Great falling practice

Aiki with Kel

• Ukemi emphasizing how the proper landing position is a natural consequence of managing the body properly throughout the entire fall.
• Tegatana emphasizing the panther walk and bringing the recovery step in fully
• Hanasu emphasizing full recovery steps
• chain #1 including the transition from release #1 to release #5 and the stuff that comes off of release #1 - mainly tenkai kote hineri, kotemawashi oshi taoshi, and kote hineri.
• Rokukata maeotoshi and Rokukata sakaotoshi with a crashpad emphasizing feeling to see if one step is enough or if you should take one more step and catch the next footfall. We were getting spectacular throws and falls.

Osotogari and taiotoshi uchikomi

Kids' judo with Whit, Mason, Knox, and Quin

• ROM, ukemi, movement skills
• osotogari ("the 1-2 throw) uchikomi sets of 3, throwing on the third. Emphasis on hitting the back of uke's knee with the back of your knee and pulling with your arms.
• taiotoshi ("the 1-2-3 throw") uchikomi sets of 3 throwing on the third, emphasizing tori turning his leg downward.
• standing randori
• intro to the shoulder-push-knee-lift turnover

Rhadi and Ronda on the Wall Street Journal

A helpful handful: 5 interpretations for yoko o mawashi

A couple of days ago, John asked about potential applications for the last movement (yoko o mawashi) in our first exercise (Tegatana no kata). Following are a handful of applications or things that this last movement teaches - but not before a disclaimer. I consider this exercise to be very general-purpose. This movement, or something similar could occur in many techniques.

• As John pointed out, all the steps in this kata are very small, conservative motions, so, in contrast, this large, lunging motion teaches us what a large recovery is involved with a large step
• You may also consider this as a withdrawing evasion (like a retreating tenkanashi) getting the hands up on the centerline. You may not step that deep, but in essence yoko o mawashi is a specific type of aiki brush-off.
• You may also interpret this motion as pushing uke down: an evasion with some degree of turning motion, dropping, and pushing uke into offbalance - taking an incoming opponent and driving them into the ground.
• As for specific techniques, you may see this type of motion as a kotegaeshi. As uke punches, tori evades with a retreating tenkanashi, grasps the arm, and returns back to the starting point, throwing with a gaeshi.
• You could also call it aigamaeate or aikinage - retreating tenkanashi scooping the arm and head in an arc, then turning the other way attacking the face.

2nd-day soreness…and 3rd… and 4th…

In Exercise Physiology school we learned about delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) – fatigue and pain that comes hours-to-days after exertion (and is not caused by lactic acid). We often called it “day-after soreness” but as I got a little older (into my late-20’s) I realized that it really seems to happen not the day after but the second-day after – thus the term, ‘second-day soreness.’ Now, in my late 30’s, I have noticed it lingering a little longer and the other day, Rob pointed out that it might be turning into ‘third-day soreness’ because of advancing age (thanks, Rob).

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I’ve had an instructor talk repeatedly about how when you get into your 60’s you will regret thoughtless movement for a week!

Randori with locking techniques

Aiki with Kel

• We've gone from freezing cold to temperate to too-humid-to-survive in about two weeks. Scott Z. would feel right at home.
• Ukemi with emphasis on landing properly and slowing the legs down so they don't get hammered on the mat
• Tegatana & hanasu as warmup - no particular emphasis
• Nijusan #6-10 with the ukemi and pins (see this training log)
• Chain #1 - the shortcut that contains the hineri-gaeshi loop
• Randori with both partners walking into and out of gaeshi, hineri, mawashi, and wakigatame locks.
• Rokukata maeotoshi and Rokukata sakaotoshi as the cool ninja techniques of the night

Ritual

A quickie question for y’all: What are some examples of things that you do in your martial art practice that don’t particularly serve any pragmatic, functional purpose – you just do it that way because that’s the way it has always been done?

3% error – bias or random error?

A teacher once told me that the greatest professional musicians in the world still make about 3% error - despite an infinite amount of practice. That is, they mis-play about three notes out of every hundred. If you look at Tegatana no kata, it has between about 70 and 100 steps (depending on how you count it). This implies that there will always be a few missed steps each time you do it even after you have practiced it for years. Thus there will always be something to work on in this exercise.

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Something to look for is the difference between systematic error (bias) and random error. When you spot one of those mis-steps, are you making that same mistake repeatedly or was that just a fluke? Systematic error is (perhaps) more shameful for the expert but it is by far the easier type of error to fix. Errors that occur at random are hard to pinpoint, much less fix. Errors that you make repeatedly the same every time are pretty easy to modify, but to fix a random error you have to re-tool your entire thinking process and movement strategy to be more error-tolerant or error-detecting or error-correcting. Change everything that you do so that there are no consequences to the occasional random error and suddenly the error will cease to exist. This is why the greatest experts can do things that are taboo for novices – because some of these things make a difference for novices but don't matter for the expert that has worked through that particular error for years.

Submission grappling in McComb, MS

Doggone it! How is it that I missed this event that was apparently hosted right here in McComb? I wonder if Madison Wrestling is putting on this event on a recurring basis?

Aiki practice and a cool knife video

Aikido with Rob and Kel

• tegatana with emphasis on the goofy-foot pivots and turns in the second half of the exercise
• hanasu with emphasis on synchronization
• chain #1

We talked about aikido having about four major failsafes - strategies that you fall back on when something is not working. They include:

• disengage and move away
• move behind uke
• hit uke in the face
• synchronize with uke to limit his potential

Rob is having some cognitive dissonance trying to reconcile his knife-based knowledge (which is quite good and quite aiki - but just a different training methodology) with our aikido. He called it comparing apples to oranges. I called it getting stuck on the warmups to the point you never make progress. I don't know if we resolved it but I think it might be better. I don't think he isn't buyng into the aikido, but that he is having trouble reconciling how the two sysems seem to build up to the same thing through different paths.

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We also talked about an interesting knife method that seems pretty viable and pretty aiki-like to me. (Watch out for some foul language on the film.) Rob had some commentary and potential problems with it. I think what I see there is pretty interesting because this guy talks all the same principles that we do in aikido - i.e. don't fight with the guy, disengage and run, control his balance and you control his potential, etc... I don't know if this is the 'best' knife system - but it sure is interesting.

Ninja invisibility

A while back I wrote that we had practiced “ninja invisibility” during that particular class. That’s not the sort of invisibility like in Hollow Man, where light passes through you. Rather it is a phenomenon that happens when you are moving in a proper, aiki fashion with uke. What happens is uke tends to lose track of you and to be unable to reorient easily. There are roughly three skills going on in this phenomenon.

• Evade toward uke, passing through the narrowest part of his field of vision. Evading away from uke keeps you in the widest part of his field of vision. By moving into uke as you evade it is easier to get into shikaku (uke’s ‘dead angle’ or blind spot).


• Don’t grab and hang onto uke. If you do he can easily orient to you. Use your arms as feelers (Mississippi-speak for antennae) instead of end-effectors. Deprive uke of stimulus if you don’t want a response.


• Synchronize your motions as closely as possible to uke’s motions. Motion in every direction – up, down, left, right, forward, backward, otoshi, guruma, etc... Peripheral vision only works on moving things, so if there is zero relative motion between your center and his it is much harder for uke to orient to you.

These skills have the cumulative effect of more than occasionally making tori seem to just disappear from in front of uke. It is not uncommon for uke to stop his attack and look around, bewildered. It is a truly odd, truly disorienting feeling – and really useful to tori.

Preparation, intensity, focus!

1-2 counters 1-2-3

Judo with Whit, Knox, and Quin

• Warmup
• osotogari cueing off of uke putting a foot forward - every time uke gets a foot forward, tori throws osotogari (which they are calling the "1-2 throw").
• osotogari as a counter to taiotoshi. At the last tournament, all the kids were throwing taiotoshi (the "1-2-3 throw"), so I have been working with Whit and company on how to turn and reap the leg for osotogari.
• While Whit was practicing osotogari on me I was practicing the R1/R3 gripfighting patterns on him.

Scam Targeting Martial Arts Instructors

There is currently a scam e-mail making the rounds, this time targeting martial arts instructors. Yesterday, dozens of the instructors in our organization got the same email, as follows:

Hello, I am Mr Rhodes Cremas. I contact you on Dojo training.Well my Daughter (Jullie) is coming to stay with her freind in North America for 2 months and i want you to help me teaching her perfectly. So Note: my Daughter Jullie is just a beginner, so please kindly teach her well. Also kindly let me know your charges cost per lesson,inorder for me to arrange for her payment before her travel. Please Advise back on 1. The cost of an hour lesson. 2. And payment method ( Let me know if you will accept your payment by check) I will be glad to read from you soonest. Best regards, Mr Rhodes Cremas.

This is apparently a variant of the Nigerian check cashing scam that is so prevalent - so watch out. Don't give this guy your personal information and certainly don't cash a check for him.