We misunderstand randori AND ukemi!

So, I commented in a previous article that since...

1. Kano said/implied that Junokata was meant to transmit practical randori knowledge to relative beginners, and...
2. We can no longer see much relationship between randori and junokata...

Then something must be wrong with our idea of what we think randori is.

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I spent this past weekend emphasizing this idea at our wonderful Junokata get-together at Windsong in OKC, and our time together there pretty much confirmed/cemented this idea but there was something else that I saw - a different facet fo the same idea...

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We mis-understand ukemi as well as randori.

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Aikido and judo are give-and-take things.  These arts have been compared to playing catch - tossing a ball back and forth between two people, where the ball consists of energy and initiative and control and balance and space and slack...

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Without someone to receive (uke), then the best you can do is bounce a ball against a wall.  Without someone willing and able to receive the energy you are putting on them, then you are practicing kata or pulled-punches type randori.  And without an uke that is good enough to yield and flow out of the initial dis-balance condition, you can never get to the more interesting subsequent conditions (renzoku).

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Junokata is a practical randori thing in one sense, because it is about building smart ukes and building judoka that can switch freely between the tori and uke roles.  It is about teaching people to play catch.

 

 

 

 

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____________________

Patrick Parker

www.mokurendojo.com

 

Spurt vs. long haul

Recently I was chatting with a local martial artist who has been doing kick-block-punch type stuff for longer than I've been alive!  Great guy!  Unassuming fellow.  Very interesting to talk to about a lot of subjects.  This fellow seemed like the epitome of a long-time martial artist.

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That same day I'd been talking to a patient of mine that had been on Okinawa in the military during the Vietnam conflict.  He was talking about signing up at the local villiage dojo to do some karate.  He said that the class was taught by an American and whenever anyone would come into the dojo this 'instructor' would start out their program of instruction by kicking the noobie around the dojo for a while, generally abusing the hell out of him, and demonstrating how much he knew and how little the noobie knew.  Well, my patient had been forewarned and when the instructor approached him for the first time, my patient told him right off the bat, "You'd better not try that because either you'll have to kill me or I'll find a way to whip your ass if you treat me that way."  I don't think they had a very long or fruitful martial arts relationship.

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Anyway, I got to thinking about the contrast between these two people - The American karate teacher on okinawa and the 40 some-odd year local karateka.

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In the martial arts, there are tortoises and there are hares.  Sprinters and endurance runners.

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Seems to me that the natural athletes that do martial arts in sprint-mode and use it as a way to place themselves above other people in a hierarchy of pain - those folks either burn out or get so broke-up that they stop after 5-10 years.  But a lot of the folks that are lesser athletes, or that have to struggle to integrate the principles the folks that couldn't care less about the rank or the hierarchy - those folks go on to be the life-long budoka...

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... and incidently, those are the guys that end up becoming the master teachers of the next generation because of the extreme attrition of the sprinters and the assholes.

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Tortoises and hares, sprinters and endurance runners.  I aspire to be the endurance-tortoise type martial artist.

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____________________
Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Somebody That I Tried to Throw

"Somebody That I Tried to Throw"

[featuring: Gotcha and Kimbo]

[Gotcha:]
Now and then I think of when we were competing
Like when you said you felt so happy just to try
They told me you were in the same weight class as me
But I felt so puny in your company
But Oh my body it's an ache I still remember

I guess I only knew how to do osoto
Like uchikomi in the class, like sensei said
So when I found that I could not get it
Well you said that "now it's gonna be your turn!"
But I'll admit that I was glad when it was over

But you didn't have to throw me down!
As if I was not there, as if I did nothing
And I didn't even need the points!
You beat me like a white belt and that feels so rough
No you didn't even try to throw!
You started like seoi then you changed your number
I guess I ought to try to learn another throw
Now you're just somebody that I tried to throw

Now you're just somebody that I tried to throw
Now you're just somebody that I tried to throw

[Kimbo:]
Now and then I think of all the times you uchikomi'd
You did kuzushi but you never did the throw
But I don't wanna learn that way
Doing half-assed non-throws all day
You thought that you could make it go
And I wouldn't catch you, break your arm, and throw.

[Gotcha:]
But you didn't have choke me out!
Sit on me and put on that armbar thingie!
And I didn't even need the points!
But you beat me like a white belt and that feels so rough
No you didn't even try to throw
You tripped me and I stumbled then you made me slumber
I guess I ought to try to learn another throw
Now you're just somebody that I tried to throw

[x2]
Somebody
(I tried to throw)
Somebody
(Now you're just somebody that I wanted to throw)

(I wanted to throw)
(That I wanted to throw)
(I wish I could throw)
Somebody



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____________________
Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Meta-knowledge in nagenokata

The purpose of kata isn't just to teach a few moves.  In fact, frequently by the time a student learns a kata they already know how to do all of the techniques in that kata.  It turns out that kata is a sneaky-efficient method of brainwashing a student so that they think about the subject the same way that the creator of the kata thought about the subject.

Take the Kodokan's Nagenokata for example.  By the time most students get around to playing with nagenokata (just before a shodan test usually :-)  they have either already learned the individual techniques or the techniques are trivial variants of something they already know.  So, what does learning nagenokata do for the student that already knows that set of techniques? 

It enforces/insures that the student thinks about those techniques in a certain way. 

For instance...

Nagenokata teaches the student to think in terms of the traditional Kodokan divisions of throws - i.e. tewaza, ashiwaza, koshiwaza.

Nagenokata suggests to students that some techniques (like sacrifices) are more 'advanced' than others

Nagenokata teaches students to value large-amplitude ippons to a larger extent than small takedowns.

I'm sure that given a 10 minute headstart, you could come up with at least a couple more examples of the meta-knowledge'that is encoded in kata and enforced by its practice.

But...

What if there was a teacher that didn't especially care if his students thought about nagewaza in those three groups?  What if an instructor wanted a student to value small, energy-efficient techniques over the big ippons?  What would stop some free-minded instructor from saying that their club-version of Nagenokata would consist of (for instance)
3 footsweeps
3 two-legged hipthrows
3 techniques named 'guruma'
3 techniques named 'otoshi'
And 3 sacrifices
Such a fluctuation of the technique selection for nagenokata would change the meta-message conveyed by the kata.  This club kata would (among other things) place more emphasis on easier hipthrows, enforce the guruma-otoshi concept especially among the hand throws and leg throws. And reduce the feeling that the sacrifices are more important than the other sorts of throws.

OKC Junokata clinic!

In or around 1887, Kano designed Ju-no-kata to illustrate the principles at the heart of Judo. Some years later, Kano saw an Aikido demo by Ueshiba and exclaimed, "This Aikido is my ideal Judo!" So, since Ju-no-kata and aikido are both Kano's ideal of Judo, one would expect Ju-no-kata to have something to do with Aikido - particularly Tomiki's aikido (also known as "separated judo").

Ju-no-kata expresses the same principles as seen in Tomiki Aikido, but instead of the ideas and motions being separated out of their context like in the Walking, or focusing on a particular type of connection like in the Releases, Ju-no-kata keeps everything in a rich, complex context. Kano could have separated all of these ideas out and illustrated them in a much more straightforward way, but instead, he chose to trust the students with the complexity involved in the context.

Ju-no-kata is fundamental, but not basic. Ju-no-kata is sort of like a Rorschach blot or perhaps a Mandelbrot set - different folks can see a lot of different things within these 15 exercises. Despite this, Junokata was not designed to be abstract performance art for aging masters or retired competitors. It is well-documented that Kano intended Ju-no-kata to convey practical randori knowledge to relative beginners.

For two days in September, Patrick Parker (6th dan aikido, 5th dan judo, instructor at Mokuren Dojo) will be teaching the 15 exercises of the Ju-no-kata at the beautiful Windsong Dojo in Oklahoma City. Parker sensei will be discussing and exploring the connections between Kano's Ju-no-kata and Tomiki's "separated Judo" (Aikido). This should be a fun and intriguing exploration for beginners and black belts alike, and you should leave with some great hints and ideas to improve both your Aikido and your Judo.

First Session Friday Sept 21, 7:00PM -9:00 PM / Second Session Saturday Sept 22, 10:00 AM to Noon/ Third Session Saturday Sept 22, 3:00 PM to 5:00PM

Cost - $60 full Clinic/ $40 for one day Limited Registration of 35 -- First come, first serve -Reserve your spot today! http://www.eventsbot.com/events/eb784095958

Guruma throws in tewaza?

I am constantly looking back over our teaching systems that the old dead Japanese guys gave us and asking myself, "Why is this thing organized this way?"

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Today I was looking back over the throwing techniques of judo and something struck me that I hadn't ever noticed before.  I don't know if it's significant, but it sure is interesting (to me at least).

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First some background (as I understand it.)  There are two major classifications of throws in judo - otoshi and guruma.  Many throws are named either otoshi or guruma based on which action they represent.  Most throws fall into one category or the other even if they are named something else (like nage or gaeshi).

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So, what I noticed was this...

• almost all throws named otoshi are tewaza
• almost all throws named guruma are ashiwaza

And that led to me to wonder...

• Why are there so few tewaza gurumas in judo?  Is it something about the close-range (first thing that comes to mind)?  This is weird to me, because in Tomiki aikido (hamare judo) there are numerous gurumas that are essentially tewaza.

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____________________

Patrick Parker

www.mokurendojo.com

Change is the only constant

Every so often I make a few little (and sometimes big) changes to keep the Mokuren Dojo blog fresh.  You'll notice that yesterday I removed the schedule and map links at the top and side and just put the schedule and map right at the top of the sidebar.  I'm also going to be tweaking some of the lower sidebar a bit in the next few days, but the thing I really wanted to get y'all's input on today was the comment system.

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I'm thinking about disabling comments for the blog site entirely, for the following reasons...

• I have rarely ever been able to get a good conversation going in the blog comments anyway.
• Most of the folks that do comment on my articles follow my blog on Facebook and they comment over there.
• I haven't really liked any of the three comment engines that I've tried (Blogger, Disqus, and IntenseDebate).  The Blogger comment engine is primitive and the other two are glitchy and cumbersome.
• The comment fields and comment sign-in fields and etc... just take up real estate that can be put to better use. 
• I won't have to worry about getting posts written in Cyrillic or penis enlargement ads or Nigerian scams in my comments any more.

Anyody have any thoughts or suggestions on this?  Anybody care one way or the other?

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____________________

Patrick Parker

www.mokurendojo.com

What is "classical judo" anyway?

I frequently refer to the judo that I teach as "Classical Judo," and some of my students and budies have picked up on that and started hyping the Classical Judo label.

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But a while back, another sensei asked one of my students, "What does the 'Classical' thing mean anyway?"  To which we didn't have a really good answer.  But like lots of things that I don't have a good answer for, this has eaten at me for a while, until my understanding and feelings have resolved a bit.  So when we say "Classical judo," do we mean...

• We try to do judo like the old-dead guys - sort of an anything-new-is-inferior view?
• We are deliberately out-of-date or anachronistic?
• We are anti-competitive judo?
• We don't like the recent IJF rules changes?
• We are just trying to create a competitive (in the business sense) name brand?

Well, there might be some of that in our understanding of Classical Judo, but having thought about it for a while, I think most of the differentiation that we draw has to do with...

• Classical Judo must abide by Kano's two axioms - Mutual benefit and welfare, and Maximally efficient use of power.
• Classical judo is not a sport - it is broad in scope and sport judo is just a subset.
• Classical judo was not specialized for any one context (like self-defense or combatives or shiai or fitness...) but was generally applicable to all these contexts.
• Classical judo randori and shiai took place under a small, broad ruleset - more like a set of guiding principles than an enumeration of every allowed or disallowed action.
• Judoka classically de-emphasized weight classes in competition.
• Classical judoka had a wide technical range - far greater than their 2-3 personal tokuiwaza.
• In classical judo there seems to have been an emphasis on application of ashiwaza and tewaza in highly-mobile upright postures.
• Classical judo seems to have emphasized teaching generalities and allowing the student to develop an understanding of the specific details in randori - as opposed to teaching many, many techniques and variations.

You should know, just because we think Classical Judo as defined above is the greatest thing, that doesn't make us right or this the only opinion.  There are plenty of very good judoka who would be proud to wear the Non-Classical-as-defined -by-Pat-Parker label.  But perhaps this at least begins to put some meaning to the words we use to describe what we are trying to do.

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And before you start protesting that I'm just being elitest, trying to place myself above some group of non-classical vermin, I am far from finally decided on the above points.  I'd love to discuss any of the above with y'all and I'd love for y'all to add points that you think separate Classical from non-Classical.  I'm even open to being told that I'm full of manure, but if you think so, I would prefer for you to expand on that so I can better understand your dissent.

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____________________

Patrick Parker

www.mokurendojo.com

Compassion integral to aikido?

For the past several days I've been watching an intriguing series of videos by LA aikido teacher Corky Quakenbush (do a search on YouTube for "kakushitoride" to find his channel).  My first thought was something along the line of "hippie nutjob," but the more I watched the more I moderated that opinion to something like, "Sorta cool, but I wouldn't like to do that sort of aikido."  But funny thing - I can't stop watching it and thinking that there is something significant there that I am not understanding.

I think part of my negative gut reaction is some of his terminology.  He talks a lot about "beneficient intention" and "connecting" and "loving" and "giving" and "caring,"  and a lot of that strikes me as code-words used by aiki-charlatans who can talk a nice game but can't do the bu.  I don't think this guy is a charlatan, but some of the language just sets off my BS meter.

But then I got to thinking about, what is it about me and my own psychology that makes me flinch away from talk about beneficient intention?  I mean, as Christians, we're supposed to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Mat 5:44). So why is it such a stretch to think that a martial art that I know as efficient and effective and pragmatic can also include as one of its prime characteristics, compassion?

I remember reading many years ago some of the standard propoganda about SMR Jodo that said that jo was an art of chastising rather than killing.  I remember thinking, "That's a nice idea.  Kinda wimpy and flaccid, but nice," and then proceeding to do jo for years imagining cracking and breaking and stabbing and smashing.  Then I went to a seminar recently in which Sensei Corey Comstock discussed and demonstrated why jo was supposed to be a restraining thing rather than a destroying thing.  I was impressed because Sensei Comstock was the first person that I'd seen both articulate this idea and actually show how it made jodo work better than it would as a destroying thing.  Comstock's restraining, compassionate jo was obviously more effective than any destroying jo that I'd ever seen.

There is also a story about Jigoro Kano taking a trip on a ship and being chalenged by a Russian sailor.  Kano, so the story goes, grappled and threw the sailor decisively, but then fearing for the sailor's life if he were to hit the deck, protected the sailor's head as he lowered him to the deck.  We (I) don't usually think of the "gentle" aspect of Ju this way, but there is an element of compassion in judo, without which judo would not be as effective.

Then there's our great buddy, JW Bode.  He was a Law Enforcement Officer for many moons and ended up making hundreds of felony arrests without ever being hurt - but what he is more proud of - without ever hurting anyone.  The story goes that he developed such a reputation for his efficient, effective, safe, and compassionate handling of subjects, that frequently, people would find out that there was a warrant out for their arrest, they would call him to come get them so they wouldn't have to get beat up by some other yahoo.  I can attest, having laid hands on JW, that he is always in complete control of the situation, and that a big part of that control feels like love or compassion.

I bet, given a couple of hours I could come up with several more examples of how compassion is an integral part of pragmatic martial aikido - true budo.

So why do Sensei Quakenbush's discussions and demonstrations of "beneficient intention" make me flinch?  That's why I told several of my buddies a few days ago that I would really like to lay hands on Sensei Quakenbush so that I could feel his feel.

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____________________
Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Tomiki-inspired aiki-knife practices

I've been thinking about knives a good bit lately - particularly in the context of aikido.  Tomiki sensei, the guy whose training system we ostensibly follow, must have thought that the knife was pretty important in aikido.  He implemented knife randori as a central feature of our training, and he (or maybe his successor)put several knife-taking and knife-using techniques in the more advanced kata.

But for a while now, I have thought that Tomiki's aiki-knife material must have been an incomplete thought.  It appears to me to be a good starting point, but mostly nobody ever goes beyond that starting point.

Turns out that I'm not the only one that is thinking similar thoughts.  Several of the sensei that I have interacted with in the past year or so have stated similar observations and have mentioned that they have undertaken to broaden our aiki-knife practice beyond Tomiki's starting point that he left us.  The really interesting point is that we have undertaken this project in slightly different ways.

One instructor I talked to this summer said that his students (almost all military and law types) complained that the Tomiki knife stuff was simply useless bullshit (as we practice it).  So he undertook a year or so of stress-testing of the Sankata knife material in some resistive randori and he took their findings and fed them back into the kata in an attempt to make the kata training more viable.  He was obviously pleased with his results and you know what was really interesting - when he showed me their kata modifications they were very similar to some of my ideas from about 6 years ago!  Nice validation of both his and my ideas.

I was talking with a different sensei about aiki-knife and his assertion seemed to be that to get better aiki-knife practice we needed to improve our understanding of how blades work and how to use them in an aiki-fashion.  So he developed a training system that (if i understand correctly) places the knife in tori's hand and teaches tori how to do his tori-thing with a knife.  I have it on good authority that this sensei's aiki-knife material is exceptional.

Another sensei mentioned recently that he and his students were embarking on a prolonged project of developing a toshu randori system where the uke has the knife and tori is empty-handed.  This would differ from the standard basic Tomiki knife practice in that uke would not be constrained to thrusts only  but would be allowed to cut and slash - a practice that was heretofore limited to kata practice. I like the idea and i am sure that this sensei's knife randori practice will be a fruitful training method.

My take on aiki-knife most recently has been two-fold.  I figure that if we are going to do aiki-knife then it should abide by the same principles and guidelines as the empty-hand aiki that we are used to.  So, I have taken a fairly extensive list of aiki principles/ideas that was compiled a few years ago by a very high-ranked sensei and Ive been discussing them with my martial buddies with specific respect to their application to stick and blade - what does each aiki principle have to do with jo or blade?

Also, in my physical practices, I have adopted a knife training  system from Arnis master, Bram Frank.  Bram's modular knife system is a very exceptional training system quite similar to some of our renzoku practices.  This modular knife system puts a knife in uke's and in tori's hand so that both partners are simultaneously learning to attack and defend with a blade. An additional benefit of this system is that the motion and muscle memory translates directly to empty-hand so that it remains functional even if tori is unarmed.

I think that it is super-interesting that we four have come to similar conclusions (mostly independently) and that our approaches are all somewhat different but that they dovetail together so nicley.  I am looking forward to seeing what our collective Tomiki-inspired aiki-knife becomes!

Minimal power and power-in-reserve

In learning a throw, once you can achieve a recognizable effect that you can identify as that particular technique...

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There is a tendency to add more power in order to try to make more amplitude or a harder landing or in order to accelerate the take-off.  But often the added power spoils the effect.  So, what to do?  Once you can make a throw go pretty good, how do you improve it?

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Hint: this is Ju-do.  (even if you happen to be calling it aikido, it's still ju-do.)  Try this:

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Once you can achieve an effect that is recognisable as a certain throw, try reducing the power until you cannot make the throw work anymore.  Then increase the power until you can make the throw again.  In this way, you can find the minimum power that you have to have to make the throw work.

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You want to practice in and around this minimum-power level. Over time, as you get better, you will find that what you thought was minimum power is too much power and you will be able to reduce power again.  Resist the urge to add power for more effect - instead, reduce power while trying to get the same effect!

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If this sort of practice makes you feel like you are doing wimpy-jutsu, then instead of thinking about it as throwing with minimum power, think about it as holding more and more of your power in reserve in case of an emergency - as developing a bigger and bigger hammer to drop on the opponent when your low-power throw does not work. :-)

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____________________
Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Filling in the corners

I got an interesting compliment from a brown belt student a while back.

Regarding why we place so much emphasis on the white and yellow-belt  material, he told the class, "I haven't learned any new throws since about yellow or green belt!"  That's not to say that he has stagnated since green belt - just the opposite!  He has seen all the material up to about shodan level and he has tried it and can do it just fine - because we spent so much time and attention to the white and yellow-belt material.

Everything after green belt is just minor tweaks or modifications of angle or timing.  The most important core of judo, we teach at white and yellow belt, and it sets the foundation that makes the rest of the syllabus almost trivial.

That is also not to say that you can do 9 months or so of judo and get a green belt and be done.  While you will definitely have the foundation by then, you will still need to learn how to properly make those tweaks and modifications to the core principles in real-time with a live opponent - and that is what you spend the rest of your lifetime in judo doing - filling in the corners!

Atemi waza or irimi waza?

In my aikido and judo classes I'm in a constant process of trying new ideas out.  I'll take some part of our curriculum and flip it and turn it and look different facets of it.  I'll put it in different orders and try looking at it from other perspectives.  I often end up putting it right back into the curriculum the way it was given to us by our teachers, but sometimes my studies yield what appears to be a better way to teach the thing or practice the thing.  And not only that, but even if I put it back just the way it was, I end up with a better understanding of why our teachers gave it to us in that form in the first place.

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Lately I've been thinking about the first five techniques of Junanahon kata.  These things are referred to as a group as atemiwaza - striking techniques - which doesn't make much sense to a lot of beginners because they don't look like how we usually think about striking someone.  It looks and feels like more of a pushing thing.  You can sort of justify calling #1-4 strikes because "Hey, you could hit the guy from that position if you wanted to," but then you get to #5 (ushiroate) and it seems like the least strike-like thing you've done so far.

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What if we stopped calling these things strikes and went back to calling them what the rest of the aikido world calls them - iriminage (entering throws)?

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See, an argument could be made that Ueshiba only taught two things - irimi (entering) and tenkan (turning).  The basic strategy of aikido could be boiled down to something like, "First try to enter in (irimi) occupying uke's space so decisively that he is overturned - BUT if something goes wrong with your entering, turn out of the way (tenkan) and look for another time/place to enter.

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Tomiki's atemiwaza fit this strategy perfectly.    In fact, didn't Tomiki allegedly say, "None of this will work unless you apply shomenate first."  That's about the same thing as saying "You pretty much have to try irimi first, then your tenkan techniques will work better."
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I don't know that changing what you call the thing changes it too much, but then again it could help to get us a little more in line with the rest of the aikido world so that some more meaningful communication and sharing of ideas could go on...

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____________________
Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

What Tomiki thought about weapons

Trying to divine the thoughts and intentions of the founders by looking at their kata (especially as performed now by students of students of students) can be tricky.  It can be easy to get off on a misleading tangent and spend a lot of practice time chasing ghosts.

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It would be better to read the writings of the founders and see video of them doing their thing - but sometimes the kata that they left behind are all we have to go on.  Take Tomiki Sensei, for instance.  There is relatively little available that was written by him and relatively few videos (though the ones we do have are very educational).

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I don't think I've ever seen a video or read anything regarding Tomiki doing any of the weapons work (jo and sword) associated with his teaching system.  The jo and sword work that he (or Ohba maybe?) did leave us consists of the second half of Koryu Dai San kata and the second half of Koryu Dai Roku kata.  The weapons techniques in Sankata and Rokukata feel to me like a sampler platter of just a few options with each condition - a foretaste or hint that there is much more there to explore if we're interested.

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This lack of material makes sense - they just weren't as interested in that aspect of the art.  They had different fish to fry -  they were engrossed in the randori problem.  But they did apparently consider it important enough to leave us at least a remnant of the weapons material.  .

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It occurs to me that perhaps we can divine a bit of the founder(s) thinking by looking at the structure of the weapons forms that they left us.  It looks like they may have been suggesting certain practices as more interesting or more important or valuable than other practices based on the number of each sort of technique that they put into the kata.

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For instance...

• jo-tsukai (jonage) - 12 techniques (8 in sankata and 4 in rokukata)
• tachidori - 9 techniques (5 in san, 4 in roku)
• tachi-tai-tachi (kumitachi) - 8 techniques (all in sankata)
• tantodori 8 techniques (all in sankata)
• jodori - 5 techniques (all in sankata)
• tanto-nage (4 techniques in rokukata)

Do the relative frequencies suggest to us that we should spend more time and thought and energy on jotsukai (jonage) than on the other practices?  Does it suggest that we shouldn't worry much about the opponent grabbing our knife-weilding arm? Does it suggest that we won't get much from working on how to take a jo/yari away from uke?

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Or does it suggest we should invest more on jo (17 total techniques) and sword (17 total techniques) than on tanto (12 techniques)?

UPDATE - A reader rightly pointed out that i failed to count the five tantodorin in rokukata. that means that there are 17 techniques for each of the three weapons, but the numbers between the different practices are still unequal.

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Or something else?

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Or nothing at all?

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____________________

Patrick Parker

www.mokurendojo.com