Things Henry taught me

I got to chat a while back with a long-time direct student of Henry Copeland - one of my favorite people and teachers of all time.  I haven't gotten to see or play with Henry in quite a while, so we reminisced about what a mind- and practice-altering experience it is to lay hands on Henry or to sit at his feet and listen.

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I've been trying to come up with a bullet list of things Henry told me or even implied during our 20-someodd years together.  Some of his most memorable lessons include... 

1. Don't fight sideways - that is, avoid applying power in any plane except that one defined by tori's midsaggital line - basically only push or pull straight forward or backward.
2. Never stop moving long enough to hit uke - This is most visible in jo work and in sword disarms, but it applies directly to how Henry does all of his aikido and judo.  Basically, anytime you stop moving (even if it is just momentarily) you lose all your momentum that you've built up and you have to start over.  Plus, that momentary stop is a chance for uke to get a shot in.  Henry said, "That's not really a bokken.  It is a 3-foot razor blade," then he asked, "So, how long would you like to stand still inside uke's reach?"
3. Tori should never add speed or energy to an already hectic encounter.  Tori's job is to use offbalance (not muscular power) to slow uke down to a manageable speed - not to speed uke up until he goes totally out of control. Don't pour gasoline on a fire.
4. Make your move when uke is not capable of observing it.  Some of the most  terrifying budo that I've worked with anyone was doing tachi-tai-tachi with Henry.  A lot of this was because he appeared to be able to teleport.  When I finally got him to explain how he did this, he said as you raise your sword from chudan to jodan to get ready to cut, there's a time when your own forearms are blocking your vision.  Henry could move during that time and the effect was so disorienting and startling that uke would often freeze up.  Another example is shomenate - if you bring your hand upward right along uke's body instead of attacking frontally, uke's nose and chin obscure his ability to see your hand and forearm.  Henry made great use of tricks like this as amplifiers of his technique.
5. Henry showed me a koshiguruma years ago that was very similar to Matl Sensei's magic that I wouldn't see until years later.  That had an interesting effect on my understanding of guruma in both judo and aikido.
6. Henry is constantly demonstrating that magic is possible.  Several times in suwariwaza, he projected me off my knees into the air with kotegaeshi, and there was never a feel of muscular power - certainly not enough power to knock a kneeling guy upward three feet into the air. He spent a lot of time trying to convince us that the things we were doing would work on a big strong guy if we behaved according to the above points but it would fail dramatically if we did not.

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Patrick Parker
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Police-jo

I know - it's technically not "Aiki-jo," but this is a cool old film that I'd not seen before...



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Why tanto in randori but not in practice?

We have been told often by our aikido instructors that Tomiki's aikido was particularly aimed at randori - that is, developing a way for aikidoka to pressure test their skills with a viable randori system.  And I do think that is characteristic of Tomiki's aikido... to a point.

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But go with me down this line of thought...

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Tomiki was out to come up with a way for aikido guys to do real randori - not taking turns being uke for each other, but both guys trying to apply aikido skills at the same time against a skilled player.  To make the game interesting and productive, Tomiki had to get the players to give each other real attacks because aikido guys when they don't want to be thrown by other aikido guys stop exerting and withdraw their energy. So he made uke's attacks count for points.

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But why did he put the foam knife into the mix?

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Why not leagalize punches, like in a karate contest? Aikido folks deal with punches.

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Why not a shinai, like in kendo? Aikido folks deal with swords.

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Why not a padded stave, like in the old-style European quarterstave matches still popular around Tomiki's time?  Aikido folks deal with jo staves.

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Heck, those pre-war aikido guys even played with bayonets like in jukendo - why not have randori matches against a guy armed with a juken?

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What is it about the tanto that of all the weapons that the old aikido guys played with - what made tanto particularly suitable for randori?

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And if tanto was so particularly suitable an instrument for the randori that would be central in Tomiki's aikido, why is the tanto not more prominent in the rest of our practice?

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What I mean is this - we learn all of our aikido empty handed against empty-handed ukes who are making empty-handed attacks.  Then at some point the tanto is thrown in almost as an afterthought - a little bit of knife evasion practice, some junana with a knife, and a pretty minimal nod to tanto skills in a couple of the Koryu no kata.

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If randori (with a knife) is supposed to be so central to our aikido, why don't we do all of our training from day-1 with knives? Ukemi with a knife, taiso (tandoku and sotai dosa) with a knife, junana and owaza and urawaza with a knife, suwari with a knife... Tanto Everything Aikido.

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True, there's nobody telling us we can't practice that way - but (almost) nobody does practice that way.

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Another sort of aside - I wonder what would happen in a tanto match if you gave both guys a foam knife and allowed both guys to score with the blade or with aikido techniques?  Or maybe a hybrid of tanto randori and hat randori where either guy could score with the knife, the hat, or aikido techniques??

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The Old Man Paradox

Martial arts are intense body contact physical activities - for most folks.  But then you hear stories and occasionally meet nearly crippled old men who can barely move but still have seemingly magical ability.

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As young men, we don't want to do martial arts like old men - even though we do want to eventually have similar magic.

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As young men, we want to be vigorous and strong.  But the old men assure us that if we would reduce the intensity a bit, we would sustain less damage and stay young and capable longer.  These are the same crippled old men that used to be vigorous, intense hellions when they were young.

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Sometimes, you see old men who still exert like young men - geriatric supermen. But realistically, how many of us think we won the genetic jackpot that would allow us to be that vigorous that long?

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I guess the best plan for dealing with the Old Man Paradox is do the best you can for as long as you can and don't feel bad about choosing to practice with either intense power or with delicate finesse whether you are young or are old - and hope that you can still do both power and finesse when you are old.

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Patrick Parker
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Violence is not even a thing

We are always talking about how we are all about dealing with violence, "reducing violence," "leading violence to harmony," "Meditations on Violence," and that sort of hippie language.  But it seems to never occur to us that Violence is not even a thing.  

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Violence is not a noun (I don't care what the dictionary people say).  It is an adverb that has been nounified - almost personified.  Violence is a kind of relationship.

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We are about relationships.  In the dojo we simulate and role play different kinds of relationships so that we can learn from them and grow.  Violence is involved in many of the dojo relationships.

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Often we are very poor at role-playing or nounifying or personifying the violence in a way that we can work with and grow from.  We call this "poor ukemi."

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A lot of times we gripe about partners who are too rough or mean or abusive - who won't play the role like we want so that we can examine it comfortably, but this is just another type of violent relationship - and probably the very one that we need to work on.

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You have to stay at least somewhat safe - after all, we all have other stuff to do besides play-acting violent scenarios stuff like marriages and work and kids.

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I just find it funny that we say we want to learn about violence and then we gripe about the partners who play that role most naturally.

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Patrick Parker
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Injury potential in Hirano's Kata

I just got back from Summer Seminar 2015 at Windsong Dojo in OKC, where I was honored to lead an exploration of Tokio Hirano's ideas that were groundbreaking in the 1950's in European Judo, and which are still amazingly innovative in American Judo.

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Each class we worked on ...

• ashi-sabaki drills (because Hirano was an amazingly agile guy with great footwork).
• uchikomi of some of Hirano's tokuiwaza (like osotogari and seoinage and taiotoshi) using his interesting rhythmic practice methods.
• Hirano's Nanatsu no kata (A.K.A. Hando no kata)

Here is a pretty good video of the type of things we worked on...

At the end of the 3rd day of the seminar, we'd not quite finished all of Nanatsu no kata - we had run out of time for several of the counters, most distinctive of which are uchimata sukashi, harai-utsurigoshi, and jumping around taiotoshi into yokoguruma.

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If y'all want to explore this whole kata including those last few counter sacrifices, I'd like to give y'all some advice - to the degree possible, work slowly and carefully with a compliant partner and a crash pad and make sure everyone involved always knows what's coming.

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The reason I say this is because the jump-around counter to taiotoshi is the only technique that I've ever been seriously injured practicing!  In college we were practicing this exact counter - jumping around taiotoshi into yokoguruma.  It's not too difficult when you go slow and step through it with a compliant partner, but as you get it moving more quickly with both uke and tori moving into their techniques at the same time, it becomes tricky.  Anyway, I moved into taiotoshi and my partner tripped and fell on my leg.  In his attempt to regain his balance, he pulled me down on top of him and we ended up with my leg entangled and trapped under him, with him trapped under me.  I was yelling and he couldn't get off of me because I was lying on top of him.

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Broken ankle. No fun.  Put a major damper on my participation and enjoyment of judo for about a semester.

The technique I'm talking about is demonstrated here by Hirano sensei so smoothly that it looks easy. (starting at about 5:50)

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Tokio Hirano's ouchigari

Watch Hirano's variety of entries and twitches on this particular throw.  This looks like a whole lot of fun!

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Tokio Hirano's Hando no kata

I received an interesting message from a fellow who is planning to attend the Summer intensive in OKC this year.  He asked if the Nanatsu no kata that I planned to lead was the same thing as Hando no kata.  I had to look it up, but sure enough - there are groups of people doing Tokio Hirano's exercises under the name Hando no kata.  (Unfortunately, that video can't be embedded in my blog, so follow the link for an interesting performance.)

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It's neat to see other interpretations by people with different ideas.  Even the name, Hando no kata, is interesting because it is yet another lens on what Hirano might have been thinking - my dictionary says the name Hando means something like "reaction or recoil or kick-back or back-lash" - and this is very much an exercise of inducing a reaction in uke and then amplifying that reaction until it overwhelms uke.

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We all act like lepers

From the time we're born - perhaps even before then - we are playing with motion.  We move around for the joy and experience of movement.  We walk, skip, run, hop, crawl, dance, climb and wiggle our way around exploring our environment and figuring out what muscles and joints and fascia feel like.  We map out our bodies as we map out our world.

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But then a funny thing happens as we get older.  Funny curious - not funny "ha ha."  About the time we hit puberty, we begin slowing down and trying to look cool and conserve energy and be efficient and not sweat and this insidious thing happens - we begin to forget what our muscles and joints feel like when they move - and then after a while, without even realizing it, we have forgotten that some kinds of motion are possible.  And after a while of thinking that a motor skill is impossible, we become correct.

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Therapist, Thomas Hanna calls this phenomenon Sensorimotor amnesia, and he attributes a lot of somatic dysfunction to it - see this interesting book about Hanna Somatics ...

We can find lots of examples of this sensorimotor amnesia in our physical practices.  For instance, learning a kata the instructor tells us, "take one sliding step forward and end up in a heel-toe stance with upright posture," and we do that and the instructor stops you and tells you to look at your poture and sure enough you are all over the place.  You thought you were stepping just so far and putting your feet just so, but your feet end up shorter or farther and turned in strange angles, posture distorted randomly.

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It takes some time to figure out how to step one step forward, end up in heel-toe stance with upright posture, because we either never knew we could do that or we've forgotten.  Sensorimotor amnesia strikes again.

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So, how do you beat that insidious forgetting process?  Here's a trick I call The Leprosy Check.

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I read somewhere that  healthcare folks that worked with lepers back in the day would advise them to make a self-check every few steps.  That is, every ten steps or so, they would stop and check to see if they'd knocked up against something and damaged themselves.

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When I read that I must have just been reading Hanna Somatics because I immediately thought, "Shoot, we all behave like lepers as we progressively become more and more insensitive to our own bodies."

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So I figured a Leprosy Check might help us in our physical practices too - For at least the first few (hundred) reps of a new technique or kata or etc... put a pause in between each step.  Pause long enough between each step to figure out if you are in the position you should be in, and to fix anything that is wrong - then do the next step followed by another Leprosy Check.

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Patrick Parker
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Is your martial art a cult?

Checklists like this one have circulated on the internet for several years, and have cropped up every so often with regards to martial arts organizations.  In fact, this idea has cropped up in my reading or my email 2-3 times recently with regards to some groups close to me.

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I don't think this list is necessarily diagnostic or definitive, but something to think about.  You might take this list as a sort of Jeff Foxworthy-like list-  that is, if you check too many of these...you might be in a cult.

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• The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.‪ 
• Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.‪ Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).‪ 
• The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry—or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).‪ 
• The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).‪ 
• The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.‪ 
• The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).‪ 
• The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).‪ 
• The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.‪ 
• Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.‪ 
• The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.‪ 
• The group is preoccupied with making money.‪ 
• Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.‪ 
• Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.‪ 
• The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.

An interesting film of Hirano's kata

This is a right interesting film, the first part of it is Hirano's unusual rhythmic uchikomi and nagekomi exercises.  The second part beginning at about 2:20 (that caught my attention today) is Hirano's Nanatsu no kata.

This rendition of Nanatsu no kata is interesting to me because:

• He does not do the crazy big wave arm swinging thing before each move.  This suggests to me that the arm swinging thing was either a sometimes thing - an option, or it was a teaching/demonstrating thing.
• He appears to do different techniques than in his other demos.  One of the most notable instances is the first ura technique is usually demonstrated as osotogari countered by ukiotoshi, but here it is osotogari countered by sukashi.  This suggests to me that either 1) the kata was not finished when this film was made, or 2) the techniques might have been somewhat interchangeable.  I have suspected for a while that the techniques were somewhat interchangeable... Something to think on for a while...

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Yield uke into ikkyo instead of driving him there

Corky has a very nice way of explaining and demonstrating katatedori ikkyo here.

Notice the emphasis on yielding to draw (or allow) uke's arm to move into extension - the same technical idea that you see in the beginning of the tachiwaza oshitaoshi in koryu dai ichi (starting at about 2:00).

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How to practice ikkyo (and everything else)

In the past several posts, I've been working on oshitaoshi (or ikkyo - thing #1).  Here is a video of Waka Sensei demonstrating two of the primary forms of this thing that you might call omote and ura.  This seems to be a pretty common practice mode, in which tori gets to do four reps (one omote and one ura on each side) then the partners switch roles.

And interestingly enough, though the Tomiki/Ohba gang seems to have done a lot of things differently, here is that same practice mode cropping up as the first part of the first kata (hmmm... thing #1).  And you will see this pattern show up again as the first and second thing in the next section at about 1:00.

The first parts of Ichi kata appear to me to be a nod back to an old training mode in which ikkyo (for example) was repped over and over in rapid succession - right omote-left omote - right ura - left ura - switch roles and keep going - and this was done in an aerobic manner. Little formality except before and after, lots of moving and falling and lots of sweat and repetition.

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I like that mode of practice.  I don't so much like the do-two-reps-and-stop-and-talk-about-it-for-a-while mode. Nobody gets any exercise that way and nobody gets enough reps to make the technique their own - to transform thing one into just one thing.

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The boat rudder analogy

In the previous post I suggested that ikkyo/oshitaoshi seemed to me to be something like using uke's shoulder girdle and spine as levers to steer his center, like using a boat rudder to steer a boat.

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Now, I realize that all analogies fall apart when taken too far, but I think this one may bear a little extension.  Imagine trying to steer a small boat down a swiftly moving stream by controlling the rudder.  Now imagine trying to do that while standing on a rock in the river.

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That second one is not going to be too successful, because in order to use a rudder to steer a boat, you have to be riding in the boat.  Likewise, to use uke's arm and shoulder as a lever to steer his center, you have to be riding uke - or at least connected to him and moving with him.  Standing your ground and trying to turn uke upside down with a lever will not work as well as moving with him and using the lever to steer him.

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We are not standing our ground and mashing uke's elbow backwards into the ground. We are riding him into the ground using his arm and shoulder to steer him.

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