Basics vs. fundamentals - and taiso

Mark MacYoung has this interesting article at his website about the differences between basics and fundamentals.  The gist of his assertion is that the basics are just starting points - like kindergarden abecedario type instruction - not much content but just a launching point for instruction.  Fundamentals, however, are the foundations upon which the rest of the study is built - the "meat" of the subject in which lives the principles that make everything work.  MacYoung talks about how students can resent being told to "go back to the basics" when the instructor actually means "focus on the fundamental principles of what you are doing." 

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In our aikido classes, we have both fundamentals (how to stand, how to enter, how to turn, how to deliver power, how to follow, etc...) and basics (like the wrist release forms - we might argue about their combat utility, but they provide a great starting point to talk about a lot of the material). 

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We have this pedagogical desire to review all of this material very frequently, but we don't want to bore the student senseless or make them resent being "sent back to the basics."

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So, we use taiso (warmups) as a way to get the review and repetition of the fundamentals in the beginning of every class.  In most of the classes that I have experience with, the warmups consist of a little (useless but mostly harmless) range of motion - arm waving and twisting, followed by the "walking kata" - a set of taiso developed by Tomiki Sensei to teach weight shifting and footwork and body coordination in a sport-specific way.  The benefits of using fundamentals as taiso are (at least) three-fold:

• Students get a nice warm-up and get loosened-up in a dynamic, activity-specific manner
• Students get the desired repetition on the fundamentals of stance and posture and footwork and coordination and power-delivery)
• The instructors and students all get a common basis of sensorimotor and kinesthetic experience that they can use as a context to communicate "higher" ideas - a common ground.

So, in summary, I think it is important that your warmups (taiso) that you do before every class consist of far less empty arm-waving range of motion, and far more activity-specific fundamental motion.

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Patrick Parker

www.mokurendojo.com

Taiso is the Rosetta Stone

The conundrum I've been discussing for the past week here on the blog is, how can an instructor and a student who might come from extremely different backgrounds ever develop a shared context or some sort of basis for real communication?  I've likened it to a similar communication problem from the late 1800's - namely, how to figure out how to read heiroglyphics with no shared background.  That problem was solved relatively quickly when they found the Rosetta Stone, which provided the key for deciphering  heiroglyphics by relating them to two previously known languages.

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Sure, the student can imitate the sensei as closely as possible and gradually build up that context.  But we've already seen in the previous post that can take many years to start speaking the other party's language.  What we need is a Rosetta Stone that can create some sort of relation between sensei's background and experience (particularly kinesthetic and sensorimotor) and that of the students.

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In many traditional Japanese martial arts, the Rosetta Stone is taiso.  Westerners often mistake taiso for simple warm-ups or calisthenics.  It is easy for many students to let the mind slip out of gear and just go through the motions during the taiso, thinking that it doesn't matter because it's just some warmups before we get to the real heart of the matter.  But taiso should be done mindfully, with emphasis on practicing motions that will be used later in kihon and kata.

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So, if you think of kihon as the essential movements found in kata, but formatted so that it is easy to get mindful repetitions, then you can also think of taiso as the building blocks of kihon formated so that it is easy to practice them in a light, rhythmic manner.  The taiso should warm up the practitioner, but it should also build a foundation of movement for kihon, which should, in turn, build a foundation for doing kata.

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An instructor and a student doing a set of taiso together provides a common kinesthetic and sensorimotor body of experience that both parties can draw upon when trying to teach or learn kihon and kata.

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Taiso is the Rosetta Stone.

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

O Sensei was a space alien

When I was a child, one of my imaginary friends was a space alien that had been sent to Earth to study our curious culture.  It had monitored our transmissions for years and thereby learned many of our words and figured out our syntax and grammar, but it still couldn't understand much.  A typical conversation with the alien (it had an un-pronouncable name) would go something like this...

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"What is that... thing?" (pointing a tentacle)

"Oh, this? This is an apple."

"What is... appul?"

"It's a fruit.  It grows on a tree and we eat them."

"What is... froot?"

"Trees make them and we eat them."

"What is eeet?"

and so on and so on ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

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Our problem was, even though we understood the same words, we came from totally different backgrounds.  We were alien to each other.  We had no context and despite our best intentions and our best efforts, we couldn't figure out how to manufacture a context.  We ended up building spaceships and laser weapons and destroying each other's home worlds.  That we understood.
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In what sense might you say O Sensei was an alien?  He lived in a newly-industrializing country just emerging from feudalism, while many of his students lived in agrarian and industrial societies and now we live in a technological service economy.  His education and religious practices were pretty different from ours.  In the immortal words of the venerable Hootie..."You and me, we come from different worlds..."  Maybe an easier question would be, "Was O Sensei like us at all?"

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The most important difference was not cultural or environmental but the fact that he and his contemporaries habitually used their bodies differently than did the generation after him and the generation after them.  They sat on their knees on the floor - we use chairs from infancy.  They climbed and crawled up and down hills - we use elevators and escalators and peoplemovers.  They walked - we drive and fly (in seated positions). They tended their animals and plants - we buy our food pre-processed and packaged.  They chopped wood for cooking and heat - we push buttons.  They worked in many varied postures - we sit and perform the same small motions repetitively.

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Even the most active of us are a far cry from the most sedentary of them.  They simply had a completely alien body experience when compared to ours.

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So, when O Sensei says something that sets our B.S. meters off, like "I am the Universe!"  Maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he was expressing something physically, tactically useful based on his body experience instead of something annoyingly etheral.  Maybe that was something that his contemps would have understood better because of a different body of kinesthetic aposteriori knowledge.

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The question then arises, how do we translate knowledge and teachings from an alien kinesthesia so that they will be useful to us?  We need a kinesthetic Rosetta Stone, so to speak.

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Stay tuned, Dear Reader, and I'll tell you about this Rosetta Stone!

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

No common ground

Who here has ever read through any of Osensei Morehei Ueshiba's quotes and sayings and instructions and thought, "What the hell is that nut talking about?"

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Or perhaps youve attended a seminar with a highly-ranked instructor approximately two generations older than you and you weren't even sure they were speaking the same language as you.  Oh, sure, they were using proper words and they arranged them into sentences that seemed to abide by most of the rules of grammar and syntax, but you couldn't draw much meaning from them.

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The ideas were not passing from their heads to yours through the medium of language.
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I have had the extreme fortune of having a regular aikido instructor for the last twenty some-odd years that is a true master.  His skill and knowledge were only exceeded by his willingness to share and his quiet humor.  All of his students love him and respect him greatly.  But at the beginning of our relationship none of us mere mortals were able to understand a damned word he said!  I fondly recall one time he gave me some technical advice, which I didnt understand and couldn't really implement.  Then he told me the same thing six months later - and again in six more months and again six months after that and finally, a couple of years later, I understood what he was trying to communicate.  We found that it took all of us on average about 18 months to decipher his instructions.

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We simply had no context - no shared experiences to form a basis of communication.

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Over the years, as we persisted with this particular instructor and as he patiently repeated himself, we found that he got better at teaching us and we got better at understanding him.  Eventually we were able to understand things after only six months or a year of patient repetition ;-)

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We had gained a shared context or a common ground - a basis for communication.

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In my next post I will discuss possibly the most important and valuable form of common ground or shared experience that you can have with your instructor, without which, communication is severely limited if not impossible.  So stay tuned!

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Tomiki on initiative in Junokata

Today my martial studies are focussed on exchanges of initiative in Junokata.  Although I know of no existing teachings by Tomiki Sensei on Junokata, you can bet he was thoroughly versed in it because Kano seemed to esteem the exercise highly.  Tomiki does discuss initiative in this excellent essay...

Sen

In all athletic sports one must, in order to gain the victory, surpass the opponent in mental power, technical skill, and physical strength. These three factors must be united in gaining the mastery over an opponent. The mastery is brought into play in the form of various techniques, and although there are a large number of them, they may be summed up and resolved into one word sen (initiative or lead).

In the old densho (books of secret principles) the way of taking the initiative is explained in three stages.

• Sen-sen-no-sen (superior initiative). Superior initiative is given play in a delicate situation where one confronts an opponent who intends to attack, and gains mastery over him by subtly guessing his mentality and forestalling his actions. This is the highest reach of the mental cultivation in any military art and is regarded as not easily attainable. But if you consider it more deeply, you will find it too late to try to gain command over anything when it has taken a concrete form, and you must have the mental preparedness to hold it down beforehand. For this purpose it is necessary to learn to maintain the openness and serenity of mind as signified by the old expression, "Clear as a stainless mirror and calm as still water." Lao-tse teaches this almost divine state of mind in the following words: "It is the way of heaven to prevail without contention."
• Sen (initiative). This is to forestall your opponent by starting an action before he begins attack on you.
• Ato-no-sen (initiative in defense). This is not to guess the mentality of your opponent and check his action before it is done, but to start action in defense the moment you have an inkling of the offensive of your opponent. It is to avoid the opponent's attack the instant it is about to be launched upon you, and to make a counter-attack taking advantage of a pause in your opponent's movement and a disturbance in his posture. A man who takes the initiative in defense rises in opposition to his opponent's attack, and parries or averts it. Seemingly it is a defensive move. In order to stave off the opponent's attack at the last moment and restore one's position one must keep the moral attitude of initiative so as not to get worsted by the adversary.

With regard to Tomiki's schema of initiative, one may make some statements about the techniques in Junokata...

• All the techniques of junokata are Ato-no-sen (A.K.A. gonosen) - that is, uke acts and tori reacts.  In fact, it seems from some of the Kano excerpts that I posted in the last couple of days, that Kano thought that the true principle of Ju could only be applied in gonosen - that direct action or pre-emption by tori was not Ju.
• Many of the techniques of Junokata involve more than one exchange of initiative in renzoku (continuous or combination)fashion - that is, uke acts, tori reacts, uke reacts, tori reacts...
• The kata seems to mostly be organized in order of increasing complexity - that is, the techniques of the later sets in the kata tend to involve more interchange of initiative than those of the earlier sets. 

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Patrick Parker

www.mokurendojo.com

More Hoare on Gonokata

Another fine piece of commentary from Syd Hoare - this time  on the topic of Gonokata.  Apparently, Kano found gonokata to be unsatisfactory for unspecified reasons, and he shelved the kata.  Below, Hoare ventures some guesses as to some of the problems with the exercise (as reconstituted and recently demonstrated on YouTube)...

The kata, as available on the internet, does not flow that well and the responding techniques do not especially 'click'. For example there are a number of times where tori moves behind uke and does a rear daki-age/uranage-like move which as it stand is virtually unworkable. See how wrestlers do it. Also the tension that is created with the pushing and pulling is either handled by turning on the periphery of it or is simply converted with a

ju yielding motion. Some of the techniques look like sumo and taichi especially its 'pushing hands' exercise (tsui-shu). Finally some of the jigotai postures cry out for a ko-uchi-gari. If you can't go through the arms attack the legs!

The Go no kata is a very interesting historical relic of judo. I do not think it holds any answers to the prevalent muscular style of judo. Sumo is much better at dealing with resistance than judo especially with its technical use of doshin (concentricity) and its hiraku and soto/uchi muso techniques (The pushing hands practice of Taichi, however, could be worth doing on a regular basis. Perhaps the go ju no kata also owes something to the Chinese martial arts practice of strong (go) breath out and soft (ju) breath in. Maybe there is more to this than meets the eye.

 

Read the whole article - it is very interesting.

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Kano on the deficiencies of Ju

Whoa! This is really intersting! In 2010, Syd Hoare published online some translations of some of Jigoro Kano's writings.  Included were the following passages involving Kano grousing about the deficiencies within the principle of Ju (as understood as winning by yielding)...

Most jujitsu was based on and carried out under the Ju principle in order to defeat the opponent. It was also applicable to all the day to day affairs of man. However Kano eventually came up against the fact that there were many occasions in both attack and defence which could only be dealt with by theories outside the yielding principle Kano giving examples of situations which could not be explained by the Ju/Yielding principle divided them into physical and mental ones.

Physical situations.

For example when you are strongly grabbed from behind, under the JU principle there is no escape – there is no way to adapt to the opponent's power. There are a number of ways of responding to a strong hug from behind but there is no adaptation to the opponent's power. Similarly if an opponent grabs your throat from the front there are answers to it but they do not involve adapting to the opponent's power.

Furthermore if judo technique is always limited to complying with or adapting to the opponent's force there is nothing that judo can do if the opponent stands still. Even if you merely think about catching the opponents hand you cannot even lower your hand. All one can say is that it should be done with a minimum of force.

Mental situations.

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When the opponent attacks you vigorously you have no time to think out new means to deal with it. You have no choice but to choose to reply to it with your old tricks which naturally float into your mind based on previous experience. If the opponent does not attack but only defends, your mental workings and new thoughts will not appear.

Furthermore when one has decided to try a technique on the opponent you must not hesitate or doubt whether you should do this or that but be resolute in your decision to try a technique. At the same time think about all possibilities and try moving around, doing techniques lightly and even though there may not be better methods one must not be idle in thinking about them and producing them. From all these illustrations, all methods of attack and defence are very difficult to explain with the simple JU principle. It is evident that whether considering the mental or physical aspects, that a new basic principle is necessary to cover the huge variety of judo technique.

rom about the period 1897 – 1907 Kano relied less and less on the JU principle to explain his judo. For example in 1900 he wrote in the Kokushi magazine, 'The number one requirement for nagewaza is the mobilization of

minimum force in order to throw the opponent how and where one wishes. In his explanations of the practical application of judo principles he wrote, 'People should put to work their God-given spiritual force to demonstrate as widely as possible meritorious deeds for the world and mankind.

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Hooks instead of grips in judo

So, I mentioned in a previous article that in my humble opinion, the gripping phase of a judo throw comes pretty late in the action - like after kuzushi and tsukuri almost concurrently with kake.

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Here's another little secret - On many koshinage, I dont even do grips, at least not with my hands.  I tend to use my elbows like meathooks, putting them in as I'm turning in for a throw (tsukuri).  I look at it like this...

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Have you ever seen a small child carrying a heavy plastic grocery bag?  They don't have the grip strength to hold it by their side with a straight arm, so they bend their elbow and hook the bags over the crook of their elbows.  By moving the load right up to the fulcrum of the elbow, they get much better leverage on much stronger muscles (biceps beats finger flexors every time).  Turns out the same trick works very nicely for an adult trying to grapple or pick up or throw another comparable-sized person.

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There are just a handful of configurations that you need to be able to use in order to be able to do all of the koshiwaza and some of the ashiwaza...

• elbow hook around uke's waist - any koshinage
• elbow hook under uke's rear arm - sodeTKgoshi
• elbow hook around uke's neck - kubinage
• elbow hook under uke's lead arm - seoinage
• elbow/armpit hook over uke's lead arm - makikomi

I recommend trying using hooks instead of grips, and putting them in relatively late - as in during tsukuri.  I have gotten a lot of mileage out of this.

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Patrick Parker

www.mokurendojo.com

Our current schedule

As of January 2015, our regular class schedule looks like this...

Monday
- 6:00 - mixed Aikido/Judo

Friday
- 6:00 - mixed Aikido/Judo

Saturday
- private lessons by previous arrangement

The heart of the jo

There is an old aphorism... "The heart of the jo is an arrow."

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I enjoy aphorisms like this because they are frequently multi-faceted.  One can often draw multiple lessons from a statement like this.

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In a purely superficial sense, one could take this to mean that both are long, cylindrical wooden objects, with the jo a bit larger, such that the arrow could fit within the jo, or that one could perhaps carve an arrow out of a jo.

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More usefully and instructively, I've always taken this to mean that it is just the very tip that is the sweet spot for striking - that the rest of the jo is a delivery vehicle for the tip - just like in an arrow, the shaft and fletching is the delivery vehicle for the arrowhead.  One of my instructors was fond of calling the jo a "one-inch long weapon with a fifty-inch long handle."

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You can also glean from this aphorism that, just like an arrow, the jo is not useful unless it is pointed at the opponent.

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This past weekend I learned another interpretation of this aphorism.  An arrow is not immediately useful unless it is fitted to a bow and drawn - that is, placed under tension.  In the same way, the SMR jo is frequently compressed between the practitioner's hands so that to thrust or strike with it, just like with an arrow, you release it.

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The jo is not just being held in position by the hands, it is being actively propelled by one hand and restrained by the other, sort of like pressing both the brake and the accelerator in your car at the same time.

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Whenever both ends of the jo are palmed, the hands are squeezing toegther, compressing the jo, almost as if the jo is straining to leap forward into the heart of the enemy and the only things holding it back are the jodoka's front hand and his will.

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Randori in jodo

There is randori in jodo.  Perhaps not like the randori that you are used to in aikido or judo.  Probably unlike any randori that you're familiar with, but it is a very interesting form of contest.

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It is a contest of wills, and it takes place at the end of every kata.  It is similar to the way that judo's katamenokata is an interesting mix of kata and randori - in katamenokata, tori applies a technique and uke makes three escape or counter attempts, then submits.

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At the end of each jodo kata, the two participants face one another and the uke makes a signal that he is willing to stop fighting, but it is a small gesture - he is not submitting, he is conceding a minor point.  Tori then makes a gesture, withdrawing the jo, testing the uke's sincerity.  Then he makes another gesture towards peace, taking the jo offline, testing uke still.  it is not until uke has committed to his second step backward that he has enough momentum towards a condition of peace, that tori begins withdrawing.

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We often think of this osami as just a ceremonial ending to the kata, but you can also look at it as randori.  It has the properties of randori...

• It is an engagement match with another participant
• Each participant is testing the other.  Tori is watching for any provocation from uke that would continue the fight.  Uke is watching for any flaw or weakness (suki) in tori's posture or position or kamae - anything that would allow uke to return to aggression with impunity.  Uke is also watchig tori for any overt aggressive provocation - too much of which would be an indication of his insincerity.
• Either participant might "win" or "lose." The outcome is uncertain because it is not ever known which of the two will break first.

All of this takes the general form of a reverse arms race.  Tension and suspicion is gradually allowed to subside, but there is always the possibility that the other participant is not what he seems, so both participants must keep kamae and exhibit zanshin.

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This is a randori that takes place within the realm of the minds or the wills of the participants.

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Patrick Parker

www.mokurendojo.com

Can't see the randori in junokata?

In my last post I asserted that junokata is not an abstract, aesthetic, demonstration thing intended for aging judo masters.  Rather, it was deliberately designed by Kano as practical randori education for relative beginners.  At least, that's what Kano says/implies in his memoirs.

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Of course, your next question to me should be, "Well, what are all those amazing randori lessons hidden in Junokata?" Short answer -  I don't know for sure.  I can't lie to you and claim to have gleaned all the cool ninja secrets from this exercise.  Shoot, even Keiko Fukuda says in her book that the essence of this kata eluded her for most of her life, and she been practicing judo for about 55 years longer than me!

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This brings to my mind the question... If Junokata was designed as a practical randori education, why is it so darn hard to glean any practical randori lessons from it?  Seems to me it could be any (or several) of the following...

• Junokata was not really designed as a practical randori thing - Parker is smoking the hoohoo weed again.  I mean, two or three generations of Olympic judoka can't be wrong, can they?
• Junokata has not been passed down to successive generations of judoka faithfully and intact, as Kano intended.  The lessons have been obscured and the kata has become just an aesthetic demonstration thing that is only remotely and abstractly related to real judo.
• Our understanding of the nature of randori has become so fundamentally skewed that we cannot see any relationship between Junokata and what we think randori is about. (AHA!)

I think the latter to be the most likely explanation.  If Kano intended Junokata to really be a practical randori education (which he says he did), and if we cannot see any randori relevance in the kata, then it seems that we are having a crisis of misunderstanding related to our idea of what randori is about.

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We might benefit from taking a good, thorough look at junokata and trying to figure out how it might possibly be the same thing as randori.

• There is no falling in junokata, (interestingly, there is no falling in gonokata either) so perhaps randori is not really about forcing the other guy to fall down.
• Randori is good, vigorous exercise, so perhaps Junokata is not about some flacid, insipid misunderstanding of "ju."
• Junokata is done precisely and slowly, so perhaps randori should not be about applying explosive strength or moving faster than the other guy.
• The only way to effectively "win" at randori without explosive strength and speed advantage is to apply effective kuzushi with proper timing, so perhaps we should be especially looking for the kuzushi and timing lessons in JNK.

 What other parallels do you see between JNK and what randori should really be?

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Patrick Parker

www.mokurendojo.com

Junokata and randori

When judo was young, back in the 1880's, the randori practice and concept was what made it unique and special.  The ancient jujitsu schools from which judo was derived were predominantly kata arts.  They had limited or no concept of randori.  Because of Kano implementing this randori idea in judo, judoka were able to gain a ton of practical experience and dominate the competitions between Kodokan and the older traditional kata-based jujitsu schools.

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As the Kodokan grew, there came a point where there were so many students that it was difficult for all the students to get direct hands-on randori time with any of the great teachers.  So, Kano came up with a method for making sure that the students were getting a core of that randori knowledge transferred to them consistently.

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Guess what this new randori training method was called...

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Ju-no-kata

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What? You don't see the connection between JNK and randori?  Doubt my description of the history? Go check in Judo Memoirs of Jigoro Kano Chapter 58 and in the Introduction to Keiko Fukuda's Ju-No-Kata book.
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Simply put, Junokata was not designed as an aesthetic performance thing.  It was designed as a practical tool for transmitting randori knowledge and skills in a consistent manner.

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Junokata was created by perhaps the most gifted educator of his time to be a practical, pragmatic, educational thing for beginners - not as an aesthetic thing for aging experts.

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Go back and check out some video of JNK with that in mind and see if you can see some of the randori in the kata.

• Kano & Yamashita
• Yamashita
• Kenshiro Abbe
• Tsunako Miyake

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

4 osotogari and 3 koshinage

So, per my post from yesterday, I suggested that you might get more mileage out of your randori experiences if you will learn a variation of your tokuiwaza that you can execute on uke when he is moving forward, backward, left, or right.  Today I have a couple of examples.

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Coming up through the ranks I often had a lot of trouble getting into osotogari.  Turns out, I only knew and practiced two directions of that thing.  I could throw osotogari when uke moved his right leg forward, or when he moved his right leg sideways or back away from me (sometimes), but if they fought left-side hard forward and stiffarmed and shuffled, I had a hard time getting osotogari in there.

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I could have mirrored those two right-sided osotogaris that I knew, stepping in and doing the reap with my left leg, but perfecting major throws on your off-side is a sketchy proposition.

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It wasnt until much later - maybe 10 years ago - that I discovered two more right-sided osotogaris that worked nicely when uke was moving his left leg.  I started spending more time on those two variations and soon I started getting osotogari in randori almost at will.  Makes sense, as now I could approach osotogari if uke was moving his left or right leg, and whether he was advancing or retreating.

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The other example is koshinage - any of the multitude of hip throws in judo.  Coming up through the ranks, I spent almost all of my time going for hip throws when uke was standing still or retreating with his right leg.  That step-through-to-the-rear hipthrow is still my favorite, and the easiest one for me to teach beginners.  But as you can imagine, if that's the only direction I ever tried it, I wasn't going to have much success.

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Sometime later I learned that there was a nice hipthrow opportunity when uke advances with his right leg.  This made two variations, but I was still having about as much trouble in randori with that thing.  Again, it makes sense, because it doesnt take my partners too long to figure out they only had to worry about hip throws if they moved their right leg.

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About the same time as I discovered the other two osotogari, I learned a new variation for hipthrows that worked nicely if uke was left-forward - and it can sort of be massaged to hit a hip throw when uke is retreating to his left (but that is still a difficult direction).

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That makes three variants of koshinage, and all of a sudden I had many, many more chances to try that thing in randori.  I've actually started throwing a few hip throws in randori in the past few years!  It's still a long way from my tokuiwaza, but I think that might be because I have mostly neglected that fourth direction.

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Anyway, there you have 2 examples of working your techniques in 4 directions and getting better at randori.

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Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com