You can under-power those you can't over-power

Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Baron Acton

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This is usually thought of in a political sense, but can also apply in a physical sense.

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Take for instance, shomenate, it can be done with a power stroke or without. When it is done with a power stroke, driving uke’s chin strongly up and back, it looks a lot like the traditional Junana version. Done without a strong power stroke it looks like a brushoff or like a kokyunage breath throw (i.e. gokata). Most any aikido technique can be done either way.

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How can power stroke get us in trouble?

• Power depends upon a base of power. To exert you have to plant your feet. If it doesn’t work it sticks you in place. This gives uke a specific, directed force to adapt and respond to. Uke can actually use your strength and power as a crutch if your angle and timing is not quite right. Applying power can make it easier for uke to pull you down with him.
• Power is addictive. If a little power isn’t enough, you naturally think of adding more strength first. This leads to escalation of the conflict.
• You never know if you are powerful enough to overcome your enemy. This leads to a struggle to gain more and more personal power and there is no upper limit in this kind of power struggle. Weakness as a virtue, however, does have a limit – zero power. You never know if you can over-power an enemy but you can know for absolute certain that you are able to under-power any opponent.

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UPDATE: Here is another facet of the power vs. weakness thing. Interesting...

What you are getting yourself into

To spend even a few minutes around wrestling is to understand one of its immutable laws: People get hurt. This isn’t by accident; it’s by design... [These arts] inflict immense amounts of pain and suffering ..., often by means that look outright cruel but in fact are the product of months of hard labor spent in perfecting the technical aspects ... If you should quit, be it mentally or physically, and you are still at some indeterminate midpoint ... then you stand roughly a 99% chance of getting hurt. (Mark Kreidler, Four Days to Glory)

There is, to my way of thinking, an unusual trend in American martial arts. Folks get into the arts without fully understanding that they might be setting themselves up for injury. These same kids will sign up for football knowing that it will be rough and tough and painful. Their parents understand this too. We all know folks that have been hurt playing contact sports. But then we sign up for a martial arts class (supposedly a class on how to fight) and we don't expect it to be rough.

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My instructors have always made it abundantly clear that there is no chance involved - if you practice these arts you will eventually be injured. Hopefully later, but maybe sooner. I tell all of my students in writing the dangerous nature of the activity. Note also the disclaimer at the bottom of this page – it is not just for decoration…

The contents of this website are for informational purposes only. Do not mistake any of this information for advice.

Martial arts training is a physical contact activity in which there is risk to the participants. Practice is frequently very physically strenuous and mentally and emotionally challenging. Participation can result in injuries or damages of any sort, including permanent disability, deformity, or death. Sometimes the risks are not even foreseeable by trained experts.

It would be wise of you to obtain the help of a qualified instructor and have a physician examine you and clear you for strenuous physical contact activity before you try any of these very dangerous activities. Always inspect the practice area, the equipment, your partners, and yourself for risks before starting. Your participation is voluntary, so if you see something that you think is unsafe you should immediately tell the instructor and decline to participate in that activity. Always work within your own limits.

In fact, one of my instructors, when repeatedly asked about starting 3 and 4 and 5 year-olds in karate classes eventually began responding, "Would you give your child a handgun for Christmas?" And after seeing their horrified responses he would tell them, "Well, this is the same thing because in this class, I teach people to kill other people."

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While I would not go that far (I do not teach people to kill other people) the violent physical contact activities we practice and experiment with in class are derived from battlefield sciences that were designed and evolved to injure and kill.

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You can't go into this thing without knowing what you are getting yourself into.

Colin Wee interview

Very nice interview from our buddy down under - Colin Wee. This interview touches on the history of taekwando, its interactions with Shotokan and tangsoodo, and Colin's experiences in aikijutsu and trying to figure out how the aiki and TKD pieces fit together. Colin's got a good bit of experience and knowledge from sorta going his own way in teaching TKD and we can learn a lot about syllabus construction and teaching methods from interviews like this. Thanks, Colin.

You can't just 'yo'

I had an instructor tell me one time , “You can’t just ‘yo’, you have to ‘yo-yo’” What that instructor was saying was this: you can’t make a yo-yo or slinky or a pendulum work at any arbitrary speed you want. They only work at their own innate frequency. Notice how, in the end of the video here, the smaller slinky has a different frequency from the larger ones. You can’t make a larger slinky perform like a smaller one no matter how much energy you put into it. It just has a different speed of oscillation to it.

People are the same way. You can’t make any given person move at an arbitrarily fast speed no matter how much energy you impart to them. As a martial example, grab a partner in a double lapel grab and throttle him back and forth as hard and fast as you can. It is uncomfortable and unpleasant for uke, but you’re not really moving them much. Each time you push and he gets ready to start moving, all of a sudden now you are pulling and you cancel his impulse out. You use a lot of energy and don’t really move him much. Now, grab him and start rocking him like you would rock a pendulum or swing a child on a swing set. Each time he gets into a certain phase with you, push a little to amplify his movement. Pretty soon he is sailing all over the mat because you are moving at his frequency, lightly bumping him every so often.

Not only do our bodies work at a certain speed, but our minds do too. Try counting in your head, “1,2,3…” to ten. Now do it faster. Keep trying faster and you will find a point that you just can’t go faster. That speed limit is much slower than the speed of neurons firing, so what is slowing the count down? Subvocalizations - microscopic jaw and throat movements. As you think about a number, your muscles in your jaw and throat begin getting ready in case you are going to say it. This happens whenever we think because we can’t think outside of our language. The bottom line – you can’t move your jaw muscles as fast as you might want, so you can’t think (i.e. count in your head) as fast as you’d like either.

You can't just yo.

Owaza

Aiki with Patrick M.

• ROM, tegatana, hanasu
• Randori
• Owaza Jupon #1-10

Flow is not the goal either

You know, you can blend and flow and still get beat up. Rolling with the punches is still getting punched.

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I wrote a few days ago that strength as a primary means of making technique work is pretty sorry. Around the same time, Dave Chesser wrote that aiki guys tend to "get it" better than a lot of folks. They get that they are supposed to be blending with something rather than opposing it. I don't necessarily know about all that. I've met some pretty strategically amazing folks with harder, more direct ideas.

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The other day in class we found an interesting problem. The student had sorta decided that flow was the goal, and that if he could smoothe the pieces of the technique out then the thing would work better. It turned out that, in this particular case, flow was counterproductive because it was making him gloss over some vital parts of the thing, making the necessary tactics seem kind of blurry. We concentrated on getting each tactic working in sequence without regard for smooth flow and all of a sudden the aiki appeared.

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And funny thing... When you get the aiki in there, then you can also get the strength and the flow for free.

Who do you think would win?

This is for my aiki buddies who are also comics fans. In this pic, Marvel is in position to do gedanate or maybe maeotoshi, while Supes is in position to do a great gyakugamaeate, throwing Marvel all the way into the Second Universe. If these guys would just learn a little aikido then they could more easily beat up their buddies during the inevitable cross-overs and the poor artists wouldn't have to draw so many bulging muscles and grimacing faces!

Working with Andy on flow vs. blur

Aiki with Andy

• Folk's expectations going into a practice have a lot to do with the outcome. Today I think Andy came to class expecting to suck and be frustrated, and for me to grumble at him about it. Sure enough, he was stiff and rough. But we did randori naming the release motions being played to give his conscious mind something to do besides whipping his subconscious mind and within about 10 minutes he was doing great aikido. Good, light, smooth, flowing, etc... Maybe the best aikido I've ever seen Andy do.
• ROM, tegatana, releases, chain #1
• Andy uked for me doing all of nijusan and I uked for him doing 1-10 before we ran out of time and steam. The thing to remember on nijusan is to get all the pieces in there before going on to the next thing. It is easy to get too focussed on flow, and end up with a clumsy blur. Flow will come if you put all the pieces in there.

Thirty-one

Trivia from the USA.gov website:

• 31 - Number of places nationwide with “liberty” in their name. The most populous one as of July 1, 2006, is Liberty, Mo. (29,581). Iowa, with four, has more of these places than any other state: Libertyville, New Liberty, North Liberty and West Liberty.
• Thirty-one places are named “eagle” — after the majestic bird that serves as our national symbol. (Places include cities, towns, villages and census-designated places.) The most populous such place is Eagle Pass, Texas, with 26,401 residents.
• Twelve places have “independence” in their name. The most populous of these is Independence, Mo., with 109,400 residents.
• Nine places adopted the name “freedom.” Freedom, Calif., with 6,000 residents, has the largest population among these.
• There is one place named “patriot” — Patriot, Ind., with a population of 192.
• And what could be more fitting than spending the Fourth of July in a place called “America”? There are five such places in the country, with the most populous being American Fork, Utah, population 25,596.

Previous Mokuren Dojo Independence Day tributes:

• After all, We're Americans
• Happy Birthday, America

Stronger and faster

There are a lot of attributes that go into making a technique successful. The timing, offbalance, strength, speed, mass, etc… of both attacker and defender play into it. But when a technique goes bad in practice, what do you immediately think to change in order to make the next repetition more successful? I’m not asking what should you be thinking about working on, but what do you naturally think of

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For many folks, I'd bet you think, "I've got to be stronger and faster."

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This reminds me of a tournament I was in years ago as an orange belt. I beat a green belt pretty handily with what I have to admit was a superbly-timed sukuinage. The guy jerked on me hard and I clipped both of his legs with my whole body, using his own strength to throw him and his mass to turn us so I landed on top. It was a beautiful judo moment.

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After the match, that guy’s coach came up to me and asked, “Are you the guy that beat my green belt so badly?” Being a young smartalek and high on adrenaline and testosterone at the time, I answered, “I donno, I beat somebody’s green belt real bad.” (If you’re reading this, I’m sorry I spoke to you that way. It was disrespectful and stupid.)

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But anyway, I thought then and I still think that coach’s response was remarkably short-sighted. He sighed, looking exasperated at his student and said, “Yeah, I’ve got to work on him to make him stronger and faster.” I actually managed to control the response that popped into my head, “Yeah, you go do that and next time I’ll throw him that much higher.”

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Point is, his first thought was that this player was unsuccessful because he was not strong enough and fast enough, when the reality was that the player’s own strength beat him in the first place.

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Strength and speed are good things, but they are pretty sorry as a first line of defense. When a technique is not successful in practice, look somewhere besides strength and speed to make the next rep better.

Simple self-defense

Violence is... Well, It is violent!

This is the second in a series of reviews of Rory Miller's excellent new book, Meditations on Violence. Check out my previous review, and by all means, get a copy of Meditations on Violenceto read and re-read.

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Violence is, by its nature, violent. Rory puts forth this idea that should probably go without saying but it often doesn't so Rory spells it out for us.

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By definition, violence happens...

• closer than you are accustomed to dealing with
• faster than you are accustomed to dealing with
• more suddenly than you are accustomed to dealing with
• and with greater force than you are accustomed to dealing with

In other words, violence is more violent than you think. If it were not, it would not be violent it would be merely uncomfortable or inconvenient. The implications of this statement to your martial art could fill a book. Actually it did fill a book - Rory Miller's Meditations on Violence.

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Highly recommended for all martial artists interested in actual self-defense applicability of their art. Get your copy from my Amazon store:

Pinning and holding

Aiki with Patrick M. and Rick

• ROM, ukemi (Rick looks like he's feeling more comfortable with the side and turn-back rolls)
• tegatana with emphasis on making the backward turning steps shallower to minimize the cross-legged weakness in the middle. We also paid attention to trying to find subsequent motions matching the natural rhythm of the body. For example, the "reaching around in front and push up to the side" is not two separate moves but an arc (or french curve) that your arm is descriving and which your body has to follow.
• hanasu & chain #1
• Nijusan #6, 7, and 8 with emphasis on the forms of pinning on the ends of these kata
• suwari menuchi tekubiosae with pin

Amen, brother! Preach it!

This is the best video explanation I've found of what I've been teaching and calling the aiki brush-off. Just like this guy mentions in these videos, if you watch most aikido randori sessions, the tori is concentrating on applying techniques to each successive attacker. Problem is, this ties the tori up, creating openings for the other attackers. Most of the time, when you see really successful aiki randori practitioners, they brush-off more attacks than they counter with actual techniques.

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This type of brushing-off action is what I've been concentrating on in my personal practice and in my teaching for the last couple of years and it has really changed my aiki for the better. I've had several highly-ranked folks whose opinions count a lot to me say that my aiki has become more robust and effective, while at the same time becoming softer. I attribute this to practicing the aiki brush-off.

Another interesting thing to note about these randori sessions: when the brush-off either fails or creates enough time to actually do a technique, the two techniques that pop up most often are shomenate and aigamaeate (A.K.A. aikinage or iriminage). Just exactly like the results we've gotten in knife randori like here and here. Atemiwaza is the first backup for the brushoff. Everything else in the art is backup for the atemiwaza.