Warrior fraternities of yesteryear

Strozzi-Heckler talks in his book about the fraternity, or brotherhood of warriors. I don’t have the book with me right now so I can’t come up with specific citations, but the premise is that part of why men are warriors is because as such they receive positive affirmation from other men. A while back I wrote about Susan Faludi’s book, Stiffed, in which she comes to the same conclusion.

This aspect of fraternity has apparently always been either a part of the warrior spirit, or coincident with it. It is easy to find examples of the warrior fraternity in ancient literature; Achilles and Patroclus, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Beowulf & Wiglaf, David and Jonathan.

The strongest point that Strozzi-Heckler seems to make in his jumbled mess of a book is that it would be a good thing if someone could find some way for men to tap into that warrior spirit and affirm each other without actually having to be destructive. To give that warrior archetype an outlet, not for aggression and violence, but rather for service.

Cuban Seoinage

Hot & humid class tonight. Roband I worked on groundwork cycle #1 and deashibarai as warmup, took a jaunt into some deashi variants and okuriashi and harai tsurikomiashi. For the cool techniques of the day we worked ukigoshi with emphasis on remaining neutral as possible during the kuzushi then hipswitching into position for the throw. from there we spun off into Gregor-nage (a seoinage variant from a wrong-side sleeve grip. Gregor-nage sparked a memory of Cuban seoinage, which we repped until the end of class. Cuban seoinage is a monster of a throw that is actually a nice, gentle sumiotoshi if uke is compliant but as soon as he tries to stand his ground or turn in to drape or choke it turns into an awful, assbusting seoinage. Needless to say, both o us are smart enough ukes to take it as a sumiotoshi and not fight our way into a head-plant.

How to learn without a teacher

My students and I are, as far as I know, the only aikido presence in Southwest Mississippi. There is a decent judo presence nearby, and a beginning wrestling presence, as well as a TON of isshinryu karate-do. But sometimes folks have an interest in an aspect of martial arts and their situation is not favorable to taking classes from a good instructor. For instance, what if you develop an interest in taiji or kendo, but live somewhere like Southwest Mississippi, where there is no presence in these arts. Or, what if you develop an interest in historical European fighting methods and can’t get good instruction nearby? What do you do? How do you reconstruct a martial art from minimal historical resources?

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Here are some hints and guidelines that I personally try to follow when I am trying to expand my knowledge base beyond the areas for which I can conveniently find a live instructor:

• Safety takes priority over effectiveness, which must come before efficiency
• You should have a prolonged basis of experience in some system under a live instructor. Don’t go playing with a martial art with no experience and no instructor.
• Find sources with the most informational content: video is better than picture/text/audio. More video=more information. Video on all of a system is better than fideo on selected parts. Multiple varying sources are better than one source from one faction.
• Find sources as close as possible to the original - primary sources better than secondary sources
• Consider remotely related info. For instance, you can get some idea about how kendo might work by studying Philippino or European martial arts.
• A source must be internally consistent – it can’t blatantly contradict itself. If you find information that says the Musashi lived in the 16th century and that he fought in 14th century battles, doubt the source.
• A source should be consistent with (or complementary to) your existent base of knowledge.
• A source should be consistent with what you know of physics and the way the real world works.
• If you think a source is inconsistent but can’t prove it, give it the benefit of the doubt.
• Try to get info on both theory and application. Was it ever used in battle? Tested in sport?
• Frame your research as a 'study group' instead of a 'class'. You probably don’t want to get students to pay you to teach them something you don’t know, but it should be pretty easy to find 1-2 buddies who will play with something with you.
• Make sure your ideas are falsifiable and testable. You must have a randori/sparring/shiai system and a test-cutting/makiwara/pell system.
• Document everything, including your starting assumptions and results.

These are pretty basic guidelines for re-creating an art that you don't have access to. Your end result may not look much like the original. You will, in essence be building your own art from the ground up, based on the sources you can find and your own research and experimentation, but the process will be educational and so long as you have some objective link to reality (randori), you should come up with a system with some validity.

The warrior in America

My dad was a warrior. He was a Lieutenant Commander on a destroyer in the Pacific in World War II. He's never talked much about the war, just an occasional hint or two, but today he told me about some action that occurred in the Philippines. His destroyer took part in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which saw the first use of kamikaze aircraft in the war. Dad says he watched a plane pass over him and miss its target by about 30 feet, piling into the water and exploding. Not yet realizing that the pilot's intent had been to fly into the ship, dad's thought was one of awed sympathy, "that guy never had a chance!" Later he said he saw two planes fly into the USS Mississippi. During this action in the Philippines, a shell from a shore battery hit a nearby ship and utterly destroyed everything from the mast forward. My dad took a whale boat into the wreckage and picked up 20-some-odd survivors. As he was offloading the men onto a mid-sized transport, the transport was hit and destroyed and he had to go pick up the survivors again. For this action he earned an award (a Bronze Star Medal?)

After the war, he gave up warrioring and became an engineer, a businessman, and a family man. But beneath these hats there was still a warrior. There was (is) some part of the warrior, noble and stern, dignified and proper, remaining in him.

But I didn't intend this as a simple tribute to my father. My father is an example of an extremely common nobility in America. Because of the relative youth of this country and the frequency of conflicts, America has bred warriors in every generation. I think you'd be hard pressed to find an American that is more than one or two generations removed from this warrior ethos represented by my father. This idea was somewhat hinted at in a quote by John Adams that I posted a few days ago;

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

The idea being that despite our desire to believe that we have evolved into artists, poets, and philosophers, not only are we at most a couple of generations removed from the warrior, but we are indebted to him (or her).

About 120 years ago, Jigoro Kano saw this same thing happening in Japan. His country was emerging from feudalism into the modern era of industrialism and multinationalism and he saw that there would be no place for the professional warrior as he had previously existed in Japan. The next generation would be engineers and businessmen and the following generation would be artists (so he thought or hoped). Gichin Funakoshi in his autobiography, Karate-do My Way of Life, describes coming to the same realization when he had to get his topknot shorn in order to be admitted to a modern school. So, what did these guys do? They reorganized the martial traditions that they had access to in order to preserve the nobility inherent in the warrior ways. That's part of what we are doing in the martial arts - conserving the warrior spirit.
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You know, I think it's funny that my dad, the warrior fought the Japanese and it is Japanese martial arts that have allowed me to learn and preserve part of that warrior spirit.

The Warriors of Vicksburg

This past weekend, my wife and I went to Vicksburg and stayed at a bed&breakfast that was part antebellum, part Victorian. The Baer House was a wonderful experience with a host that really went out of his way to make his guests comfortable and welcome. I'd highly recommend this B&B for anyone in the vicinity who wants an exceptional experience.

While there, we went to see the old Court House Museum. Fascinating history. One of the most interesting artifacts (to me) was a copy of a newspaper that was unfinished at the time of the seige. One of the last articles to be set was basically an editorial about how there was no way in hell the Union would ever be able to take Vicksburg. Well, they did and the Union army found the newspaper and finished setting he last column and printed copies of it. In the Union addition to the paper was a counter-editorial that essentially said,' a couple of days make a lot of difference, don't they?" But the most interesting part of the counter-editorial was a comment to the effect that the Mississippians ought to be grateful to the Union because they (the citizens) need not live in caves and eat cats anymore. Apparently, according to the artifacts at Vicksburg, both sides had noble motives. One was fighting for Unity, the other for Homeland. The one side thought that they were the noble defenders against 'Northern Aggression,' while the other side saw themselves as saviors and liberators.

The next day we viewed the Battlefield Memorial Park, a 16-mile long trail winding through the sites of the emplacements of the various Union and Confederate troops during the seige. Now, the trail is populated with massive, impressive memorial structures to the various states and companies and groups that took part in the seige. At the end of the trail (not really the end, but we were exhausted by the time we got there, so the rest of the trail went really fast) is the USS Cairo museum (the first armored steamship to be destroyed by a torpedo (what we would now call a mine).

I'm certainly not a Civil War buff, but this was fascinating military history. It was touching to see the battlefield memorials to the various warriors on both sides that fought this conflict to determine what kind of country this would be. I thought this trip had a good bit to say about the role of the warrior that I've been discussing with Dojo Rat lately.

Precision in practice

Great aiki class this AM with Patrick M. We warmed up with ROM and Ukemi, spun through tegatana once, repping the hipswitch and the forward turns for a while, then got into hanasu. For a long time now, I've been working on robust, gross-motion aikido, and that is a good thing, but I want to bring some of Usher-san's precision back into our practice. In hanasu we worked particularly on #2 and #4 emphasizing pushing yourself around uke as well as stepping precisely onthe line of uke's feet and bumping him on the perpendicular offbalance.

You can get the feel of these elements by imagining release #2 as katatetori iriminage (wrist grab aigamaeate) - as uke steps in to grab, you push his attacking arm across in front of him then go for the face. Alternately, you can think of release #2 as trying to slip uke's grasp completely and going for the face as in aigamaeate. Sometimes in this situation, uke will grab to prevent the iriminage (aigamaeate) so you turn behind into release #2.

We brought this same precision into nijusan, working on shomenate and aigamaeate. We emphasized timing and angle of the kuzushi as well as not pushing uke through the offbalance or pushing him down to give him support. The feel of these two techniques today was phenominal!

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Efficient, threatening attacks. Natural, reflexive evasions. Sharp, precise kuzushi. Flowing, well-timed, but powerful pushing throws. Good ukemi. Felt like budo to me!

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After we worked these two techniques to death, we surveyed Nijusan #6, 7, 10, 11, kotetaoshi, and maeotoshi with regard to the stuff we saw at the recent ABG.

A sensei is a lot of things

A while back I polled the blogosphere about what y'all thought the most desirable trait of a sensei was. With 15 voting, the majority (60%) said that a sensei should primarily be a great technician. The rest of the votes were spread out across the answers with a little bit more emphasis being on spiritual leader and workout partner. Several people added other responses, including leader, mentor, expert, teacher, 'someone who can guide me past self-limitation' and 'all except spiritual leader.' From experience, I have found that I have been called into all of the above roles.

Personally, the traits I desire most in my sensei fall predominantly in the great technician and workout partner categories. I recall my Japanese language teacher in college, who was also a martial artist, telling us that the word sensei has connotations similar to big brother/sister or even trail guide. The sensei is someone who has been on the path for longer than you and who is still on the path, so they can act as a partner/leader. Not someone who says, "go that way," but rather someone who says, "follow me this way." In some traditional martial arts, this trail guide role seems to be assigned to or assumed by the sempai (more senior students who are not the sensei).

I recall my first martial arts instructor, Pat Little, telling us that, "those students that don't eventually surpass the teacher, fail him." I don't know if I've surpassed him, or if I ever will, but I think that was a pretty darn good motivator for me. Along the same lines, perhaps the best advice on learning and teaching martial arts that I've ever gotten came from Dr. John Usher, when he said that in order to ever become more than mediore as a student, you have to progress to the point that you can identify and diagnose your own faults and create your own plan to improve them. You have to figure out for yourself what you need to learn and how to best move toward that. In order to surpass your sensei you have to figure out how to become your own sensei. Usher is not only a great technician and workout partner, but he is gifted at creating these self-motivated learners.

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For a good resource on self-directed learning, check out this wealth of information.

Richard Strozzi-Heckler's Warrior Spirit

I have finished reading Richard Strozzi-Heckler's In Search of the Warrior Spirit that Dojo Rat recommended I read and review and which Patrick Waits (P3) subsequently loaned me. What can I say? Overall an interesting book. It's got all the things that should make for a fascinating read - aikido, Green Berets, hi-tech biofeedback voodoo. The premise is that in the mid-1980's the author got to try to teach a bunch of soldiers aikido, meditation, biofeedback, etc... to see if there was anything in these new age modalities that would make the soldiers better warriors.

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Despite the great premise the book fell somewhat flat with me. First, their explicit premise seemed to be to bring the mythical Jedi warriors from Star Wars to life in the form of the United States Special Forces. The project's motto was Vi Cit Tecum (may the Force be with you) and their logo depicted crossed light sabers over a Trojan horse. Those that know me know that this is a pet peeve of mine - trying to take movie spirituality and use it as a justification for some behavior. I had a sensei who used to love to motivate us by quoting wise-sounding sayings of Yoda et al. And sure, I have found over the years quotes from movies that significantly mirror parts of my martial arts philosophy (perhaps most notably, "Power without perception is spiritually useless ..."), but I don't toss these quotes around as resources of wisdom or cite them as guides to belief or action.

Also, on a purely personal note, I went into the book with a couple of expectations, One: I expected that somewhere in the book, the author would come to the conclusion, "a warrior is..." and that would be interesting. He did cite various qualities, like courage, mindfulness, patience, etc... but either he skipped it or I missed it in my reading. Two: and this is related to the first point above. I expected this book to move from point A to point B making some progress and describing it. It didn't. Instead it vaguely meandered through selected vignettes that occurred during the project. To put it into Meyers-Briggs terminology, the book is very intuitive-feeling-perceiving (NFP) and not very sensing-thinking-judging (STJ).

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All that is not to say that it is drivel. It is not. The book was thought-provoking and there were many parts that I am going to want to think about a lot. It is the type of book that I will want to re-read more than once. I intend to dissect some of the issues in the book and cover them in future posts, hopefully translating them from NFP-speak to STJ-speak. Stay tuned...

Liberal and conservative rulesets for randori

Faik Bilalovik at the Martial Art Science blog has some interesting opinions about flow drills found in some martial arts. His post is worth reading and thinking about – he’s pretty much talking about exercises similar to the contact improv that we’ve been discussing between Mokuren Dojo and Formosa Neijia. Scott from Weakness With a Twist also has a cool inside perspective on contact improv in his comments here.

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I respect all these guys’ opinions and I see their points, but I can still see a potential value to “noodle circle” drills like contact improv. Basically, I think it is a good thing to do some randori under different rulesets – not just your normal mode of randori.

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These noodle circles are basically randori (or push-hands) under the most liberal possible set of conditions. Any motion is okay so long as uke and tori continue moving in contact with each other. There is no way to lose or win, except maybe to be unable to continue moving in contact with the other guy – and even then it is unclear who is the loser. Under this sort of ruleset, you’re playing with what’s possible – not necessarily what will probably bring about certain outcomes (like winning). What do you learn in this type of play? Who knows! It’s free play! You develop a base of experience of possibilities when you move freely in contact with the other guy.

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In more conservative rulesets there are more ways to win and lose (knock-out, points accumulation, submissions, time limits, penalties, etc…) Here you learn to use motion and skillfully conform to a set of conditions or ideals or principles in order to increase the likelihood of certain outcomes (like the other guy falling down or submitting instead of you).

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In the most conservative rulesets, you work only with what’s most probable. There is little room for playing with what might work because potentially costly loss is looming over you. Here you are learning worst case scenarios (i.e stab-twice knife randori).

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Most rulesets for randori are somewhere between these extremes, you have some leeway to experiment with both possibilities and probabilities. I say it’s a good thing to spend some of your practice time (not necessarily a lot of time) on both extremes and then work most of your time somewhere in the middle. You want to play with a variety of conditions of freedom (e.g. contact improv) and constraint (stab-twice randori).

Ninja Army

WhooHoo! My ninja booty has arrived! I recently won the Martial Development Haiku Contest, and Chris sent me my prize - a ninja playset! Three swords, a dagger, and a ninja claw! It arrived just in time for an epic ninja battle in the front yard this morning. Here are some pics of the newly equipped Parker Ninja Army. Thanks, Chris, for running the contest - that was fun. And thanks for the ninja booty.

After all, we're Americans!

Nathan posted a great series of patriotic quotes on his blog, beating me at my own game that I established last year. Here's you a couple more. Everybody has heard the first verse and chorus of America the Beautiful a million times. When the song is played as a sound bite on TV they seem to always cut it off there. Check out the other verses.

Oh beautiful, for pilgrims' feet Whose stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness!

America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw; Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law!

Oh beautiful, for heroes proved In liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved And mercy more than life!

America! America! May God thy gold refine, 'Til all success be nobleness, and ev'ry gain divine!

Oh beautiful, for patriot dream That sees beyond the years, Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears!

America! America! God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!

And while we're on the subject, how about a great quote on the nature of the freedoms that our forefathers secured unto themselves and their posterity through the shedding of their blood and the forsaking of their personal comfort and safety...

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. (John Adams)

And one more... an excerpt from perhaps America's greatest rhetor, Ronald Reagan...

Standing here, one faces a magnificent vista, opening up on this city’s special beauty and history. At the end of this open mall are those shrines to the giants on whose shoulders we stand. Directly in front of me, the monument to a monumental man. George Washington, father of our country.

A man of humility who came to greatness reluctantly. He led America out of revolutionary victory into infant nationhood. Off to one side, the stately memorial to Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration of Independence flames with his eloquence. And then beyond the Reflecting Pool, the dignified columns of the Lincoln Memorial. Whoever would understand in his heart the meaning of America will find it in the life of Abraham Lincoln.

Beyond those moments -- those monuments to heroism is the Potomac River, and on the far shore the sloping hills of Arlington National Cemetery, with its row upon row of simple white markers bearing crosses or Stars of David. They add up to only a tiny fraction of the price that has been paid for our freedom.
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Each one of those markers is a monument to the kind of hero I spoke of earlier. Their lives ended in places called Belleau Wood, the Argonne, Omaha Beach, Salerno, and halfway around the world on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pork Chop Hill, the Chosin Reservoir, and in a hundred rice paddies and jungles of a place called Vietnam.

Under one such a marker lies a young man, Martin Treptow, who left his job in a small town barber shop in 1917 to go to France with the famed Rainbow Division. There, on the Western front, he was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy fire. We're told that on his body was found a diary. On the flyleaf under the heading, “My Pledge,” he had written these words:
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"America must win this war. Therefore, I will work; I will save; I will sacrifice; I will endure; I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole
struggle depended on me alone."
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The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds; to believe that together with God’s help we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us.
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And after all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans.

Ground cycle #1 pointers

Great return to judo practice tonight after being out for a week or so. Rob and Iwarmed up with some ROM and moved into groundwork cycle #1 with some minor adjustments to what Rob was doing:

• Even though it's a pretty elementary drill and top man is not looking for armbars, bottom man has to actively work to protect his arms from being entangled and locked. Bottom man continually moves his arms as top man shifts so that they stay free and viable and so that they act as feelers.
• Also, when pushing back to base from your belly, you don't want to do a push-up type action. Rather, pull one knee up as far as you can and use you arms to slide your butt over that shin as if you were pushing your butt over a roller (your shin is the roller). I can push back to base this proper way with a 350 pound guy on my back, whereas it's hard to do a push-up with anyone on your back.
• Third thing was the crawfish action at the end of the groundwork cycle. Bottom man has to immobilize one of top man's arms against the ground or else he will float with you. Top man has to watch out for putting an arm around bottom man's waistline/beltline because the turnover is almost trivial for the bottom man in this situation.

We did a lot of randori, both newaza and tachi into newaza. Rob did well there and got me in some positional asphyxia deals a couple of times. I got him with a good jujigatame (cross armbar) once and a good jujijime (cross choke) another time. We finished up with some repetition of kouchigari (one of the divine nine). We both agreed that if we worked with this intensity daily we'd each weigh about 20 pounds less.

Avoid & evade

The other day I avoided a guy who rounded a blind corner coming at me fast. I was in the middle of a step – right at that critical point and I just stepped over the hill and slipped past him and was gone. I had my hands between us for a brush-off in case I couldn’t slip him, but I didn’t have to even touch him. And that response was a completely habituated reflex! I didn’t realize what I was doing until I was ten or fifteen feet away. I don’t even think he really understood what had just happened because people seem to just disappear when they walk over the hill on you. Pretty cool!

Jointlocks as shikaku and kuzushi

Kotegaeshi is a jointlock. There are many joint locking or holding techniques in aikido, including manipulations of wrist, elbow, shoulder, spine, and others. Different people interpret this class of techniques differently, but essentially there are about three ideas on joint techniques:

• Use massive force against an anatomical weakness to break a joint
• Use controlled force to create pain sufficient to control the opponent
• Use a lock to limit uke’s motion and damp out his potential for harm

You can probably tell from my previous post on pain control that I subscribe to this third idea. Joint locks, like kotegaeshi, when used to restrict an attacker’s range of motion, control his balance, and limit his potential to hurt you, can be very effective. Potentially much more effective than joint breaking techniques or pain control techniques.
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In aikido we talk a lot about shikaku, the dead angle. This is a place where tori is relatively safe because it is difficult for uke to bring weapons (natural or otherwise) to bear. Typically we say shikaku is behind the arm to the outside of the body. Jointlocks can be used to expand the space that you can call shikaku. For instance, with kotegaeshi held (but not cranked), shikaku often extends well in front of the arm.
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A while back I wrote about there being several ideas about how kuzushi (offbalance) works. Some folks say that uke is always offbalance and tori has to learn how to use that offbalance. It’s not hard to imagine uke, in his natural motion, oscillating up and down, left and right, forward and back, in sort of chaotic spirals. Now, take an arm and hold it at the end of its range of motion in kotegaeshi. How do uke’s oscillations change? Well, for one thing they are damped out on one side. If something is oscillating and is damped on one side then it is, by definition, asymmetric, or offbalance. Thus, tori can use jointlocks to maintain offbalances rather than to try to bust uke with them.

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Play especially with the second kotegaeshi exercise (taking up the slack) that I posted the other day and let me know what you think of it.