Ma-ai: palm-to-palm or fingertip-fingertip

Sensei Strange's ma-ai question from a day or two ago...

...the other day you mentioned finger tip to finger tip is incorrect. Why? I practice finger tip to finger tip, just because I feel handblade to handblade is actually too close. I feel Maai has already been broken...

Go back, for a moment, to swordwork. When you measure ma-ai in swordwork, you don't measure by touching the tips together - you cross swords by about a fist-breadth or 3 inches or so. This goes back (I think) to the discussion in The Sword and the Mind about 'sneaking three inches'. Uke wants to find the distance to attack from, where he can put his sword about 3 inches into you with one efficient lunge. Same thing applies to arms as well as swords. Uke does not want to lunge forward just enough to barely touch your body with his fingertips - he wants to lunge far enough to put his palm on you, representing a fist penetrating 2-3 inches.

Also consider, tori does not want to begin his reaction when uke is still outside of ma-ai because that makes tori's motion easier for uke to read and follow. Tori wants to define ma-ai as the distance where uke can first begin affecting him. At finger-tip to finger-tip, uke can, in no way affect tori. He is just too far away. But palm-to-palm represents the distance where uke can casually lean in and grab your arm if it were extended.
.
There's also the subjective feel of the different distances. Measure fingertip-to-fingertip and put your hands down. Looking at uke at this distance tori is alert, but not especially anxious. Uke is also not particularly eager to attack because he can intuitively feel that the distance is too great. But let uke shift forward a couple of inches and all of a sudden tori can hardly contain himself because he knows he is right on the edge of his ability to evade if uke attacks. That's ma-ai - you want uke's presence at ma-ai distance to make you so anxious and alert that you begin your evasion at the first sign of motion from uke.
.
So, ma-ai represents the distance at which uke first becomes an immediate danger to tori - but also a great enough distance that tori can still manage an evasion if uke attacks with maximum efficiency. That distance is generally closer to palm-to-palm than it is fingertip-to-fingertip.

___________

Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog

Karate-do - aikido - same thing?

A while back in a discussion about karate and aikido, a pretty smart guy quoted some old dead oriental guy as having said something to the effect of, "There is only one martial art."  The idea being we all practice subsets of the one martial art and practice under different names.  Could it be?

.

I got to thinking about this quote the other day while watching some karate vids on YouTube. I think we're all familiar with Shotokan (though maybe not with this particular kata)...

But some might not know that Shotokan split into two groups, with one group calling themselves Shotokai and practising the same stuff a little differently...

But how many of y'all knew that a group of Shotokai guys went completely off the deep end and started doing aikido, or something that would be easy to mistake for some aikido practices. I give you Shintaido...

Did I say they went off the deep end? Did that seem kinda harsh? How about Shintaido telepathy, ki blasts, and remote controlled ukes...

I'm sure some of you might come back with some talk about untapped human potential and possibilities and unexplained phenomena... Well, I for one would just as soon leave that kind of potential untapped.  My remote control for uke is called shomenate (you might know it by the name palm-heel-to-the-chin).

___________

Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog

DMZ - Discomfort ma-ai zone

Photo courtesy of Teamworker

We usually think of ma-ai as a safety zone around tori - a comfort zone. Well, another way to think about ma-ai is as a discomfort zone. A line that as uke approaches, tori becomes progressively more uncomfortable, until at two-arms-distance, tori is so intensely uncomfortable that he unconsciously begins to shift off the line of attack and toward a more comfortable space.

.

If you train a precisely-measured proper ma-ai sufficiently, your intuitive sense of ma-ai combined with your own sense of disomfort will make the off-line evasion and aiki brush-off a subconscious, automatic thing.

.

You don't want to cheat yourself out of that discomfort. Train with it, let it be part of you and bathe in that discomfort.

___________
Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog

Measuring every time

Started an interesting conversation thread in the comments of the last post with Sensei Strange.  I don't think he's completely wrong, but...

.

It seems (to me) that Tomiki got a lot of his ideas about kata construction and practice either from the ZNKR guys or from the same place that they got their ideas. If I remember my history rightly, the ZNKR guys formulated their new kihon and kata around the same time as Tomiki or maybe a little before. In any case, the Tomiki sword work in the Koryunokata (simple as it is mostly) bears a great resemblance to the ZNKR stuff. That influence (like measuring every time in kata and kihon) seems to spill over into the rest of Tomiki practice.

.

Notice, for instance, in the kendo kata video below. They start an arbitrary distance apart, move forward, measure, do ipponme, then measure again after every technique and before the next.

Notice that the kendo kihon operate the same way...

___________

Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog

Measuring ma-ai

The first, and best way to begin developing a good intuitive sense of ma-ai (space, time, and distance) is to measure ma-ai at the beginning of every repetition of a partner exercise.  The way that we measure ma-ai is to stand palm-to-palm with your partner, both of you standing in shizentai (natural upright posture) with unbendable arms.

.

Something you have to watch out for, though, is the tendancy to pay attention to uke's hand instead of his center.  Remember, after you measure like this, ma-ai is the distance from uke's center to tori's center - not the distance from uke's hand to tori's center.  I usually teach to measure, then have both partners drop their hands, take a breath and observe how far away your partner is, then uke attacks.

.

Repetition of this measuring trick will instill a fine intuitive ma-ai sense, and this ma-ai measuring exercise is applicable in aikido, judo, and karate.

___________

Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog

Ma-ai month

Photo courtesy of Tommrkr

Having focussed on relaxation in January and posture in February, during March we are going to focus on ma-ai, or the time-space relationship between attacker and defender. Ma-ai is a principle that one hears preached upon in aikido and weapon classes all the time, and even though it is not as often taught explicitly in judo or karate-do, it is still vital that you have a good, intuitive sense of spacing and timing and the ability to control distance.

.

As a first glimpse of how important ma-ai is in all martial arts - not just aikido and kendo - following is Genshin Hironishi Sensei's definition from the Preface to Karate-do Nyumon:

... literally translated, maai means "(spatial) distance", but in this usage it also evokes a sense of timing, or chance. Thus, it indicates both the space and the time it takes for and opponent's fist to reach one's body. In the practice of both kata and basics, there is a tendency to forget maai and become absorbed solely in the repetition of movements...

___________

Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog

February 2009 review - posture

February 2009 has been posture month at Mokuren dojo. We've been paying particular attention to natural, upright posture in all of our classes and I have written several articles on the subject. As a matter of review:

• An introduction to good posture
• How to build good posture from the feet upward
• A funny video of how posture teaching used to be done - wrongly as far as I'm concerned
• And a discussion of a better way to improve your posture - ideokinesis
• A comparison of postures used in Chinese and Japanese martial arts
• A discussion of kokutsu and zenkutsu - two of the postures in karate-do.
• An exercise we do in judo to improve posture and learn to attack bad postures
• Finally, the best book around about movement and posture
• Or, you might want to browse all the articles I've ever written on posture

___________
Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog

Heian Yondan opening movements

Following is a good video of the first movements of Heian Yondan. This movement seems superficially to be kinda dumb, but if you look a little deeper you can see it as the basis of a whole lot of very fine self defense technique. In this video, tori demonstrates these moves as:

• a wedge-like block similar to the 'cowcatcher' that we teach at Mokuren.
• an iriminage-like clothesline throw with a great hip bump as insurance
• shomenate throwing the attacker straight down his weak stance line.
• a groin strike (notice how the off-hand follows to stay in the center of the relationship)
• a gedanate-like throw
• a pick-up type scooping throw
• a kubiguruma-like throw
• a form of oshitaoshi (ikkyo)

It seems as if the first move of Heian Yondan could be one of those universally-applicable techniques.

.

Sure, there's something missing in trying to learn these types of applications in a solo form - these things will pretty much be impossible to develop without doing a good bit of partner practice. But on the other hand, the jujitsu guys that practice these same ideas in partner kata all the time are missing something too - the ability to train these things (at least to some degree) solo.

.
___________
Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog

Helpful handful: Ichikata as an intro to power

Photo courtesy of BekiPeti

Power can be defined as the ability to make something move or get something done. One of the fundamental theories of aikido and judo is that people's power is always ebbing and flowing, waxing and waning as we move. The techniques that we do are timed based on the ebb and flow of the opponent's power.

.

Suwariwaza (kneeling technique) is one way to see this phenomenon in action. For instance, in Ichikata, the first five techniques are suwari, and they vary in their timing condition with respect to uke's build-up and application of power.

• Suwari oshitaoshi (provocative timing) – tori catches uke sitting back, all the way down, before uke has started building power. Tori attacks uke's face, provoking a response that tori uses to throw uke. As such, tori is well ahead of uke in the timing of this technique. Basically, tori overwhelms uke before uke can build up a resistance.
• Suwari tenkai oshitaoshi – uke attacks tori's face and tori rises with a rising block but uke is not so far ahead in timing that tori is overwhelmed. Still, because tori is behind he cannot run over uke as before so he turns out of the way and throws uke. Tori has successfully played catch-up.
• Suwari tekubiosae – uke attacks tori's face and tori is ever farther behind. Finding himself in the hole, tori knows he'd better not try to apply power, so he fades around and moves with uke's arm until uke's power peters out and tori's power is relatively high. Then tori pins uke.
• Suwari ryotedori sukuinage – here tori is absolutely caught flat and dead (energy-wise) and uke grasps both of tori's wrists. Tori retracts his wrists, slipping uke into off-balance and activating uke's back muscles, which tori can then follow into a pin.
• Suwari ryotedori sukuinage (juntai timing) – this is an odd exercise in timing. Tori is actually pulling uke up from the previous pin and getting in synch with him as he rights himself so that the throw on the opposite side happens immediately as uke regains his knees.

___________

Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog

Spring schedule changes

At the beginning of March we will be adjusting the schedule as follows. Notice that this is mostly the same, but kid's judo will be condensed into two class days and Saturday stick&blade class will be before aikido. I look forward to seeing y'all at class per this schedule starting March 1.
.
Tuesday

• 4:00 PM judo
• 5:30 PM kids' judo
• 6:30 PM aikido
• 8:00 PM karate (by appointment with Patrick M.)

Thursday

• 4:00 PM judo
• 5:30 PM kids' judo
• 6:30 PM aikido
• 8:00 PM karate (by appointment with Patrick M.)

Saturday

• 7:00 AM private judo lesson
• 9:00 AM stick & blade
• 10:00AM aikido

___________
Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog

What can a large organization do for you?

Pretty much whichever martial art you get into, there is the potential for you to be affilitated with some large regional, national, or international organization or 'governing body.' Generally, you don't get to pick your affiliation when you first get started - you start working out with whatever instructor is local and convenient and agreeable to you, and if you want to keep working out or ranking in that club then you join whatever organization that club is affiliated with.

.

But then again, after you have been in an organization for a while and gotten a good dose of the ego and politics involved (Like anything, there are ups and downs to organization membership), you might be on the lookout for some other organization to get involved with.

.

I thought I'd give you a list of the things (off the top of my head) that an organization might provide - potential benefits to belonging to a martial arts organization.

• standards, curriculum, and examples of best practices
• rank validation
• connections to other instructors and students - networking
• connection to a tradition
• educational resources
• seminars
• a source of guest-instructors to teach at your club
• legal protection/advice
• insurance
• teacher training/certification
• validation for the way you do things
• economies of scale
• a common culture/band of brothers
• competition format/structure
• business model/training
• advertising

How about you guys? What benefits to organization membership have I missed? How many of these benefits would it take to make it worth putting up with the inherent disadvantages to martial arts organizations?

___________

Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog

The best RNC video ever!

This guy definitely gets extra points for style and humor...


___________
Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog

The rhythm of randori

In randori the pace waxes and wanes. There are inevitable spots when you or the other guy can take a moment to rest, or think, or ham it up for the camera, or...

Photo courtesy of Elise D. Parker

___________
Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog

Feldenkrais' Awareness Through Movement

Seeing as this is posture month at Mokuren Dojo, I thought I'd drop you another little hint. Actually a BIG hint. Ok, a REALLY BIG hint!
.
I have written often about Moshe Feldenkrais' writings on judo and posture, but I also found this online copy of Feldenkrais' book, Awareness Through Movement. A definite must-read, even if it is not an easy read in places! If you want the free online copy then download it but it you're the type that prefers the mass and feel and convenience of paper, then pick up a copy at my Amazon store from the link below.
.
In either case, I consider this necessary reading before you really start to think deeply about posture and movement.

UPDATE: Here is the month-end review of all the posture articles from this month of focus.

___________
Subscribe now for free updates from the Mokuren Dojo blog