Thing number one or "one thing"

They say ikkyo means something like "thing number one," but I often like looser, more colloquial translations, so I sometimes wonder if it might be better to think of "ikkyo" as "one thing," just like Curly the Cowboy in City Slickers.

There are many, many forms of ikkyo, or oshitaoshi that we practice.  I think the idea is to look at this principle from lots of different angles and under the light of many different conditions, until it becomes one thing - ikkyo - in our minds instead of many things.

For me, the one thing that all these different forms seems to be congealing into is the idea of controlling uke's center by manipulating the primary cross (the spine and shoulder girdle) sort of like a rudder on a boat - but maybe you should play with these things for 10 or 15 years yourself and see what conclusions you can draw from ikkyo.


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Thing number one - shomenuchi ikkyo

It probably does not matter too much where you start in aikido or judo or any sort of jujutsu, because whatever technique or movement you decide to call thing number one, as you play with it some, you will eventually find the other things - the other techniques and ideas surrounding thing number one will eventually make themselves known and you can call them thing number two and so on.

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Tomiki began his students' training with some taiso (coordination exercises) and then worked on shomenate as thing number one.  Beginning with shomenate seems axiomatic to us - it is just obviously the right place to start our studies.  But some aikido folks don't even consider shomenate a thing - at least not a thing worthy of a name.  They just tell uke, "hit me in the face" and they proceed with their thing number one.

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And it turns out that their thing number one is a pretty darn good place to start studying aikido.  In fact, that's where most of the rest of the aikido world starts.  They call it ikkyo, and I like to poke a little fun at their inability to come up with a better name than "thing number one," but actually, Tomiki wasn't that much more creative, because he called it, oshitaoshi, or "push the guy down."

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The following is some film of me exploring a peculiar form of shomenuchi ikkyo at Nick's beautiful Windsong Dojo in OKC.  The action starts at the 2:00 minute mark.
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And here is another bit of exploration of the same technique from a wrist grab - katatetori ikkyo.  Again, the action starts at about 2:00.

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Not only is ikkyo the starting place for most of the aikido world's studies, my law enforcement buddies assure me that it is exquisitely effective and useful in controlling aggressors in real world situations.  In any case, ikkyo (oshitaoshi, thing number one) deserves a good bit of your attention.

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Mutual Fault and Blame-sharing

I have said it many times, and my instructors before me, and theirs before them all the way back to Kano - Judo is about Mutual Welfare and Benefit.  I know that's sort of a loose translation of the principle of Jita Kyoei, but it's a common translation and as good as any.

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But Human Animal Males (HAMs) tend to fail to get the mutual benefit thing, or we get it in an incomplete sense.  It just does not make deep visceral sense to some of us that we are doing a deadly martial combat thing with a partner instead of an enemy - that our main goal is to improve both the self and the other.

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Sometimes we start class out with some vague admission or nod to Jita Kyoei, or at least with some pseudo-Japanese etiquette, but then we inevitably end up with an uke that doesn't work quite like we want and we get into this vicious cycle of pushing harder, causing uke to resist harder or do ukemi more un-naturally, which causes tori to struggle more, which makes uke more miserable...

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So, let me try to put it in different terms - one syllable each...

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If your arm gets hurt it is both folks' fault.

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If your elbow (or whatever else) gets bent, tori should not have pushed that hard, and uke should not have stood there and let tori push that hard.  It is almost always possible for uke to yield (and to yield productively) to force rather than to stand against it.  It is almost always possible for Tori to get the effect you're looking for with far less struggle.

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But since this issue  ALWAYS crops up, maybe we're all just knuckleheads who are addicted to power and bent on making our artistic pursuits so difficult that they are self-destructive.  I think that is likely the case.  We are all idiots.

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So, maybe it would do us some good to approach our practice from the angle that we really are ALL idiots, and search for ways to prevent the other guy from mashing our own personal triggers that throw our own personal form of stupid into high gear.  What are my triggers that make me stupid, and what are the ways that other people push those buttons during a conflict?  How can I respond productively to someone mashing my stupid button?

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Maybe we should approach aikido and judo from the idea of working on ourselves rather than from the perspective of applying the power of our will effectively to someone else.

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Have I heard that idea somewhere before?

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Mode-switching and switch-flipping

Toshu randori in Tomiki aikido is a strange beast.  I do not think it teaches us what we think it teaches us.

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It seems at first glance, that toshu randori would be similar to sparring in karate.  But it is not.  Randori cannot be a contest of both folks attacking to see whose attacks succeed and whose fail because that tends to lead to clashes that are not what we're looking for in aikido.

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Likewise, you can't have both guys playing the gentle, receiving, flowing role to see who has better skills at the soft aspects of the art - if both guys play that strategy then nobody does anything and we might as well sit down and share a spot of tea.

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For us to practice aikido skills, we have to have an attacker - someone playing the role of uke so that the other guy can practice being tori.  The tricky part about toshu randori is that both guys would like to be tori, so they have to either trick the other guy into being uke or find a time when he is in that mode.

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To avoid the nobody-does-anything problem, Karl used to advise us "always attack."  When in doubt, attack.  But then to avoid the everybody-always-attacks sort of clash and to actually get some aikido done, one of the partners has to switch gears in mid-attack from attacking to flowing/blending/receiving mode.

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That sounds like I'm saying someone has to choose to be uke and take a dive.  I'm not.  Funny thing is, the guy that is more adept at flipping the switch and can more smoothly and more completely take the role of receiver usually ends up being tori.

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So, that is what I think toshu randori teaches us - it develops skill at identifying when your attack is going to be insufficient and switching to receiving mode so that you can ride the other guy's attack until it is your turn again for a more decisive attack.

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Toshu randori is a mode-switching, switch-flipping practice.

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If your timing is perfect...

I'm slow, I know.  But I just realized...

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When people would ask Karl for advice on "good" technique and "proper" form, frequently he would say, "You can do anything you want if you have perfect timing."  He beat us to death with drills that worked largely on timing - and largely on timing of footsteps.

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All of his heuristics that we took as law - that we thought were THE gospel way to do aikido correctly - those were not actually THE way, they were his preferred, suggested ways to handle the problems caused by imperfect timing.  All of our heuristics can be seen as backup plans for imperfect timing.

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Why do we do the same hand/foot straight arm thing?  Because it makes us stronger when our timing fails.

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Why do we do tsugiashi instead of ayumiashi? Because it makes us more stable when we miss our timing.

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Why do we spend so much time on reflexive ukemi?  Because tori is either going to get the timing right, in which case uke will need good ukemi, or tori will screw up the timing, in which case, tori will need good ukemi as a backup plan.

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It's all about the timing, because if you have perfect timing then your form does not matter.

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Of course, nobody has perfect timing - that's why we spend so much effort on timing drills and why we have so many backup plans that we all recommend keeping in place all the time.

That's why our aikido appears to be based on lists of rules or heuristics-  Keep your arm unbendable, same-hand-same-foot, arms stay centered, etc...
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And that's why the masters , the guys that trifle with us in randori and make us look dumb, appear to break all the rules that they just told us was the right way to do aikido - they break the rules and they still come out on top because they have better timing than we do.


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Energy, Frequency, Vibration

Many of the worlds' greatest thinkers and warriors have been telling us the same thing.  Ueshiba, Tesla, Hirano, Laban, Tohei, Solomon.  The influential school of jujutsu, Kitoryu, was all about the waxing and waning of energy.  Henry Kono said (in essence) that he didn't understand aikido until he realized that Ueshiba was talking about yin-yang, and the implications of that.

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Karl Geis was fond of telling us, "You can do anything you want if you have perfect timing."

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Some of the lessons in Nanatsu

In some ways, Nanatsu no kata seems to be a better introduction to randori than does Nagenokata.  Watch the above video and observe, among other lessons,

• It has a good technical range - several ashiwaza, koshiwaza, tewaza, and sutemiwaza spread out across the gokyo
• It teaches tori to throw right-sided against both left and right postures by uke.
• It teaches tori to throw uke out of jijotai as well as shizentai.
• It teaches tori to throw tori out of light, moderate, and strong resistance conditions (watch uke's posture and arms going into each technique).
• It teaches tori a counter (or a weakness to watch for) to each technique.

Nagenokata is also a good exercise and a good introduction to randori techniques, but I would not be offended if any of my shodan candidates chose to work up Nanatsu no kata for their shodan demonstration.

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Be like water, My Friend

Hirano was putting this lecture into a physical instead of verbal form when he devised and demonstrated Nanatsu no kata.

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Why all the arm waving and spinning!?

Modern judoka, competitive and recreational alike, seem to have about two distinct initial opinions about Tokio Hirano when they see his videos - 

1. Whoa! This guy has amazing light technique that still gets big amplitude throws!
2. What the hell is all that arm waving and spinning around nonsense!?

Those were certainly my initial thoughts, but then the question struck me, "how did he get from those crazy practice motions to that amazing skill?" or "What is the meaning and idea behind those unorthodox training motions?"

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I spent most of a year or so obsessed with Hirano and his videos and his crazy kata. I did searches on Google for info about Hirano and the kata. I played with what I could understand of the kata. But it still took a long time for me to get a glimmer of what I think he was getting at.

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Follow me here...

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The name of the kata is Nanatsu no kata, which means something like "seven forms." Not much help there. But then I found somewhere on the net some French practitioners that refer to it as le "kata des vagues" or "The Form of Waves." I like to use my own loose translations, so i call it "Seven Waveforms."

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It seems that Hirano was obsessed with ocean waves and spent a lot of time watching them and thinking about how they behave. He came to see judo throws as similar to the motions of waves. I also think that he was looking at the waves in a naturalistic, non-scientific way - like art, because his Waveforms kata is a work of art and not a Physics thesis.

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Once I started thinking along the lines of "He is demonstrating seven kinds of waves that exemplify judo throws." all of a sudden the pieces fell into order.

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Also note, there is video of Hirano's students on the net doing the kata and they don't always do the arm-waving thing, so apparently that was a teaching or a demonstration or a sometimes-practice sort of thing.

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Hirano was a stranger in a strange land. There was probably a language barrier and there was certainly a skill-level barrier between him and his European students. It must have been hard to communicate advanced ideas like he wished he could. Here's what I think. Here is the monologue that is running in my head as I watch Hirano do Nanatsu...

"Alright, listen up, monstrous, clumsy westerners. I'm about to really lay an idea on you. Judo is like waves..."

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(Imagine Hirano holding a giant paintbrush and painting a huge wave on the wall beside him...)

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"Some waves wash in and subside like this...Some judo is like that... Some waves wash in and cut along the shoreline like this...Some judo is like that... Some waves wash in and hit a rock and splash back like this...Some judo is like that... Some waves come in and become whirlpools like this...Some judo is like that..."

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He was saying the same thing as Bruce Lee in Lee's famous "Be like water, my friend" lecture.
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Hirano was, as literally as practical, painting you a picture of the sort of motion happening in the waves and the judo throws.  Watch it again and let me know if the arm waving thing makes more sense.

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A glimpse into Hirano's head (maybe)

I think watching this instructor makes Hirano's rhythmic work make much more sense. He (Hirano) appears to have been decomposing whole-body motion into its constituent components and drilling each technique with each movement component - the thesis being, if tori is skilled enough at fitting with each of several components then he will be able to fit with chaotic-seeming motion that is made up of those previously-understood components.

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Check out the last 3 throws on the video - tori spazzes out (chaotic motion) and then finds the throw inside the chaos.

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Tokio Hirano tachiwaza (esp. sumiotoshi)

Watch this video of Hirano sensei with an eye to his rhythmic application of tsukuri.  I think my favorite throw on this video (there are many!) is the superb sumiotoshi at 5:15, but they are all worth studying.  The wealth of Hirano sensei's material that is available on Youtube is an outstanding resource!

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Other examples of Koryu Dai Ni

For the past couple of weeks I've been doing a series on Koryu Dai Ni, featuring Nick Sensei's instructional videos.  I like Nick's ideas about this kata a bunch, but he's certainly not the only guy out there with opinions about how it should be done.  Here are several other examples for compare/contrast...

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Where does Hirano's magic live?

I am signed up to lead an exploration of Tokio Hirano sensei's cool/crazy rhythmic exercises and training methods at OKC at the Summer 2015 seminar.  Check out this video (The first 2 minutes) of some of what I mean by cool/crazy.

Here's a hint as to my line of thinking/exploration on this stuff. Notice in the title at the beginning of the film what he calls this material - kumikata - "forms of gripping!" This strange, rhythmic thing that he is doing that we think of as kuzushi or tsukuri - he is calling that gripping.

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With that in mind, check out this excerpt from JudoInfo's essay of Hirano...

Traditional nage-waza (throwing techniques) were taught in the following sequence: kumu (gripping), tsukuru (the entry and proper fitting of your body into position taken just before the movement required for completion of your throwing technique), kakeru (completing), and nageru (throwing). 

Hirano revolutionized the order to tsukuru, kumu, kakeru and nageru. This is the current European style Judo. This is a proven method to defeat bigger opponents, as demonstrated by Hirano's stunning success.

The magic that he is doing seems to live within the "fit-in-and-grip" stages of the conflict.  That makes sense, because it is much harder to induce a useful vibe into uke if you have already set your grips (like in the Classical Kodokan approach above) because your grips tend to damp out that vibration (like holding a bell while trying to ring it).  But on the other hand, uke should be more susceptible to that vibe-induction thing as you are coming to grips, while he still has freedom to oscillate.

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So it seems we're going to be studying how to come to grips with gentle, facile hands while inducing a vibe into uke and/or matching yourself to uke's oscillation.

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KDN #12-16 - The Final Five

The Final five techniques of Nikata are yokomen attacks - that is, uke is striking downward diagonally at tori's head.  The five responses are...

Ukiotoshi

Kokyunage

 

Shomenate

Sukashi nage

and Hikiotoshi

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