a standing wakigatame falling with the guy into a side control (similar to the last example on the video above).

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I wonder if that means that I've mastered the "language" of martial arts, or just of wakigatame. Or perhaps it just means that I ate something unusual before bed last night...

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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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Don't drop the arm!

Photo courtesy of BestKevin

Another quick and simple hint for preforming osaekomi (locks, holds, or pins) in aikido - When uke taps, do not just drop their arm onto the mat and walk off.

When a muscle is stretched to its limit, it becomes slack and does not contract correctly for a moment or two. So, when you stretch their arm, if you drop it they won't be able to control it and it will smack the mat like a dead fish. This is poor zanshin for you but it is also disrespectful, unpleasant, and perhaps painful for uke.

Stretch the arm and when they tap, step outside their reach, place their arm on the mat, and back away.

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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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Shomenate ikkyo

A pretty good demonstration of ikkyo as a counter to shomenate. This is what we played with today at early aiki class. Although a bit different form, this is a good reference for the idea. In Tomikiryu this is called oshitaoshi and it is the #6 form of junana (the 17 fundamentals) instead of the #1 form (ikkyo) as in aikikai.

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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
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Technique #0

Photo courtesy of BekiPe

The aikikai guys named some of their techniques with ordinal numbers (e.g. ikkyo=technique#1, nikyo=technique#2, etc...), suggesting that ikkyo is foundational to the rest of the stuff. Tomiki appeared to think that the atemiwaza was more foundational to aikido than ikkyo (which Tomiki called oshitaoshi) because Tomiki taught oshitaoshi as technique #6 after all the atemiwaza.

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I guess that makes all the atemiwaza (shomenate, aigamaeate, etc..) = "Technique #0" just because it's the set of stuff you learn before ikkyo.

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What would the Japanese word for zero-kyo 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
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Strange answers about atemi and brushoff

The other day, Sensei Strange dared to disagree with me about what was going on in my video that I posted. The nerve of some people! Actually, I'm not offended at all by folks disagreeing with me in the comments on my blog - especially when they do it as intelligently and civilly as he does. Today I wanted to post a few thoughts in response to Strange's comments.

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First, aiki is a lot of things to a lot of people. Strange characterized it as being primarily about breaking uke's posture. I disagree. Aiki is about harmony or unity of energy. Lately I've liked to translate aiki as defending yourself by doing the most perfectly appropriate thing at just the right time. Maintaining your own posture (shizentai) and breaking the other guy's posture (kuzushi) are important parts of that, but they are not the first or the only thing that you do when applying the principle of aiki. This is the same message that I've been trying to communicate in some previous articles...

• Properties of the principles of aikido
• Kuzushi in your spare time

The aiki brushoff as demonstrated in that film is not done as an attack. It is done specifically to avoid attacking uke in order to minimize the chance of uke countering. I don't see it as simply moving the relationship around as Strange says. I see it as absolutely refusing to have a (physical) relationship with uke (if circumstances will allow). Incidently, it is nearly the same thing as the 'stealing the initiative' timing that Strange demonstrates on his excellent shomenate video, with the exception that your intent is to steal the initiative and use it to separate rather than to step into uke or hold your ground.

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Strange demonstrates on that same video, one counter to a shomenate used as an attack - wakigatame. That weakness exists in all aikido techniques, and I agree that when tori steps into uke with shomen it's often begging for wakigatame, but the aiki brushoff is not more succeptable to wakigatame than other variations of shomenate. It is actually less succeptable - that statement comes from a lot of randori testing. In fact, in our series of knife freeplay tests against FMA guys, this sort of shomenate and aigamaeate were the only things in the system that reliably reduced the likelihood of getting cut.

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On my film, the times that tori steps through uke with shomenate were specifically demonstrated with tori backed into a wall such that he couldn't separate. I offered the step-through shomenate as a solution when you can't brushoff. And it's a pretty good one, even if uke does counter with wakigatame. At least he's not holding you against a wall pounding on you, and wakigatame has just as many weaknesses as shommenate.

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I'd like to end by repeating, aiki is a lot of things to a lot of people and my way is not THE only way to do the thing. I do, however think it is a valid and highly valuable paradigm under which to apply aikido technique. In a previous article I characterized this type of motion as the Aiki Gift That Keeps On Giving. There are other ways to play aikido, and I'm sure that Strange's is pretty good - maybe even better than mine in some ways - but I still suggest you at least make a study of what this paradigm can do for your aikido.

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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

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Chain #3 - kaitennage

Here some of my students and I are playing with Chain #3 - specifically with kotemawashi, oshitaoshi, hikitaoshi, and kaitennage. Enjoy. Things I found interesting, and of note:

• Notice the atemi to chest or face at the beginning. This not only softens uke up, but also pushes tori into the release#3 motion.
• We are paying particular attention to synchronization of our techniques to uke's footsteps.
• The kaitennage is an interesting variation that screws uke straight down into the ground instead of projecting him. Of course you still have the option of projecting him if you need to.

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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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Video response to DR & Strange

Dojo Rat posted a video of an aiki sequence that he and his friends were playing with on their secret island hideaway.  I posted some comments and Sensei Strange One-upped me by posting a video commentary with some really good motion.  I didn't figure to be able to out-do Strange's motion on this thing, so we took a little different tack on this material.

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I gave the students a look at the sequence (which happens to be part of our chain 3) and then told them to play around within that set of techniques - basically randori with shomenate, wakigatame, and kotegaeshi on the table.  These guys played for several minutes with this set of movements.  Some of the motion is outstanding, some is ok.  Almost none of it just plain sucks.  Hopefully this will be interesting in the context of DR's video and question.

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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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Helpful handful: Ichikata as an intro to power

Photo courtesy of BekiPeti

Power can be defined as the ability to make something move or get something done. One of the fundamental theories of aikido and judo is that people's power is always ebbing and flowing, waxing and waning as we move. The techniques that we do are timed based on the ebb and flow of the opponent's power.

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Suwariwaza (kneeling technique) is one way to see this phenomenon in action. For instance, in Ichikata, the first five techniques are suwari, and they vary in their timing condition with respect to uke's build-up and application of power.

• Suwari oshitaoshi (provocative timing) – tori catches uke sitting back, all the way down, before uke has started building power. Tori attacks uke's face, provoking a response that tori uses to throw uke. As such, tori is well ahead of uke in the timing of this technique. Basically, tori overwhelms uke before uke can build up a resistance.
• Suwari tenkai oshitaoshi – uke attacks tori's face and tori rises with a rising block but uke is not so far ahead in timing that tori is overwhelmed. Still, because tori is behind he cannot run over uke as before so he turns out of the way and throws uke. Tori has successfully played catch-up.
• Suwari tekubiosae – uke attacks tori's face and tori is ever farther behind. Finding himself in the hole, tori knows he'd better not try to apply power, so he fades around and moves with uke's arm until uke's power peters out and tori's power is relatively high. Then tori pins uke.
• Suwari ryotedori sukuinage – here tori is absolutely caught flat and dead (energy-wise) and uke grasps both of tori's wrists. Tori retracts his wrists, slipping uke into off-balance and activating uke's back muscles, which tori can then follow into a pin.
• Suwari ryotedori sukuinage (juntai timing) – this is an odd exercise in timing. Tori is actually pulling uke up from the previous pin and getting in synch with him as he rights himself so that the throw on the opposite side happens immediately as uke regains his knees.

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Using relaxation to your advantage in aikido

I generally do lesson plans for my classes by cycling through lists of techniques, principles, and hints one after another. This makes lesson planning easy and ensures that I cover all the material regularly. I have described how I do these aikido lesson plans and judo lesson plans and I have posted a list of hints for tegatana no kata and a list of hints for hanasu no kata as examples of the lists that I cycle through.

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As Todd mentioned a few days ago, I have decided this year to add another layer of this type of repetition to my classes. We will be emphasizing a different broad principle in class each month. For instance, the principle of the month for January is Relaxation. We'll still be going through the technique lists as before, but there will be an emphasis on relaxation in every class this month. That's not to say that we didn't already talk about relaxation before or that we're going to toss it out the window in February - we're just paying particular attention to that concept this month.

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So far this month we've talked about relaxation in tegatana no kata - working with flaccid arms as a measure of how well controlled your momentum is, visualizing a string pulling the crown of your head upward in order to relax the neck, relaxing the hips and back and legs to improve mobility, relaxing/collapsing into a step, and measuring the relaxation of your steps using the embusen (performance line of the kata). We've also worked on relaxation in hanasu - particularly in techniques #1 and 2. In #2 it is particularly apparent that tori is unable to move directly behind uke if he is tense but it is easy when he is relaxed. Last night we worked on oshitaoshi from release #1 using the exercises in Ichikata - learning to relax and flow around uke's extreme resistance.

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I can go on and on with this theme. Look for more on relaxation in upcoming classes and stay tuned for next month's super theme!

Fundamental judo and magical aikido

Judo with Todd

• ROM, ukemi
• footsweep to control with emphasis on bumping uke to get his front foot floating and then reaching out and touching his foot to see if he is really floating or not.
• deashibarai uchikomi early and late
• deashibarai uchikomi - 2 of any variation on one side and one on the other.  This really develops the feel of randori because of the type of synchronization
• osotogari - four variations that allow tori to throw uke right-sided no matter what foot uke is moving or what direction.

Aikido with Todd

• tegatana, slightly faster than normal with emphasis on keeping a dynamic tension between floating and weightedness.  This tends to draw you upright into a perfect shizentai (natural posture) 
• releases with emphasis on #6 and 8 as ways to get into the #2 and #4 positions by following when uke does something wrong.  That sort of makes the kata 4 repetitions of a pure release form followed by four in which you have to synch and follow along with uke until you can find the place to turn into the position from the pure release form.
• chain #3, including near and far wakigatame and near and far kotegaeshi
• ichikata section B, techniques 1-3 (oshitaoshi and tenkai kotehineri) with emphasis on using ki bumps to diffuse uke's strength so you can walk around it, breaking down his posture.  This stuff is pure magic, amazing how tori can move around uke's strength.  Great example of how inappropriate  strength destroys uke.

ABG 2008 – Session 3

Tegatana no kata with emphasis on small steps. We also brought up the possibility of doing the turns with a post right in front of you, similar to the bagua practice of pole-walking.

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Hanasu #1-4 with tori brushing off of uke’s face strike instead of uke grabbing the wrist. Hanasu #5-8 with very light touch, working on following the French curve and making #5 and #6 reversible into each other.

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Chain #4 – particularly the left-right loop and the hineri-gaeshi loop with emphasis on disengaging and brushing off of the thing that is not working.

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YK#1 into kotemawashi oshitaoshi with emphasis on finding the right angle between oshitaoshi and wakigatame.

Training log

Judo with Todd - ROM, ukemi, footsweep to control, deashibarai, kosotogari, ukigatame, ground mobility cycle

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Aikido with Kel, Todd, Jesse, and Justin - ROM, ukemi, tegatana, evasion&brush-off, release#1, shomenate, suwari oshitaoshi, tekubiosae

Training log

Aikido with Kel

• Everything ebbs and flows - including my motivation for practicing. lately I've been ratcheting my workouts up to try to beat the middle-aged flabbosity and I have been feeling tired and sore and generally blah. But Kel showed up for training with an in-person response to my question, "Why do you train?" that floored and humbled me. Kel said he does it as a meditation - a way to get to that extraordinary state of in-the-moment-ness where the burdens of the world dissolve. I had been thinking about begging off of practice today until I heard that.
• ROM, ukemi
• tegatana with emphasis on hara - moving from the center as if all your mass were concentrated in one spot
• hanasu with emphasis on the concept of monitoring the distance (ma-ai) between centers (hara) and moving when ma-ai is breached. We homed in on the last 4 releases, practicing reversing #5 into #6 and vice versa and reversing #7 into #8 and vice versa. Cool practice.
• oshitaoshi from R1 as in ichikata. This was a cool practice in trandferring energy between tori and uke instantaneoudly and changing directions if it doesn't work. This sorta feels like tring all the directions in rapid succession to see which one will work. Alternately, you can think about this as alost programming the attacker to resist in a given plane, then overturning that plane on a perpendicular. Again, cool practice.
  

Magical kotegaeshi night

Aiki with Kel and Whit

• ROM
• tegatana with emphasis on balls of feet and the 'washing the mirror' exercise
• we worked 'washing the mirror' into a sort of general-purpose evasion and offbalance program using attacking partners
• gyakugamaeate
• chain#3 including wakigatame, kotegaeshi, and gyakugamaeate
• variations on kotegaeshi with emphasis on taking the slack out of the arm without crushing the arm, striking to induce a vibration in uke, then following the vibration. (the magic kotegaeshi)  We also played with siilar mechanics in the suwari munetsuki kotegaeshi from sankata.
• We ended up tying it all together with kotegaeshi from owaza, using the 'washing the mirror' idea, getting in synch, and throwing on the step
  

Floating throws again

Aikido with Kel

• ROM, ukemi
• Tegatana with emphasis on hip-width steps
• Hanasu with emphasis on synching and moving with uke – particularly on #2 and #4
• Preview of floating throws – kotetaoshi, maeotoshi, sumiotoshi (& variants), hikitaoshi. I let Kel do most of the reps of these things so he could get the feel of the motion and so I could do some ukemi.
• Review of Kel’s rank material – elbow techniques – oshitaoshi, udegaeshi, hikitaoshi, udehineri (& variants), wakigatame (& variants)

Stepping aside into udegaeshi

Aiki with Kel

• ROM, ukemi
• tegetana with emphasis on how shifting how you think about the rhythm of the exercise changes what you get from the exercise.
• hanasu with emphasis on the flow: R1↔R2↔R6. R1 (or R3) is sort of a prelude to all of the releases, with R6 (or R8) being a little curlycue on the end that is sometimes required to make the release work (almost an afterthought). So R1↔R2↔R6 and R3↔R4↔R8 make great flow exercises that seem to work on a lot of of the types of motions that occur in aikido. We also got to play with ushiroate and aikinage in the context of R1↔R2↔R6.
• shomenate and aigamaeate with emphasis on moving offline using the cowcatcher.
• oshitaoshi and udegaeshi with emphasis on stepping aside when you meet resistance. There is a lot going on in udegaeshi...

Aiki practice tonight

Aiki with Kel

• ROM, ukemi
• tegatana emphasizing walking on the balls of the first two rays of the feet. Also looking for the combinations of moves that can be trailed together into one long French Curve.
• hanasu with emphasis on following uke's curve on #6 and #8 instead of picking some arbitrary place to turn and forcing ukke into your curve.
• shomenate with emphasis on getting the initial offbalance right on the initial footfall.
• aigamaeate with emphasis on checking the elbow to keep the knife hand off you as you push him down. We were getting a little bit more vigorous falling practice with aigamae today than usual - it was good!
• Chains: R1→oshitaoshi; R1→R5→tenkai kotehineri; R1→R5→kotehineri; R1→R5→kote mawashi oshitaoshi→hikitaoshi→ushiroate. On these we were emphasizing letting the motion of the bodies tear uke's grip apart and tori just closing his hand on whatever he happened to have. This way there is no fine motor skill or specialized gripping required.

Patrick's ikkyu rank demo

Aikido with Patrick M., Vincent, Chris, and Hashan

• Tegatana while holding a full cup of water. We played this exercise twice, the second time faster, and I sloshed a little water on the second rep on some of the arm motions. That might indicate that my arms were doing something independent of my body, because my COM motions seem to be pretty well under control. I'll have to play that exercise a few more times and figure out what to think about that.
• Releases without incident.
• All of Nijusan with Patrick M. as tori and me as uke. He did great. I asked him what he thought were his strengths and weaknesses in aikido and he said that his faithful daily practice was his strength and the floating throws at the end of Nijusan were his weakness. Sure enough, he seemed more confident with everything before the floating throws, but that is to be expected because the floating throws are his current rank-level material. We probably ought to work on hikiotoshi some more, perhaps getting some other instructors' perspectives on how he can make that thing happen with one arm. But I thought it was all good despite the slight deficiency on floating throws. I thought that his oshitaoshi, hikitaoshi, and wakigatame were especially good. He has gotten good at finding the time to drive uke straight into the ground on those three. I thought he might also need some more work on kotehineri...
• The whole class worked on oshitaoshi, kotehineri, and kotegaeshi
• For the cool techniques of the night we worked on #9 and #10 of Ichikata, kotemawashi and kotegaeshi.
• Vincent called for more practice on the kaitennage that we practiced a week or so ago, as well as a tenkai kotehineri from a wristgrab. Both techniques that are found in his police training.