Omote and ura oshitaoshi

Good class tonight. We calibrated with tegatana and with hanasu then began using hanasu as a vehicle to explore some of the principles I wanted to look at tonight - specifically, metsuke (eye contact), shizentai (upright posture), and moving from the center.
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This led us to alternate between the omote and ura versions of oshitaoshi (ikkyo) with emphasis on how the insde version is more direct but promotes worse situational awareness. We worked for a good long time on oshitaoshi trying to shorten the duration of the power transfer between uke and tori. From here we moved into Nijusan 1-10, which led us to emphasize wakigatame (gokyo), hikitaoshi, and gedanate as three techniques that happen early in an ura path - right as uke rounds the corner on tori.
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At the end we played with a part of chain #3 in which we transition between wakigatame and gedanate. This led to a couple of interesting variants of gedanate, which is really any well-trained balance attack against the lower body. The variants included a stepping knee strike against the common peroneal nerve in uke's leg prior to pushing uke off, and a simple but effective step-on-uke's-foot as a balance disturbance prior to pushing uke off.

Holding techniques

Yesterday I started writing a response to Nick Hughes’ article about armlocks being useless for self-defense. It rapidly started turning into an epic because it brought up all sorts of topics like the role of osaekomiwaza (holding techniques) in aiki and judo and the relative merits of positional vs. submission wrestling. As the length and scope of the post was burgeoning, this is a condensed version. Perhaps it will be the first of several posts about holds and armlocks

I agree fully with Mr. Hughes that holding techniques are generally unreliable and unproductive from the point of view of self-defense. You can’t guarantee that holding someone immobile will make them stop trying to hurt you and you can’t even be sure that they won’t break your hold.

Holds are really either an artistic (in the case of aikido) or a sporting (in the case of judo) abstraction of the battlefield skills of joint manipulation and breaking. In order to practice aikido and judo with some degree of safety we have to have this particular abstraction but if you are to call what you do self-defense training then you have to recognize the abstraction as such and understand what it is abstracted from.

Big boys' butt-busting judo

The bane of all childrens' martial arts teachers has struck again - the infamous... the insidious... teeball! Tonight I had a bunch of the kids (all but Whit and Knox) out practicing teeball. Whit's practices are on Saturdays so he got to attend tonight. It worked out okay, though, because I got to do big boys' judo with Rob Belote. It was a good class. He's been doing a lot of arnis and karate in the last four years so we started out slow to make sure his ukemi skills were still reflexive. They were. So we moved into a warmup of nagekomi trading deashibarai then moved into osotogari. By the time we got to osotgari we were both glistening nicely and we'd begun to add in a little oomph on a throw here and there to test our landing skills. It is nice to have a grown-up black belt student to beat up and to beat me up. I'm really looking forward to Rob being a regular fixture here at Mokuren dojo.

Shizentai and shomenashi

Whenever someone in judo or aikido says the word shizentai it always makes me want to say gesundheit! But that's just me.
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Shizentai is the natural, upright posture used in aikido and judo. The feet are under the hips with slight (but not over-done) separation side-to-side and front-back. Some instructors call this a heel-toe, shoulder-width stance but I think that makes for a little bit too big a stance for shizentai. The stance is generally vertical, with the ears above shoulders above hips above toes. weight is on the balls of the feet (particularly the medial two toes) and is approximately evenly balanced between the feet.
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An important thing to work on is to be able to take one conservative step and recover without getting out of shizentai. This one basic step forms the basis of all footwork in aikido. Try this as an exercise - take one step forward (i.e. shomenashi) and stop halfway through the step just as your moving foot hits the ground. Is your front foot under your center or out in front of you? If it is not under your center then you are stepping too far out of shizentai and you are succeptible to getting immobilized in this wide stance at the bottom of your motion. Now, try the motion like this - from shizentai, shift your center in the direction you're going and then put your front foot directly under your center and freeze. This is a more mobile position (closer to shizentai) and it is not possible to get stuck at the bottom of this step. Any force that is put on you at the bottom of this step just shifts your center out of the way again. It's like your center is floating over your feet.
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Another way of thinking about this same thing is think about always putting feet right under your center as you move instead of positioning your feet in some stance and then trying to get your center back over your feet. Remember - "feet under center - NOT center over feet."

Run, doggies, run!

Tonight we did a lot of moving in kid's judo class. Warmed up with ROM and did laps of running, skipping, galloping, and laterals across the dojo. Worked on three standing techniques tonight - deashibarai, kouchigari, and a single leg takedown (I can't ever remember kuchikitaoshi and kibisugaeshi apart but it was one of them). The kids did great. On the ground we worked on kesagatame and the situp escape from kesa. Inerspersed in there was some kneeling knockdown randori - but not much. The last part of class was more laps and ukemi. I had them run laps across the dojo constantly with one of them dropping out each lap and doing a teguruma or deashi breakfall with me as the spotter. We cooled off with laps of dragging and/or carrying each oher across the mat. As they left with sweat flinging off their hair, a mom expressed her gratitude for wearing them out.

Samurai Whit

Short and sweet - that's the best way it seems to get some practice with Whit and maintain his interest and not frustrate him. Today we worked on menuchi suburi for a few minutes, by the end of which he was able to get the tsugiashi steps right and get the up-down of the sword synched with the up-down of the body. Pretty cool. Then we worked on men-kote-do-tsuke cuts and I worked on migimaki harai and hidarimaki harai. We may not be getting hours worth of sword bashing but we are getting a few minutes each night and he is getting some exposure to how to move in a way that will translate well to aikido later on.

Aikidoka do it with upright posture!

Tonight we're going to work on gyakugamae ate (some call it sokumen irimi). After the initial offbalance (the one in junana and nijusan) there are three common reactions that ukes make:

• If they have enough momentum they may pivot and continue backwards for a step or two in the direction they were going.
• If they are strong and reactive they may stop in their tracks and try to regain their balance.
• If tori hits the offbalance just right uke will sometimes stumble in the direction of uke's push.

Gyakugamae works with all three reactions and all three are worth working on.
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The principle of the month for my students is going to be shizentai (upright, natural posture). If you can't do it with upright natural posture you can't do it. If you can't do it with one well-timed, small step forward (just like in tegatana) then you likely can't do it very well with a larger step. If you break your own posture then it was a poor technique even if uke does hit the ground.
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We're also likely to be previewing some of the gokata material that Henry will be teaching at the Starkville clinic in April. Gokata is interesting - especially the suwariwaza at the beginning - because it's the same old stuff but tori is the instigator. Tori provokes an attack from uke then deals with it. That's a type of sen (initiative) that we rarely deal with outside of gokata.

Encounter at Aston Avenue

The other day I posted a smartalek comment about crime in Mississippi, but Mississippi and particularly the towns in southwest MS really are nice places to live. But I had an interesting encounter yesterday after work.

I was walking in a nice neighborhood down a well-travelled avenue in the middle of the day and was assaulted by two schoolkids in a random act of malevolence. I passed by this couple of teens who were about the size of 11th graders or so. They were crossing the road on a side street. As I passed I said something like, "hey, guys, how's it going?" They said nothing and kept going. I kept going.
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I am situationally aware enough to look at them and speak to them and make sure their path is not intercepting mine and theat they are not trying to surround me, but about the time I got to the other side of the street one of them threw a fist-sized piece of concrete at me. It landed next to me and I looked back at them and one of them yelled at the other (apparently for my benefit), "Hey, that wasn't very nice of you!" They took off running.
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I wasn't about to try to chase them down to beat them up - what could I hope to gain from hurting a couple of schoolkids? Plus the fact that beating up a couple of high school juniors can be an iffy proposition.
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Anyway, I walked on. No harm no foul - right? Well, This happened right in front of an assisted living home. What if it hadn't been me but had been an 80 year old man? What if I'd had Whit with me and they'd hit him with a piece of concrete? What if these two numbskulls had thrown a brick at someone with a gun and a shorter fuse? What if they'd actually hit me and stunned me?

Deadeye Whit

Tonight Whit and I set up a drink can on a post at about 20 feet and shot groups of five into it with a BB gun. Whit was shooting about 60% and I was shooting about 90%, yay me! I can out-shoot a five year old! Really, I think Whit is doing exceptionally well - not only with the actual shooting but also with the safety rules and controlling the direction of the gun.

Sword kata

Sword work with Whit today. Whit worked on kata #1 - men-kote-do-tsuke with me as uke and I worked on kata #3 migimaki harai and kata #6 hidarimaki harai with Whit as uke. No comments. not because we are the ultimate masters or anything - I just have nothing to say about that one right now.

Another good fundamentals class

This morning was surprisingly cool in the dojo considering the 70+ degree days we've been having for a couple of weeks. I think (hope) that there will only be a couple more 30 degree nights this spring and pretty soon we'll be back to broiling in one anothers' sweat here in southwest Mississippi. I don't like the heat but I HATE the cold.

This morning's class included 2/3 of clan McKenzie, Kristof, and myself. We worked on tegatana several times looking at potential applications for the moves in tegatana. This is sometimes an iffy proposition because tegatana is just a collection of general-purpose movements that reoccur in aikido - not really techniques. So, no one of these motions really has one definite application. Rather each movement can be reused in part or in whole in any number of situations. But, we went through all of them and gave 1-2 common applications as examples.

Then we worked on hanasu #1 and #2, melding into part of chain #2 where kotetaoshi and gyakugamaeate live. Everyone was picking up on these movements well when a tiny bout of randori broke out between Richard and myself, leading into the technique that I particularly wanted to work on today anyway - aigamaeate. We did aigamaeate with hanasu#2 as a leadin, holding the elbow with the free band and releasing the held hand and then using the newly-released hand for aigamaeate.

Kid's Judo

Sensei has got the one-week, new dad drag going on. I got off work at noon eagerly anticipating a nap before judo but alas it was not to be. So it was a low energy nite. We warmed up with range of motion followed by hopping, skipping, galloping, low-craw, inchworm, seal walk, spider walk, crabwalk, and hipheist. Then we moved into suwari kubinage (kneeling knockdown) for a while but nobodt was getting into it. I don't know if I was putting a damper on everyone with my low energy or if it was just a tough night for everyone, so we did about 20 minutes of teguruma falls with me as the spotter. We finished off this tiresome night with toestomp randori.

It's funny how time perception goes. sometimes 2-hour classes fly by and sometimes one-hour classes drag. I was sure that we were only about half-way through this class and that I was irresponsibly ending class early, but they got right at an hour, which is about all you can get out of five year olds anyway so I don't feel too bad about it.

Zanshin

I wrote a while back about the concepts of zanshin (remaining aware), mushin (acting without analysis), and kime (explosively focussed concentration). Basically my assertion was that we need to develop a healthy balance in our martial arts between these (mostly) mutually exclusive states of mind.
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Different martial arts seem to specialize to different degrees in these ideas. Karate, for instance is all about kime, while aiki (as I understand it) is more about zanshin - to the point that I'd be willing to say there is almost no kime in aiki. I know Ueshiba said "Aikido decides between life and death in an instant," and this is used to promote the idea of kime in aikido, but I don't really think that dog hunts. Maybe that will be a topic for another post.
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Today I want to talk about zanshin. Remaining aware. There are a couple of practices that lead to a greater awareness of your surroundings as you are playing the role of tori.

• proper posture - The aiki posture we use almost exclusively is shizentai (gesundheit!) - the natural, upright posture with feet under hips. Musashi called this "stance of no stance" and talked about remaining "open in all eight directions." I take this to mean that a neutral stance keeps your options open - but it also means that upright posture makes you more alert in all directions. Try this: stand upright and look straight ahead. notice what you can see in your peripheral vision in all directions - up, down, left and right. now, bend over 90 degrees at the waist and look straight down and check how much you can see. upright posture gives you a better field of vision - thus better awareness.
• The ura forms. Tomiki collected seventeen fundamental techniques that occur a lot in randori into a kata and named it (uncreatively) Junana Hon Kata (the 17 fundamental forms). I don't know if it was coincidence (I suspect it wasn't) but almost all the techniques in Junana are omote forms, meaning that tori enters in front of uke and executes the technique from there. For most of these 17 techniques, we also frequently play with the ura forms, meaning tori enters behind uke and stays there while doing the technique. This tends to take the form of entering, turning 180 degrees behind uke, then throwing. A cool side effect of this 180 degree turn is that it allows tori to see what is going on all around him before he commits to busting uke. Zanshin!

So, next time you're practicing your aiki, consider how upright, neutral posture and the ura (turning backward) forms allow for greater situational awareness. Look around a little bit!

Local crime

Mississippi is a nice, friendly place to live - The Hospitality State. Just ask any Mississippian and they’ll tell you the same – and if you don’t believe us, we’ll beat you up!

Check out the following crime stats for Mississippi from www.disastercenter.com.

In the year 2000 Mississippi had an estimated population of 2,844,658 which ranked the state 31st in population. For that year the State of Mississippi had a total Crime Index of 4,004.4 reported incidents per 100,000 people. This ranked the state as having the 27th highest total Crime Index. For Violent Crime Mississippi had a reported incident rate of 360.9 per 100,000 people. This ranked the state as having the 27th highest occurrence for Violent Crime among the states. For crimes against Property, the state had a reported incident rate of 3,643.5 per 100,000 people, which ranked as the state 26th highest. Also in the year 2000 Mississippi had 9.0 Murders per 100,000 people, ranking the state as having the 2nd highest rate for Murder. Mississippi’s 33.3 reported Forced Rapes per 100,000 people, ranked the state 23rd highest. For Robbery, per 100,000 people, Mississippi’s rate was 128.2 which ranked the state as having the 21st highest for Robbery. The state also had 317.2 Aggravated Assaults for every 100,000 people, which indexed the state as having the 18th highest position for this crime among the states. For every 100,000 people there were 906.9 Burglaries, which ranks Mississippi as having the 10th highest standing among the states. Larceny - Theft were reported 2,864.8 times per hundred thousand people in Mississippi which standing is the 15th highest among the states. Vehicle Theft occurred 288.0 times per 100,000 people, which fixed the state as having the 32nd highest for vehicle…

For most of the types of crime listed above we are pretty much toward the middle of the US states rankings, but second highest murder rate in the country! Who would have guessed it? I’ve lived here all my life and I wouldn’t have guessed it by a long shot. But, that’s just another example of people being bad statisticians by nature. If you zoom in on Pike county using the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program, you find that McComb and the surrounding area has approximately one murder per year and one rape per year.

I certainly don’t want to be a fearmonger here, but us local guys need to watch out. It may behoove us to get a little training in self-defense and conflict resolution. Hmmm. Sounds like aikido and judo to me…