Training log - engaging is stupid

Aikido with PatrickM., Kel, and Erin - ROM, ukemi, tegatana, hanasu, shomenate, tanto-using section of Rokukata as a preview to the ABG at the end of October.  I really think the only reason that section is in that kata is to make it perfectly clear that engaging in a fight - trying to control another person - is stupid.

Chaka Zulu will kill you

Last week, Somaserious posted a pretty good video featuring Chaka Zulu. One of the things that really caught my attention in this video was his understanding and use of the concept of the ladder of force. Chaka Zulu said (and I paraphrase)…

“If you attack me, I will go into the fight with the intent to kill you. Then, if I see that I don’t have to kill you I will de-escalate. You have to do it this way because you don’t have time in a fight to go the other way, escalating from evasion to control to injuring to killing intent.”

This appears to go against the typical thoughts on ladder of force, that you evade before you control, control before you injure, injure before you kill… But Chaka Zulu has a valid and interesting justification for his understanding – the time it takes to escalate vs. de-escalate and the potential consequences.

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So, what do you think is more appropriate in ‘typical’ conflicts, escalate toward an appropriate level of force or de-escalate toward an appropriate level of force?

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BTW: Nathan at TDA posted a related article almost simultaneously with this one. Check it out.

The rhythm of my life

Funny thing...

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Some times I feel shorter, fatter.  Slumped and burdened by my responsibilities.  Less energetic and willing to proceed.

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Other times I feel stronger, taller, slimmer.  More engaged and energized by my responsibilities.

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My exercise intensity goes in waves too.

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I have noticed that there seems to be a relationship between exercise and self image but I haven't been able to tell which way the causation goes.  Does exercising more make me feel better about myself or does feeling better about myself empower me to exercise more?

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You'd think an Exercise Physiologist with a Ph.D, a godan, and a rokudan could figure this one out, but so far no luck...

Helpful handful: Smart investment in hard times

In the past few months some of our blogger buddies have warned us about coming hard times and have suggested some safe investments. I thought to offer my own handful of suggestions now. It may be late but its not too late.

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• Pay off or pay down your home and your credit cards ASAP
• Invest in handgun and tactical knife training and consider purchasing a handgun and folding knife.
• Find about ¼ acre that you can plant and invest in a tiller. Don’t let the hardware store guys talk you into getting a rear-tine tiller. The front tine tiller is half the price and perfectly fine for a garden of ¼ acre (plus it is more exercise, which will make you more fit to survive hard times). Talk to the county agent, university extension, or co-op guys about what staple crops to plant for your area. Don’t forget fruit and nut trees. Learn how to preserve.
• Invest in martial arts lessons – something street combat practical but still useful for more than just combat – something like aikido or perhaps judo.
• Invest in your neighbors and your community. Join a church and get deeply involved with the members. You remember when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast? Let me tell you from firsthand experience - FEMA was useless, state emergency folks were useless, Red Cross was useless, and National guard and city officials had their hands full. The first responders and the best, most effective disaster relief responders were local churches caring for their own congregants and then extending that caring into the community.

Training log

Judo with Jesse, Justin, and Alan - ROM, ukemi (including oozing), footsweep to control, review (deashi, kosoto, osoto, hiza), ukigoshi, bridge&roll escape from munegatame, newaza randori

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Kids' judo with Gavin, Emma, Whit, Knox, Quin, Dylan, Chance, Lanie, Luke - ROM, ukemi, shrimping, footstomp randori, rooster-tail randori, amazon randori

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Aikido with Patrick M., Alan, and Erin - tegatana with emphasis on shizentai, hanasu #1-2 with emphasis on rolling off of uke, shomenate, aigamaeate, randori

Altitude, airspeed, and ideas

There's a saying among pilots, at least so I've been told by some of my instructors, when you are really in a pickle and can't think of a way to make your situation better, you are "out of altitude, airspeed, and ideas." In other words, you are going to crash soon and there is nothing you can do about it.

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One of the important things that ukemi (the practice of taking falls as someone else practices techniques) teaches you is to stop putting energy into the situation when you are out of altitude, airspeed, and ideas. That extra energy is not only unhelpful, but you're going to have to eat it during the impact. When you get yourself into a situation where your skills and efforts are not going to help you change the outcome, relax and crash with as much grace as possible.

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Surely you've noticed that as you spend more time in a martial art like aikido or judo, you can be thrown more vigorously and can survive more outrageous techniques. We usually attribute this to increased skill at falling, but this is also due in part to increasing awareness of one's own limits and skills. As you gain a better understanding of where your edge lies, you are better able to know when to fight and when to lie down.

Helpful handful - Big picture martial arts strategy

My list of five (or six) indispensable judo books and five (or again, six) great aikido books met with such great success that I thought you might like to see a handful of suggestions for great books on the big picture of martial arts. Some of these are indispensable strategy classics, some are philosophical, and some are political. Some of them are directly related to martial arts and some, only peripherally. But I consider all of these books absolute must-reads for martial artists as well as self-improvement buffs.
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If you think you want to pick up a copy of some of these books. please buy them from my Amazon store through the links below.

Munegatame - the side holding position

The following is a decent instructional video on munegatame (the chest hold) known in jiujitsu (uncreatively) as the side position.  The audio is in Japanese, so unless you speak the language you'll do just as well turning the speakers all the way down and paying close attention to his positioning and motion.  I thought his demonstration of the leg entanglements and the hip switches was most interesting.

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This post is especially intended for my newbie adult judoka.  We've been working our way around the body in the ground mobility exercise and have dwelt a little bit on this position, munegatame.  This vid will serve as a good reminder/review/preview.  Enjoy...

Worst martial arts movie dialogue ever

In the mid-1990’s I watched a movie that was so bad that it actually immunized me against bad movies. Now I am able to watch extremely bad movies, frequently without even groaning. The movie that developed this talent in me… On Deadly Ground starring Steven Seagal.

Remember the scene during which Seagal beats a smartalek up really bad, then asks the man, “What does it take to change the essence of a man?” to which the guy (in tears of shame) answers, “Time... I just need time to change.” Argh! I actually feel dumber for having just typed that. The screenwriter for that movie should be traded for a pet monkey (another wretched line of dialogue from Segal’s Fire Down Below).

Lets’ hear y’all’s nominations for worst martial arts movie dialogue. I’m sure y’all have seen some doozies!

The many faces of Judo

Anticipation, Exhaustion, Patience, Endurance, Contemplation, Curiosity

Training log

Judo with Justin & Jesse - ROM, ukemi, 2-hands-on-a-point, uphill escape from kesagatame, footsweep to control, deashi, kosotogari, osotogari, hizaguruma, randori

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Kids' judo with Whit, Knox, Nick, Mick, Matt, Zach, Laurie, Stephen, Bailey, Davin, Kevonte, Mason - ROM, ukemi, oozing, crawling, cross face turnover, crawling man randori

A helpful handful: 5 great sacrifices for dealing with an overwhelming opponent

Judo as a self-defense art excels in one particular situation that can give other martial artists sweating terrors – that is, when the defender is surprised and rushed and overwhelmed and borne down to the ground.  In this situation, judo’s sacrifice throws crop up and often save the day. Following are five of my favorites.  I’ve said it before and I'll say it again – don’t practice these things without a good coach and a good falling surface.  For safety's sake we don't mess with these things until about brown belt, but if you are a judoka you owe it to yourself to (at least eventually) become proficient at these particular sacrifices.

• tomoenage or yokotomoenage or sumigaeshi
• yoko wakare
• uranage
• yoko guruma
  
• makikomi

Aiki buddies gathering - Surviving armed assaults

This fall (October 31 and November 1), we will be having our third annual Aiki Buddies Gathering here at Mokuren Dojo. We are likely to have aikidoka from all over the southwest US come practice with us and the theme this year will be the role of the knife in aikido. We will be working on the knife part of the system, including basic knife evasions, the knife sections of sankata and rokukata, and knife randori, and I will be showing how the knife components of the system are a vital piece of the un-armed self-defense picture.

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With that in mind, I wanted to share a handful of quotes from Lawrence Kane's excellent book, Surviving Armed Assaults, that I recently reviewed. While I am not really using this book as a text for the Aiki Buddies Gathering, some of these ideas underlie what we will be working on and y'all can get a head start by giving some thought to Kane's ideas...

When dealing with weapons, awareness is the best defense followed immediately by avoidance and strategic withdrawal. (p. xix)

No matter what martial style you practice, controlling an opponent's arms (or elbows) and disrupting his or her balance is a sound strategy... (p. xxiv)

Armed assaults with edged weapons are becoming increasingly common since they are much easier to obtain and conceal than handguns, and are carried by far more people. Their relatively low-cost, silent application, and comparative ease of disposal are definite bonuses for the criminally minded (p4).

Self-protection in general, both forceful and non-forceful, reduced the risk of property loss and injury, compared to non-resistance. A variety of mostly forceful tactics, including resistance with a gun, appeared to have the strongest effects in reducing the risk of injury ... Combined with the fact that injuries following resistance are almost always relatively minor, victim resistance appears to be generally a wise course of action (p7).

Because you simply cannot tell by appearance alone whether or not that gentle-looking man or woman walking down the street next to you is a harmless accountant, a violent rapist, or even a mass murderer, you must always be on your guard (p9) ...

...in self defense...The closest thing to an absolute...is that it is critical to maintain sufficient distance between yourself and a potential assailant to give yourself time to react (p43).

...who attacks you will consider himself bigger, tougher, meaner, and more experienced than you are. Either that or he will employ a weapon to win, likely from an ambush (p56)...

That's only a handful of quotes that I marked in my copy of the book - only a taste of what the book is about. I highly recommend the book as an interesting, educational read if you want to think that your martial art has something to do with armed violence.

Interesting testimonial

Yesterday one of my judo guys - a new white belt that's only been to about 3 classes - told me he'd been talking to a guy at home that had done some judo before. The guy asked him, "Show me what you've been learning." The student demurred but upon the insistence of the old-head judo guy, he said, "Well, we've been working on deashibarai."

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"That's the advanced leg sweep, right?" Said the old-head.
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"Yep"
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"Well, show me how you do it."
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(student does deashibarai)
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"Whoa! that was cool. I've never seen it like that. Show me how to do that!"

I like it when my white belts and yellow belts surprise their friends who have been doing this stuff for longer. (But don't take this to mean that I want you to start way-laying passers-by to validate your martial arts practice.)