Distance

There are three distances at which you can deal with an attack. For want of more precise terminology these are: before contact, at contact and after contact.

Let me explain these distances better. If you want they are also temporal as well as physical.

Before Contact
The attacker is moving toward you to either hit or grab. They are just entering your personal space - that zone around you where you become vulnerable to attack.

At Contact
The attacker has entered you personal space and has almost touched you but maybe not quite; they have reached out to grab you or their punch has been thrown.

After Contact
The person has got you - either with a strike (ouch) or they have grabbed you with a strong hold.

Each of these distances represents diminishing levels of freedom on your part. At the first distance you have the most freedom to deal with the situation. At the last distance you have the least (and may well have been knocked out!)

The distance at which you deal with an attack depends upon, how aware you are to the situation, what your reflexes are like, whether you are constrained (physically or psychologically), how subtle and fast they are.

In any case the best position to be in is the first distance. Well aware of the attack and with the most options available. In this situation you can attack the attacker (preemptively) or make your escape or perhaps even lead the attacker into a position that is unfavourable to them (the most aiki approach).

In the last position, particularly from a grab, you have limited freedom of movement and have basically two approaches. One is to create more freedom using atemi (strikes). The strikes in these situations are not designed, necessarily to disable the attacker but to disrupt them enough to give you options to escape or take control of the situation. The other approach is to move. First you should move things that are not constrained. If your wrist is held then you can move just about everything else other than you wrist. Leave your wrist in the position that it is in and move your whole body around it. This is a form of blending and is fundamental to aikido. This movement allows things to develop and creates opportunities to break the attackers balance and execute an aikido technique.

In the middle distance you are not able to preempt the attack but can still move in a way to lead the attacker into a position where you can control them. This is the most common aikido situation. Timing and blending exercises are important to develop the sensitivity required to achieve this. This is sometimes described as ki no nagare.

Whenever you are practising an aikido technique you should consider at what distance it is most suited and how you could adapt it to the three different distances.

Another beginners' course is over

Well done to Zanna, John and Nicholas who completed the course on Tuesday. They have learned a lot during the ten weeks and I hope that they had fun too. I certainly did.

If any of the others who were on the course read this, then please know that you are most welcome to keep coming. I know that some of you had injuries or work commitments that kept you away. Don't feel you can't come along and get back on the horse, as it were.

The course has two aims. One is to introduce aikido generally to people who may have not even seen it before. The other is to get the attendees to learn enough of our syllabus to be able to grade to 6th kyu (white belt). Certainly the three mentioned above managed this with ease.

The difficulty with focusing on a syllabus is that you don't have time show off lots of other aspects of aikido. This is something we will be remedying over the next few weeks before Christmas. No stress about grading; just fun and exciting aikido.

I hope we can keep up the healthy numbers at the Tuesday session till the end of the year. I.E. Don't book your Xmas parties on Tuesday nights.

Teacher or Coach

I often worry that my aikido ability is not good enough for me to be teaching. I don't train often enough for my timing and sensitivity to be good enough that my demonstration of technique is really slick. On the positive side, I do feel that I have a good understanding of aikido principles and a reasonable depth of knowledge of aikido techniques, history, philosophy and so on.

The question is what do people want or need from the person running their classes?

Arguably, a beginner is going to be able to learn something from anyone with more experience than them - assuming that they are not trying to teach them something they don't understand.

But perhaps more hopefully, and what I would like to believe, is that people learning aikido need a good coach more than a good exponent of the art. You see this a lot in sport, the rugby or football coach is not able to perform at the level of the players but their understanding of the game allows them to get the best out of their team. Boxing coaches are similar.

Now that I say that, it occurs to me that you generally only get a good understanding of something when you have, at least at some point in your life, been good at it yourself. Also, you can't beat a great demonstration of aikido to inspire and motivate, if not educate.

Oh well, better get more training in then...

Syllabus

OK so we are into the second half of the beginners course and I feel the pressure of getting everyone through the syllabus for the first belt bearing down on me.

With this in mind, I turned my eye toward drilling the techniques and exercises needed for the first grading. I think I have written about a lot of this before but for those not interested in trawling through the archives here is a quick run down of the techniques we need to have covered by the end of the course. Bear in mind that this is only the thinnest sliver of what constitutes the body of aikido. Also, remember that in truth the techniques and exercises are only a vehicle through which to learn the underlying principles that make aikido tick/work.

Techniques 1 to 5 from the randori no kataThis kata was created to teach the basic techniques that could be used in aikido competition as devised by Professor Tomiki. It is possibly his most important legacy to the aikido world.
1 - Shomen ate [frontal strike] - move inside the attack and push through the face or neck down the weak line. Ensure that the push comes from the legs/hips not the arm.
2 - Aigame ate [natural posture strike] - move outside the attack and push through the face or neck down the weak line (the same weak line as in 1 but from outside the arm). Ensure that the arm that is connecting to the opponent is kept in front/centre so as to ensure that the legs/hips are doing the work not the arm.
3 - Gyakugamae ate [opposite posture strike] - throw by pushing the opposite arm across the opponents chest (above their arm) while trapping their leg with yours. Ensure good connection through the whole body with uke to make the throw work. Uke should get bent backwards.
4 - Gedan ate [low strike] - throw by pushing the arm down into the opponents bladder (below their arm) while trapping their legs with yours. Ensure that your posture is good and upright not bent forward. Uke should be forced to sit backwards rather than bending backwards.
5 - Ushiro ate [rear strike] - throw by moving behind uke, hooking their shoulders with your arms and driving them backwards and down. Use your body weight to effect the throw rather than arm power; this requires good connection.

The Grading Game

Sunday was a big day for the club. Apart from having a full day (9am til 11am then 1pm til 4pm) on the mat - for some of us at least - with the afternoon session being the third and final seminar with John Waite at the club, there was also some surreptitious grading going on.

John Waite is known for his no nonsense approach to aikido, both in practice, teaching and the backroom politics. This weekend was no different. The aikido taught was straightforward and fundamental. After a vigorous warm-up, John began with a simple wrist turn from a grasp. He then built in the principles of moving off the line (away from the attackers weapons), breaking balance (kuzushi) and keeping centre. This is all important stuff and the opportunity to practice it in detail was helpful to the higher grades while not overwhelming the less experienced. The teaching and training was done in a fun and enjoyable atmosphere. John can be very severe in his criticism of poor technique but is also very positive and friendly to everyone who is trying. From this wrist turn we worked it into a number of techniques of varying complexity.

After a quick water break the session changed tack. Pepi took the lower grades, through some of the randori no kata I believe. John took the higher grades and went through some more advanced stuff. I didn't get to see much of this as I was collared to become uke for the rest of the day.

First, I was uke for Terry Mason, who went through various parts of the dai ichi, dai ni (sort of), dai san and dai yon. This included the weapons section of the dai san except for the sword to sword. Terry performed well and while there is always room for improvement there were no serious issues with his performance, notwithstanding that we have not trained together for months and had only had a brief chance to go through his katas that morning.

Not content with the beating I got from Terry, I was then plunged into the abyss that is being uke for Tony. It is rare to see Tony get put through his paces, as he is usually busy teaching and doesn't get much opportunity to let rip. Well he certainly had his bite of the cherry this time. We did parts from the dai yon, the 4th dan kata, which is a mix of shichi no hon variations and bit from the goshin ho.

In addition to this, Tony had to perform the full weapons section of the dai san as a demonstration in front of the whole group. I must admit that I was somewhat worried about this as I had not spent long practicing the uke side recently and I was not convinced I would provide good fodder for Tony. In the end it went smoothly and Tony performed excellently. The techniques flowed but we very effective. [There is video footage of us doing the dai yon on YouTube and various people have commented that I "gave" him too much. The truth is that I rarely over-extend on purpose, although I am usually quite relaxed] When Tony draws you in it works really well. What with his tremendous strength, too, I was given a fine and intimate introduction to most of the mats in the dojo.

I believe there may be some video footage of that kata section. May be it might get posted on YouTube or somewhere else soon??

At the end of the day, Tony and Terry were fairly awarded their 4th and 2nd dan respectively and also Audrey was given her 1st kyu. Again, deservedly so, although I didn't watch her during the session.

The day was an enjoyable workout for all and there seemed to be a very positive atmosphere being generated. I hope we can get more of these long days going in the future.

This kind of brings me to the crux of this post.

What is the point of grading? I suppose there are many reasons with perhaps the least important being personal achievement.

These grades are important for the club.

As more people start breaking into the dan grades, it is helpful for Tony to be ahead of the pack as it were. It also provides the club a level of autonomy for the majority of its activities. We are a large club with a healthy income and it makes sense that we should not be unnecessarily shackled by administrative issues.

In order that the club is able to continue to grow without putting undue strain and pressure on Tony, we need to be able to provide more teaching options and only by getting people trained up as coaches and breaking into the black belts can we provide a broad and deep provision of teachers and teaching.

These grades are important for individuals

You do you measure your progress in the activity of aikido? I have written about this before and there is an argument that says it can all be internal, like in yoga, where you just "know" who good you are. This works fine for some people, but not everyone has this level of sensitivity to their ability. Also, this is probably only possible once you have more experience. For the lower grades at least it is essential that they are able to have concrete feedback on their progress.

This feedback is also a good motivator. In an ideal world, everyone would be completely motivated all the time, no matter what was happening on the mat or in the lives at home, we would all work hard every time we train and always maintain focus on our development. Unfortunately this is rarely the case, often at any time let alone all the time. People are definitely more motivated to train hard and in a focused and specific way when gradings are around the corner. This also means that people can have a bit of a break from this level of focus away from gradings and is likely to prevent people from burning out.

Finally there is the egotistic nature of grading. "I want to be a black belt," is often a phrase you here from people taking up martial arts. This is an understandable aim but as you begin your journey in martial arts, and aikido in particular, I hope it becomes apparent that this kind of attitude is actually fairly immature and misses a fundamental aspect of budo. Martial arts, or at least budo derived ones, have an element that is about personal development or growth on top of the purely technical development. What this means differs from art to art and club to club but for me it is about learning humility, hard work, self control and respect for others. It seems perverse to be developing this on one hand and at the same time striving for a fairly arbitrary measure of your technical ability.

As far as this last point goes, if anyone needs a role model for these high moral characteristics, it is Tony. Never do you see him showing disrespect for anyone (he may not like someone or disagree but he still maintains a level of respect). He is one of the most humble people on the mat at the club. This is particularly notable, since he is the most experienced and accomplished aikido student on the mat, he is responsible for the creation and on-going success of the club and he puts more time and effort into the club than the rest of the members put together.

As John said on Sunday, we are indebted to Tony for the club that we have, we are incredibly lucky to have such a good teacher and we need to make sure that he is appreciated.

Finally and interestingly, John said that we need to keep pushing Tony. I think this may be the closest that he came to a criticism during the time he has spent with us.

Avoidance

This week, being the third of the current beginners' course, we looked again at the techniques that we have been learning so far but also focused on movement and avoidance.

When someone goes to strike you with a hand or fist and there is not too much commitment it is fairly easy to block the strike and redirect it without really moving much. The trouble is if they really mean to hit you and you block poorly or late then uke will most likely take your head off, which is not good. Also, by blocking rather than blending with the strike you are not following good aikido principles and this leads to poor technique or at the very least an incorrect mindset.

So, to encourage more movement and avoidance, we got out the bokkens (wooden swords). After some initial introduction to the bokken we had uke cutting "men". This cut is straight down as though you are trying to cut tori in half through their head. Now this has two benefits to training. If you don't avoid this cut it is likely to hit you hard on the head or at least on the arms if you try to block it. Second, the act of striking with a weapon in you hands actually slows down the strike. This is due to the additional inertia from the weight of the weapon over that of just your arm.

Sorry, there is also a third benefit, and this is that it is more scary to have someone swiping a bit of wood at you rather then an open hand. This introduces a psychological element that is very interesting to work with.

Everyone did well and I was generally pleased with the movement. We even had time to look at a few techniques against sword attack.

We worked on the three techniques that we have looked at already: oshi taoshi, hiki taoshi and shomen ate. In addition we spent some time on aigame ate. This is a very hard technique to do well. The focus of the teaching was on breaking uke's balance rather than doing the full kata style technique.

Since there was a good number of grade students there I decided to let them have a little knock about at the end of the class. This was partly to let them have a more free practice after helping so much with the beginners. It was also to let the beginner see some more fluid aikido and see what to expect in the future.

Some photos from class

The second week of the beginners' course and we had another good turn out. Only a couple of the beginners were missing and one guy who missed last week made it along.

Also, we had a visit from Wojciech, a guy from Poland, who was in London for a few days and came and trained at the club for a few sessions.

 

In this class we went over some of the stuff we did last week. I feel it is important at this stage in the course not to over-expose the class to too much aikido as it generally leads to confusion. Instead I try to keep the techniques few and simple. We looked again at oshi-taoshi (push down) and hiki-taoshi (pull down) and added simple attacks, shomen uchi (straight downward chop to the head) and tsuki (straight punch in this case to the stomach).

 

It was noticeable who the introduction of actual attacks led to an increase in effort and tension in most people - even if they were not aware of it. I noticed that whereas before people were comfortably moving through the technique and uke was generously practicing their breakfall, now uke was being forced (if only slightly) down to the ground and there was more grabbing of the arm rather than keeping a relaxed open hand.



As I mentioned in the class. An important part of learning aikido is cultivating a relaxed body and mind while under the stress of attack. This is partly a philosophical point but mostly it is a physiological one.



If you are relaxed in your body then you are using the optimum amount of effort to do your work. When tension creeps in you are using muscles unnecessarily and wasting energy. While this can be helpful in intimidating your attacker it usually leads quickly to exhaustion and loss of quality in your technique.



If you are relaxed in your mind then you are open to the situation you are in and don't tend to freeze up and get locked into a single preprogrammed response to what is happening. You are able to make value judgements about the best course of action, respond to changes in the environment or attacker and also you tend to maintain a relaxed body. Body and mind or closely linked - they each feed off and influence the other.

Anyway enjoy the photos and look at the posture of the people to see which are good and which are poor.

New Beginners

What a great turn out we had last night. Along with the eight new guys AND girls we got seven regular club members, which made for a very successful session.

The first session of a beginners' course is always a bit tricky. People bring many preconceptions, consciously and unconsciously, about what aikido is about. Some of these are accurate and some not. Generally my goal in the early weeks is not so much to teach aikido techniques but to set the stage for future training.

With this in mind the class structure went as follows:

How the body maintains and loses balance
Leading to good aikido posture
And how this can be used to transmit power from the legs
Through pushing your partner
Basic avoidance of this push - side to side, on the diagonals and turning
How the body reacts to having the arm rotated forwards and backwards
The forward rotation leading into two "techniques"
Although these were taught as opportunities to practice a simple forward breakfall
A variation on one of the techniques to introduce turning
And finally some soft back breakfalls to warm down

The homework was to work on these back breakfalls during the week, focusing on keeping the chin tucked in, curving the back to ensure no unnecessary bumping onto the floor and using the body weight to bring yourself back up.

Feel free to comment on the session as feedback is always welcomed. Hope to see the same kind of numbers next week.

Congratulations

Well done to Simon, Ian and John in passing their grading last night.



As you can see they are not proudly wearing their yellow belts indicating their promotion to 5th kyu.

It is always difficult to keep up a reasonable level of training during the summer months. People take holidays and there is often a lack of continuity. These guys have made a consistent effort to turn up and it shows in their development.

Tony was also there last night to ratify their grading and was generally pleased with the level. This is also a relief to me as in many ways the development of these guys is a direct reflection on my teaching and Tony is putting a lot of trust in me to keep people who train on a Tuesday night in line with the club as a whole. Of course it is not too problematic because I think all these guys have attended at least some other classes with Tony.

Interestingly, Simon commented that he really enjoyed the session, that it was a good hard work out. This was despite my concern that I did not do much teaching and we did not freeplay at all. I suppose it goes to show that while demonstration and discussion is important giving people time to actually practice and work things through for themselves is crucial. I will consider this in future sessions.

Next week we begin a new beginners' course. This will mean bringing the pace down a little for a few weeks to get the new guys and girls into the groove but will hopefully provide our new yellow belts with an opportunity to appreciate the progress they have made and while working with the new beginners they may be able to bring themselves back into the "beginner's mind" way of thinking about their own technique.

Attack!

Tony wrote recently on the forums at http://www.londonaikido.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=155 on atemi or the practice of striking.

This is a huge topic and often completely overlooked in many aikido circles. So much so that some people would argue that aikido does not include striking. This is not so, although the focus on knockout blows that you might see in karate or some Chinese arts is fairly minimal.

Apart from the use of strikes in defending oneself (I think I have written on this before) there is obvious area of the initial attack. What are we defending ourselves from in aikido? Someone is trying to injure us or make us do something we don't want to do like hand over our worldly goods. In most of these cases there is some form of physical attack in the way of flying fists, and in more unusual cases flying feet, knees, elbows or even head.

How can we defend ourselves from such ballistic attacks if we cannot reproduce them in training. It is therefore necessary to study, at least in part, punches and kicks and so on in order that we can then study how to deal with them. Many of the early aikido students (O Sensei's students) were already black belts (or at least well versed) in a range of external arts such as sumo, judo, karate, jujitsu or forms of kung fu. O Sensei's focus in training therefore was in teaching these already competent fighters how to relax, blend, control and use their "ki" to be even more effective. This has been misconstrued in some peoples minds as aikido not really doing hitting.

I believe O Sensei himself, or at least one of his top students, stated that aikido is 90% atemi!

Any way back to our training. In the past I have had difficulty getting a technique to work. I haven't been able to off balance uke or they have managed to recover their balance and block my technique. It is important to train so that you can deal with such situation, as they will inevitably occur in real life. But I believe that in many cases the fault has been, at least partly, in a poor or uncommitted attack.

If you are supposed to be attacking someone and don't really try to connect, either by stopping short or second guessing the technique and redirecting your attack or just not following through, then it is almost impossible to get many of the most wonderful kokyu nage throws of aikido to work. You start struggling to get the technique on, uke gets solid and nervous because you are trying to force it and what you end up with is a non-technique, either uke looks at you and nothing happens or they are kind to you and roll off without being thrown. This is not just poor aikido it is detrimental to your training and drilling into you bad practice that is really hard to remove later on.

From day one all attacks should be fully committed, honest and true. This means picking the point of attack, aiming correctly at it and following through correctly. This then gives tori every opportunity to actually practice good aikido and uke the opportunity to experience good aikido and learn more about their ukemi.

One important point: A committed attack does not necessarily mean a full force attack.

Look at the level of the person you are working with. If they are a young, strong, 5th dan who trains daily, then you should be looking to knock their head off - if that is what you have agreed! Otherwise you should be looking to temper the power of you attack accordingly.

This means going SLOWLY! Slow attacks can still be committed and provide so much more opportunity for learning that crappy uncommitted fast attacks. When things happen quickly your brain just does not have the time to process what is going on and instinctive reactions kick in. There is no learning going on. Your body is just doing what it would normally do. Research has shown that your conscious thought and control processes are about 1 to 2 seconds behind what is going on.

If your attack takes less than a second then there is little chance you are learning anything.

Think about that next time you are training. Attack slowly but with commitment. Be a good uke and allow things to progress as though you had attack fast; if you would have been off balanced if you attacked quickly then allow yourself to be so when attacking slowly, rather than cheating and using the lack of speed to allow you recover your balance. Build up the speed as tori become more comfortable with the movement; this indicates that they are transferring the technique into their unconscious control mechanisms and out of their conscious brain.

If you need any evidence of this in action, just watch any free play in class. There are some techniques that people have internalized and they appear to do these quite well at any pace - in fact they often revert to doing it over and over again. There are other times when tori just seems to freeze up and go blank - this happens at all levels. That is the time where the technique is not learnt well enough and the conscious brain is having to try to catch up with what is happening. When you see this happening, go slower ...

... and train more!

Rupert leaves

Sadly Rupert informed me this week that he had to return to South Africa to sort out passport issues. It may be that his departure will be eclipsed by that of Yves but I feel it is important to note that Rupert has trained well over the last couple of years. He has always been a willing uke and open to learning. I am sure he will be missed. I only hope that he is able to find a club that he is comfortable with back home and if he returns to the UK he remembers to come back and train with us.

When you just don't feel like coming...

Some days you are tired, unfocused, busy and you just don't feel like going to aikido. Sometimes this hides an underlying difficulty you are having with you own aikido development. Sometimes it doesn't.

Acknowledge to yourself that you have these feelings. They are natural. Don't berate yourself.

Accept them and let them go. Then go to class any way.

More often than not you end up feeling a hell of a lot better for having made the effort and sometimes you find that these sessions are those when you have an epiphany or moment of clarity that you have been struggling with recently.

Of course if you end up not coming, don't get upset either. Put that in the past and resolve to go next time you feel this way.

Nit-picking

The tube strike appears to have had an impact on numbers this week. Tuesday night stalwart Simon turned up as usual. His continued attendance and commitment is displayed in his growing aikido ability.

We mainly focused on the second section of the randori no kata for Simon's sake but it actually was a useful session for all of us. Points that I picked on during the session included:

1) Ensure that the pins that complete the technique control the shoulder of uke. If this does not happen it is fairly easy for uke to get up even if you are applying quite a lot of pain.
2) Techniques 7 (ude gaeshi) and 9 (ude garame) are setup in this kata by uke trying to prevent the previous technique, 6 (oshi taoshi) and 8 (hiki taoshi) respectively. In order to train for these techniques correctly it is important that uke actually reacts correctly. In the case of ude gaeshi, uke must try to come back into good posture. It is no good doing this half heartedly, knowing that tori will apply ude gaeshi anyway. Tori must really try to do oshi taoshi and uke must really try to stop tori. To emphasize this we first got uke to reverse tori's oshi taoshi with an oshi taoshi of their own. This has the helpful feature of getting uke to block the initial technique in exactly the way that leads to ude gaeshi. Once this was being done effectively, tori was then able to transition into ude gaeshi. This gave much better feel for both parties and resulted in better technique all round. The same ideas are true for 8 and 9.
3) All the controls at the end of techniques, whether pins on the floor or standing locks should not require any muscle strength to maintain. Otherwise how are you going to keep someone controlled for a long period of time, may be until the police or help arrives? If you are getting pumped and tense when controlling people then you are doing it wrong. Try to find comfortable positions to stand in where the control is primarily provided by the skeleton and body weight.
4) Finally as always, it is vitally important that uke's balance is broken. A compliant uke will go down with any old dross but a resisting one will just stand there and look at you unless you break their balance. Breaking balance is so fundamental it should be considered for every technique in every class. You can only control someone larger and stronger than you if their balance is broken. This was demonstrated rather badly by all of us in our little session of aiki sumo at the end of the class.

Ura Waza

We had a fairly uneventful session on Tuesday. We covered a handful of the techniques from the counters kata (randori-no-kata-no-ura-waza). In this kata one person attacks (shomen), the second attempts one of the randori-no-kata 17 techniques and the original attacker counters the technique with a further technique. Due to the similarities of the entrance to a number of techniques in the randori-no-kata there are only 10 counter techniques in the ura-waza. We managed to get through about 5 of them; not bad going since the majority (all except Jun and Leonard) were yellow belt or below.

I got a few shots on the camera and will intersperse the text here with a few of the more interesting ones.

The counter techniques in this kata are all about timing, blending and taking control of the situation. If any of these three principles are missing then the counter will not work.


If you mistime when to counter a technique you either are too late and get thrown or you are too early (not sure if this is possible in reality...) and the attacker realises what you are doing and stops you.

If you do not blend with the attacker then you will end up fighting against their technique and the person with the most power will win. This point is tightly linked with timing. You can only blend if the timing is right and if you do not blend then that often means that you mistimed or you simple don't understand the direction and goals of the counter.


Finally you must then take over the technique. It is all well and good blending into a technique with perfect timing but then not controlling the centre, having bad posture and ultimately giving the technique back. Part of the beauty of good counters is that the other person really thinks that they are going to throw you and suddenly the tables are turned and they find themselves on the floor. Wonderful stuff when you pull it off.

Of course everything that I have just said is also true for all aikido techniques, whether techniques from simple attacks or from counters. The nice thing about counter techniques is that they force you to consider these things more closely. It also provides the basis for more free flowing aikido. For instance, once you can string a few counters together it is possible to practice a form of freeplay sparring where neither partner is the attacker or thrower but both more through a series of attempted techniques, trying to control their partners balance and movement. This takes a long time to achieve and often ends up in battles of strength for those who don't have the skill not to resist and don't understand the point of the training.

Finally a note about the word(s) ura-waza. I am not quite sure why this kata uses these words to distinguish it from the randori-no-kata. In most aikido schools ura-waza refers to techniques that are effected from behind uke, usually through a turning motion. This is compared to omote, where the technique is done across and infront of uke. An online dictionary that I used gives the this definition for ura : "reverse side, wrong side, back, undersurface". This makes sense in the traditional sense of aikido technique. (Omote is defined as "surface, front, right side, face, exterior").


Interestingly the single word urawaza was defined as "underhanded trick". Now this kind of makes sense. I can imagine a poor student is being attacked by their sensei and thinks they are about to pop a nice technique on when wallop the cheating sensei sends them flying with an underhanded trick, er, I mean, counter technique.

My own take on all of this is that ura refers to a change of direction (going the reverse (wrong) side rather than the front (right) side. In this sense a counter technique is a change of direction (both physical and metaphorical) so that (s)he who was controlling and throwing now becomes the controlled and thrown.

There is also the issue of the shichi-hon-no-ura-waza. In this case the 7 kuzushi (balance breaking) techniques of the shichi-hon are turned into slightly more effective throws, primarily through a change of direction. Considering the more traditional usage of ura and omote, there is a lot of confusion here. Arguably the first two of the ura waza are actually omote while the next four are mostly ura. I am not entirely sure where I stand on the last one probably more tenkai than ura or omote but what do I know?

What fun can be had when you get into the semantics of foreign words in technical context?

Looking forward to seeing everyone back in classes in September, fresh from their holidays and ready for some hard training in the run up to John Waite's visit and on toward Christmas.

Freeplay

It is a long running debate in martial arts circles as to the efficacy or realism of training. It is easy to argue that in kata the point of the training is to learn the movements of the technique and so the level of "realism" can be minimal. Similar to slip catching practice in cricket, the batsman purposefully edges the ball to allow the fielders to practice catching - one could say that you would never get such easy catches in reality, the batsman wouldn't be edging it so nicely and might be trying to smash the ball, and so on. But the point is that you need to set up a situation that allows development of the technique.

Freeplay on the other hand always gets a bad rap. People look at it and claim that the attacker is not really trying; that in reality they would never leave their arm out that long; they would follow up with another attack; and so on. This is all valid but also misses the point. Freeplay is not a fight nor a competition to see who can knock the other person down. Freeplay is yet another opportunity for developing your technique. As such the attacker should be attacking in a way that pushes the defender to their limit but no more. If this means single slow telegraphed attacks, then so be it. The interesting thing to focus on in freeplay is starting to work under a bit of pressure and allowing techniques to come more freely than in kata. If the attacks are too strong or fast then more often than not the defender loses it, freezes or reverts to some subconscious response - perhaps a previous style of martial art or something more primeval learnt in the playground! In both these cases the benefit of training is lost - at least in terms of developing your aikido.

When doing freeplay: Don't worry about the realism until you can easily handle what is coming at you; Don't be afraid to ask the attacker to slow down; and most of all concentrate on what you are trying to get out of the practice - sloppy physical techniques are not good aikido and you are teaching you body bad habits.

See you in a couple of weeks.

No training on Tuesday 7th August

The class is closed on 7th August but we will be back on 14th.

Sticks out

As very few people (three) turned up I thought we would have a play with the sticks or jo to be more precise. Fortunately Tony popped his head in so we were able to unlock the weapons box and have one each.

Here we have Manny practicing a straight jo strike, tsuki. Most of the Tomiki kata that include jo use this strike to initiate the movement. One can imagine having a pointy bit or even a blade on the end of the jo and you are trying to impale your opponent on it.

Of course there are lots of ways of doing damage with a jo as well as poking people with it including swinging it.

The real benefit of using a jo for me is that it is an extension of your own body. In this respect it emphasizes aikido movement that is more subtle in open handed techniques. Also the longer reach of the jo means that you can upset uke's balance more obviously. Here we were practising projecting uke as they try to grab the end of the jo. You can see how much more you can off balance uke without over reaching yourself.

We played around with a few techniques. One of my favourites being a mae otoshi on uke who is trying to tsuki you in the stomach. Here we are looking at the hand positioning. This is great as you can really get a lot of leverage on the arm to help lift and project uke. We also did a technique that you can use if uke tries to block the mae otoshi. I had real trouble getting this to work with John, he seemed to be unbendable at the waist, which shows good posture. This was very interesting for me and I am going to have to work on the positioning, angle of movement and my posture to see if I can sort that one out. Thanks for the lesson, John.

Finally a note of caution to myself. The day before class I had been shown some jo against jo techniques. This was great fun and I thought we could have a go at them in class. I don't think it went very well, mostly because I didn't have a good enough grasp of the movement to teach it effectively.

"Make sure you know what you are teaching." Or at least don't pretend to know and make sure people realise that this bit is experimental, I think they quite enjoy that.

On entering

Many (if not all) of the randori no kata are irimi (entering) techniques. I think I mentioned that in an earlier blog. The key to entering into someone's space is to ensure that they lose their posture and you keep yours. It is no good moving in close to your attacker if you are bent over accommodating their position and they are all over you.

A classic technique where this happens a lot is gedan ate. Since we need to get low and under the uke's arms to target the hips for a throw, it is common for people to lean forward and fit their bodies into the shape provided by uke. It is really easy then for uke to lean their body weight forward and down on you to block your technique. It is important that you enter into the position with a straight vertical back, head up. It is most likely you need to get low and below uke's arms and in line with the hips but this must be done by lowering the knees. The feeling is that as you begin to make contact, with the lower arm and elbow into uke's stomach area, you are sliding into their position and they are being off balanced. The off balance has to occur throughout from the moment (or before if possible) contact is made. In that way when you get to the point of throwing uke is already going down and the throw is academic; just a matter of turning the hips and maintaining your own posture and balance.

All other irimi techniques require this kind of attention to posture when entering. You can think about aigamae ate, wake gatame and shiho nage in the same way. If at any point during the technique you give back the posture to uke then you have lost the technique. Other techniques such as oshi taoshi and ude garame have a different moment of entering, slightly later after some earlier movement, but the principle still applies. When you are entering you must take control of uke's space and posture and keep control until they are thrown.

Made it home

Well the weekend was great fun. We had five one hour sessions on each day, Saturday and Sunday. The teaching was varied and entertaining.

Gary Masters provided some great weapons training over a couple of sessions with an unusual (for me at least) set of techniques using a tanto against a sword. His techniques were crisp and effective leaving little to the imagination. I also enjoyed some nice and simple jo movements despite finding it not so simple - I kept hitting myself rather than the attacker.

John Jenkins displayed marvellous flexibility in both his toes and jaw but also ran a great session emphasizing the importance of being able to modify your technique as the circumstances dictate. In this particular case one imagined having multiple attackers and ensuring that you are not leaving your back exposed after completing the technique.

Jack and Merrel Poole focussed more on principle than technique. Jack had only recently returned from a hip replacement so could not really put much weight on hi left left. He demonstrated how it is possible to do aikido when disabled. In this case he used minimal movement to control and manage the attack and ensured that he kept his weight off the bad leg as much as possible without losing balance.

Merrel emphasized that in things like wrist locks are only partially implemented through the use of pain on the joints but mostly they are about affecting the opponents posture. One way she did this was by getting us to do nikkyo on the forearm rather than the wrist. This meant that we couldn't rely on the pain causing uke to react - we had to break their posture and balance.

Our Tony did a great session that got everyone moving. As it turned out (probably not on purpose) it followed on nicely from what Merrel was doing. Mainly we were looking at techniques that involved moving only slightly off line and redirecting the energy to cause uke to fall as they went past.

We got a good work out from Steve Billett who did his usual tricks with the tanbo and plenty of chokes. For those who don't know, the tanbo is a seriously nasty piece of wood, not much larger than a pencil, but it can be used to create some of the most stupendous pain on various bony bits of the body. Steve is a master of choke outs and it was a pleasure to be entertained and have the opportunity to practice an aspect of fighting that is often overlooked in aikido.

Finally, there was Roy Shepherd. He is a regular at these events and is a self proclaimed clown. After the bizarre chicken and knife act Roy finished off the Sunday sessions with a great period of meditation and visualisation that was much appreciated by all those who had been working hard all weekend. As Sian mentioned to me later, it is important that martial arts include learning how to heal as well as how to destroy.

The extra curricular events were also good fun, culminating in Tony getting an unexpected birthday card from the Chinese buffet restaurant. Some enjoyable drinks and food with some friendly and interesting fellow practitioners of aikido.

Folkestone

We are off to Folkestone for a weekend of aikido tomorrow. It is my first aikido trip away for over a year and I am very excited about it.

These kind of trips are very helpful. They let you get an intense, compact exposure to training, which often results in a quantitative improvement in your technique. Also, it allows you to see other people and other styles, which allows you to see different viewpoints on what you know and this also helps to improve your understanding of aikido.

Finally, I think it is really important for the club to do these trips as it improves club cohesion and motivation for all.

Good luck to everyone who is going and I hope we have a great time.

Principles of aikido

Following on from the link to the book I like below I thought I would spend some time thinking about what aikido principles are important to me.

After sitting on the panel for the black belt grading last week one thing struck me as vitally important in aikido. In order to perform aikido techniques effectively (in a aiki way - may be I'll come to that another time) you need to be relaxed and open to what is happening. Too often people become tense when under the pressure of attack and this blocks their ability to deal with the situation. A corollary of this is that people become fixated with "doing" a technique or worse on doing a particular technique that they have decided upon beforehand.

These two things are closely related. If you try and force a technique or are not open to changing what you are doing as the situation changes you will become tense. When you are tense you are less likely to be open to change or to deal with change.

Note that relaxation does not mean that you have to go all floppy. Contrary to some opinion it is not possible to do aikido without some use of muscle strength (the key being the optimum use of strength in a way that maximizes its effectiveness). Relaxation in aikido first starts in the mind (being open and aware) and then progresses through to the body (not wasting energy flexing muscles that are not needed).

In my experience the best way to achieve this level of relaxation is to concentrate on breathing. It is not enough to do this only in class but to try and integrate an awareness of your breath into you everyday life. In particular, though, when practicing techniques in class you should first stop and think about your breathing and how it matches the situation (your level of tiredness, the ferocity of the attack, the kind of technique you are doing) and then also check at the end to see if you maintained that awareness throughout.

Try it for a few weeks and see what happens.

I like this book...

I recently came across an Internet based aikido book: "Aikido from the Inside Out".

The title says it all. Rather than going for the traditional, "here is a technique (lots of pictures), here is another technique (more pictures), blah blah," which is all very good as a general reference when you are trying to remember techniques that you are working on in class - one can describe this as "from the outside in" - this book forgoes discussion of technique and tries to get to the heart of what makes aikido tick.

For me this is exactly what I want to try and achieve in my classes. I am not so interested in people learning techniques by rote but that they understand what the techniques are trying to tell us about how we should use our bodies in conflict situations; what are the principles that lead us in all techniques.

O Sensei, himself, coined the phrase takemusu aikido for his martial art toward the end of his life. Here takemusu means "spontaneous creation" and implies that aikido is not defined by techniques (or form) but by spontaneous creation of movement that fits the current situation, harmonizes with it, takes control and leads in the direction that ends in peace.

I see the practice of technique and to a lesser extent kata as a training aid to learn more about the principles of aikido. It is not acceptable to just think about the technique and whether you are copying the teacher accurately when training. You must be thinking deeply about the movement, you posture and positioning, the energy and direction of the both attacker and defender so that you can come to appreciate the principles on which the technique is based. Only then will you be able to deal effectively with unexpected attacks. Equally when teaching, although superficially you must demonstrate the technique correctly, in the back of you mind you must be thinking about what principles you are trying to convey.

Read this book and let me know what you think. I don't necessarily agree with all of it but I commend the attempt to break from the normal format of aikido books.

Injuries

It goes without saying that we should be aiming to minimise the risk of injury while training, whether that is a broken kneck or a scratch on the foot.

Please take all precautions for training and this includes: trimming finger and toe nails, removing jewellery, not training while under the influence of anything, controlling your throws and breakfalls and maintaining an awareness at all times of where you are and who is around you. This last point is particularly important if you are using weapons.

On the toe nail front, it is also beneficial to the owner of the toes to keep them short - I remember Joga having most of a big toe nail removed one night when he caught it on someone's foot. Not a pleasant experience I am sure.

Thus endeth the first lesson

And so we have finished the first Tuesday night beginners' course. I hope that everyone who completed it enjoyed it. Those who didn't complete it have probably voted with their feet. Sorry if it wasn't for you.

Tonight we begin a new set of lessons. This is not a course where you pay up front. You now have to pay each session, or monthly if you are keen. What we will be doing is consolidating what was taught in the beginners' course and pushing out into the further realms of the aikido universe.

There are so many options available in terms of techniques to practice, principles to study and people to train with. To keep it simple and also to focus on those people who have been regularly attending the classes on Tuesdays we will be looking at the rest of the randori no kata. I recommend this to all club members as it is never a bad thing to go over these techniques regularly. Even if you are focusing on the koryu katas for higher grades you still need to have these techniques perfect.

The randori no kata was developed as a set of techniques that could be used in the tomiki style randori or competition aspect of aikido. All the techniques are executed from a straight forward shomen attack, although with a little variation pretty much any attack can be accommodated. The kata is broken into four sections. Each section contains techniques that have some similarity.

The first section is the ate (striking) techniques: shomen ate (frontal strike), aigamae ate (natural posture strike), gyakugamae (opposite posture strike), gedan ate (low strike) and ushiro ate (rear strike). Of course the strikes are actually projections or throws and could be described as nage rather than ate, like in irimi nage, which is very similar to aigamae ate. That being said these techniques require a certain martial spirit to be executed effectively, requiring timing and a good understanding of entering (irimi). This is the section that we focused on for the beginner course.

The next section is the ude (elbow) techniques: oshi taoshi (push down), ude gaeshi (elbow fold), hiki taoshi (pull down), ude garame (arm rotation) and wake gatame (arm bar). The absolute classic is oshi taoshi. This is often the first technique to be taught and O Sensei described it as such, "ikkyo" (first technique). We are going to spend a few weeks looking at these techniques in some detail.

But there are some lovely techniques later on and I will definitely be touching upon shiho nage (four direction throw) and tenkai kote hineri (turning wrist rotation) as they are great fun and have lots of "aikido" in them. I would also like to take a look at tenshi nage (heaven and earth throw) as it is also quintessentially aikido.

Look forward to seeing as many of you as possible tonight.

Made it... just!

Congratulations to Simon, Ian, Smart and Brian who all successfully graded to 6th Kyu (white belt) on Tuesday. And thanks to Andrew for coming along and helping out. It was a great to have his support and hopefully he got something out of it too (all this will be remembered during his black belt grading next week).

This was the first grading that I had run without Tony presiding over me and so I wanted to make sure that the guys were put through their paces and demonstrated a reasonable level of competence - I don't want Tony worrying about me running more gradings without him.

Of course, this grading was only for the first belt in the syllabus and so as I have stated before, the idea is to give everyone every opportunity to perform at their best and not to try and knock them about, physically, psychologically or emotionally. I hope to do that later. Despite this I didn't want to start my grading history by letting everyone pass just because they turned up, which, by the way, is a minimum requirement!

Things started off quite well. We went through the basic foot and hand movements (unsoku and tandoku undo) and breakfalls. The majority of the class were fine. This is interesting as I only introduced the movement kata at week seven. It shows that with a bit of homework there is no reason why you can't master at least the foot movements in a few weeks. There are club members who are still struggling with this after months of training - what is going on there?

Unfortunately when we got down to the five techniques of the randori no kata that are required for this grading things went a bit to pot. I even tried to make things easy by demonstrating each technique one at a time and having the class follow. Most of the class went to pieces and some didn't seem to remember the techniques at all! I decided that there was a combination of nerves and a general lack of memory having not practiced the techniques for a week (or more if they missed last week).

We took a break and had some free play and Andrew and I demonstrated some of the kata required for black belt; this was also a cheeky opportunity for Andrew to have a bit of a practice under the pressure of an audience and a chance for me to get more of a look at his technique.

After the commercial break we went back to the kata and I got each of the students to get up and demonstrate their five techniques in front of everyone else. Now they seemed to be settling down and pretty much all the guys performed adequately with only a few minor mistakes that we will iron out as time goes by. Phew, I can honestly say that I was thinking that I may have to fail some of them up to that point.

I gave Andrew another opportunity to show off by asking him to teach a technique of his choice for fifteen minutes. This gave him a chance to practice his teaching skills - something I think any aspiring blackbelt should be thinking about - and also another chance for me to see how he stood up to the pressure of the audience. He sensibly chose oshi taoshi, the basic pushdown technique, often known as ikyo. This was sensible because it has a simple breakfall that he knew all the guys would be able to do and it has plenty of variations for him to play with so he could show off some of his depth of knowledge. He did well, spoke well, kept control of the pace of the class and demonstrated well, although he could probably think more about what beginners would struggle with in the technique rather than just thinking about demonstrating the technique well. The technique was also helpful to the students going forward as it is the next technique in the randori no kata after this grading.

We finished up with a bit of fun, avoidance of multiple attackers and a bit of a painful pressure point lock on the wrist. I was happy to say that all the guys pulled it out the bag and although there was considerable variation in the ability they were all acceptable for this first grading.

I hope they now continue to train as the world of aikido is only now about to open up to them.

Practice makes perfect

After last week's blip on the attendance horizon, this week we had almost the full complement of beginners from the course as well as a few extras from other nights and a new guy looking to get back into aikido. In total there were nine people on the mat.

This lesson was week number nine out of the ten week course. That means that next week will be the last session and the course attendees will be taking part in an optional grading. I say it is optional but of course the only way of getting out of it is not to turn up. Perhaps that is a bad thing to say as it may discourage anyone reading this from coming along next week. Suffice to say the grading is the first of many in the long line of tests that anyone looking to continue with aikido is likely to undertake and at this level we really aren't looking to trip people up but rather allow them an opportunity to assess what they have learnt over the course.

What I have noticed over the last few weeks is how some people seem to have picked things up much faster than others. Taking into account prior levels of coordination or experience I can only say that the differences in ability at this stage are driven by the differences in attendance. Those who have missed up to half of the classes are still struggling with a lot of what is being shown whereas those who have managed to come more regularly seem to be more comfortable with the movements. Those who have been training more than once a week really look a lot better in their shape, posture and confidence.

This is not an attack on people not turning up. I am just making an observation. Aikido is always going to be a pastime for most people and it is important that family, friends and work are given due respect. Without a strong basis in these things it is unlikely that you will be able to sustain a happy and prosperous practice in aikido anyway. I have seen a number of people who have thrown everything into their practice for a few years but something happened and they end up stopping altogether. I have also seen a lot of people who have tried to dip in and out of practice but ultimately become frustrated at their lack of progress and also disappear.

Until you are completely hooked and willing to make serious life decisions about aikido, a healthy training schedule is two sessions per week. This allows you to have a life outside of aikido but also keeps the mind and body focused to allow a reasonable improvement. Far more important is that you set aside what time you decide upon as non-negotiable. This means that you commit to going to aikido at that time, every time. No excuses. It is easy to say, "Well, it is so-and-so's leaving drinks so may be I'll just skip training just this week." But there is always something that can get in the way and before you know it you have not been for weeks and then it is really hard to motivate yourself to restart training. Bye bye aikido.

So be conservative and realistic about your training but also try to be rigorous and disciplined and before long you will be getting better and hopefully enjoying it too.

Private Training

This week only two people turned up, both were beginners on the course. This meant that we could spend the whole session focusing on their needs and working through the techniques in some detail.

Small classes are often difficult to run as you don't seem to spend much time demonstrating and things move along too quickly. The feedback from the guys was that they got a lot out of the session. Certainly they were progressing well in their techniques and will have no problem with the grading.

Hopefully some of the others may reappear next week. Tony says that it is week 8 blues and I am inclined to believe him, especially after last week, which was apparently well attended.

Thanks to Tony for taking the class last week and also turning up last night where he helped put a lot of the redundant mats away.

Back to the syllabus

The aim of the class last night was to bring everyone up to speed with what will be expected of them for the grading in four weeks time. I wanted to work through the first five of the randori no kata and then look at the unsoku and tandoku undo. As is often the case we ended up spending a lot of time (well spent I might add) on the first two: shomen ate and aigame ate. These are very difficult techniques to do effectively and it is very easy to pay lip service to them at this stage but I felt that this would just mean that the guys would spend the next few months drilling bad technique into their muscle memory only to have to spend ages reworking it later.

I tried to focus on a few basic principles of the techniques that I felt were key to doing the technique well rather than worrying about all the bells and whistles of the kata proper. In particular, for shomen ate we concentrated on avoiding the attack and pushing through from the hips. A general exercise of pushing your partner across the mat by placing your outstretched arm on their chest and driving from the hips was meant to exemplify this. For aigame ate we looked at the position you had to get in as you actually made the throw: very closely connected to you partner at the hips with your arm out in front of your centre. I hope that this proved helpful. There were certainly a number of guys that had got what I would say a good shape for the techniques by the end of the class.

Inevitably we only managed to get through techniques 1 to 4 but as I said earlier I believe it was time well spent. Tony will take the class next week so he can fix any problems that I have introduced then!

Stuff on my mind

After reading a great book - Waking Dragons - recently I have been thinking about the motivation behind training in martial arts. What is it about MA that keeps people coming back, often to be subjected to fairly unpleasant experiences particularly in the physical arts.

The author of the book almost revels in the pain of training and pushing himself to his personal limits. In a small way I emphasize with this myself but at the same time I am also aware that aikido for me is a greater activity than seeing what I can achieve with my body. There is a personal relationship aspect to aikido in which, if you choose to, you can try to understand what makes people tick, what scares them, what excites them, how to make them happy or sad. This is an intriguing area that I feel I am only just tapping into and one in which I am trying to concentrate on.

I imagine most people come to aikido classes with the idea that they will become indestructible to assailants and would be attackers or muggers. I extremem cases some people might think that a few months or perhaps a year or two of turning up once or twice a week is going to turn them into some kind of comic book super hero, perhaps a kind of viligante going around righting the wrongs of the world.

In reality, although martial artists do have a lot of reasons to feel more confident walking the streets at night it is rare that without a lot of innate talent and even more hard work the superhero is going to appear.

Aikido is about learning about yourself as much as about learning self defence. You find out what your body can do, what situations make you feel out of control and also to what extent to you can try to manage these situations. I believe that a lot could be learnt from purely practicing ukemi (breakfalling) exclusively without even getting into the throwing. Ukemi is often a good measure of an aikido practitioner's ability. If they can't deal with the ukemi then they probably can't control their own body and mind well enough to perform techniques accurately. People who master ukemi early almost always progress faster through the belts; they are able to train harder and are less tense as they know how to protect themselves. By being thrown effectively you are able to understand the mechanics of the throw better. You can learn a lot of aikido by being an uke.

Another interesting aspect of the book is when the author describes his sensei as telling a load of beginners that he is not interested in them until they show themselves to be willing to learn. They have to prove their commitment to learning to his assistants first. Oh, to have a strength of club and conviction not to pander to people who turn up expecting to be spoon fed their martial art. I believe that anyone can benefit from taking a class in aikido, whatever their previous experience, personal and physical issues. That being said, if the learner doesn't want to learn then both the teacher and the pupil are wasting their time. May be one day our club will be so strong that it can turn away students who aren't prepared to sit on the doormat for 48 hours before they can start training. I think that was what they did in Fight Club, yes?

Return of the Prodigal...

After a number of weeks of low higher grade turn out we had a bumper session this week with almost 50/50 ratio of high grades to beginners. In addition there was the welcome return of Joga who has been out due to a dodgy back.

Isn't it interesting how most of our higher grades have one injury or another. Is this true of all clubs and martial arts? Perhaps as you get higher up the grades you also tend to get older and also your body starts to fall apart. Or maybe you just whinge more!!

Joga was actually on good form and despite continued efforts on my part not to over do it he was rolling around the room like a twenty year old. He claimed that he thought coming along to one of my beginners' classes would be a gentle reintroduction to the rigours of aikido training and I would like to think that he was right. That being said I am sure that Tony would have also eased him gently back into the routine.

There was no camera this week, which is a shame as it would have been nice to get some snaps of some of the higher grades doing their stuff.

We started to look at the first couple of techniques in the randori no kata - shomen ate and aigame ate. I hate to teach these to beginners as they require a level of understanding and ability in certain aikido principles before they can be executed effectively. Shomen ate, for me, is all about timing and entering. These two aspects of aikido being among the more difficult to acquire. Aigame ate (or irimi nage) really needs good positioning and connection to execute effectively and again, when done from a striking attack, requires good timing. I sidestepped some of these issues by introducing both techniques as exercises in good avoidance, posture and entering.

Despite abstracting the movement as much as I dared many of the graded people still automatically slipped back into what they do normally and were doing the standard grading style techniques. This was quite enlightening for me but not at all unexpected and I was pleased with the few guys who showed that they were actually watching and seeing what I was doing.

Apparently Femi turned up last week and ran what sounds like a very iwama style class. I thought I would match it at the end of the session with some classic strong grasp aikido that I have seen up in North London. It was a bit over the heads of the beginners but I wanted to give something to the graded guys who turned up.

I felt much more happy with this class than I had for a few weeks. I hope it wasn't purely down to the graded guys coming along and giving me a safety net to work above.

Gareth and Ude Gaeshi

We were blessed with the reappearance of Gareth this week. This intermittent character is often unable to train for long periods due to work commitments so it is always a pleasure when he pops in.



Gareth is a gracious and honest fella who always trains with good spirit despite somewhat dodgy knees.

As promised there was a (slight) departure from the normal run of the mill class although my "quick" recap of the four techniques seemed to take up half the session. Here are a few snaps of the guys doing some of the techniques.






To be honest most of the shots were of ude gaeshi (elbow fold technique) since that is when I had the camera out.

The difficulty most beginners have is a fear of falling. They get all stiff when a technique is being done on them and this means that the thrower is not able to learn how to break balance easily and can in drastic situations lead to injury where the uke tries not to fall and ends up hurting themselves.

Despite some of these fears the guys continue to appear to be enjoying themselves.



After the review of the past two weeks we played with a form of kote mawashi (nikyo) and kote gaeshi (wrist fold) which demonstrated that whatever side you avoid a strike there is always a technique available.

Thanks to Rupert, Gareth and Peter for supporting the class.

More beginners

A couple more beginners joined the class this week. Jun was the only graded person there, which is still a little disappointing, but he was a star and this helped the class run smoothly.

I am generally very pleased with the group we have. Most are very coordinated and learn quickly. Everyone seems comfortable with breakfalling and there has been very little unnecessary tension. From my point of view everyone seems to be enjoying the classes and some of the group have shown interest in attending extra sessions.

This week we looked at two new techniques, ushiro ate (rear throw) and ude gaeshi (arm fold). The first looks straight forward but can be rather difficult to execute, especially when uke is much taller than you. The second seems quite complicated, lots of arms, elbows and wrists involved but I feel is a more natural movement and comes easier.

Next week we will break from the syllabus and do something a bit more unusual for a change.

Beginners Begin

I was pleasantly surprised to have a good handful of beginners turn up for the start of the beginners' course. What was very disappointing was that no regular members of the club turned up at all. This makes it rather difficult to teach as you have to use the beginners as ukes. Aware that they are not necessarily comfortable or safe to breakfall correctly one tends not to demonstrate the techniques most effectively, leaving them looking a bit stale and unimpressive.

It is a bit of a catch 22. If I don't demonstrate effective technique they won't think my aikido is up to much; if I do the technique effectively and the uke falls badly and injures themselves I will be in trouble and probably scare the others away anyway.

OK. I appreciate that many aikido techniques can be done to absolute beginners without losing effectiveness but that is not how I felt last night.

Luckily Tony turned up toward the end of the class and joined in so that helped matters.

The beginners themselves were great - keen and relaxed and willing to try out something new. I hope they come again next week!

No class over Easter

There is no class on Tuesday 10th April.

Have a good Easter and see you in two weeks.

Atemi!

I spent the whole of the day wondering to myself what I we would do in the class. I had lots of small ideas but I couldn't weave them together to create a coherent class in my mind. The upshot was that I arrived at the dojo without any real clue what I would teach.

Thanks to the guys who helped put out the mats. You know who you are... Or perhaps those who turned up to late too help know who they are...

For inspiration I asked what the guys (no girls today) would like to work on. There was the mandatory request for grading practice but since I am trying to keep away from kata oriented training at the moment I didn't want to get into that. Other than that the guys said they just wanted something new or different from what they are used to.

The general theme of the classes recently was movement but I was thinking to myself that the path to good movement starts in relaxation of the body and mind. And it is my belief that relaxation finds its home in calm, even breathing. So I started off a class aimed at focusing everyone on their breath and had them all running around breathing in different rhythms in time with their running. From this we moved on to using breath to initiate movement. In particular in the form of pushing our partner.

An interesting exercise involved both partners, standing face to face and not moving the feet, trying to push the other over using a single hand. It was obvious that those with more tension in their bodies were easily off-balanced. The analogy was with a plank of wood and a jelly. If you push a vertical, stiff, plank it has no where but to topple over. The jelly can accommodate the push internally and it is harder to push over. The key was to take the partner's push and direct the energy into the ground through relaxed but solid posture, while at the same time trying to find that point in the other person through which you could upset their posture.

As I suppose was inevitable the pushing lead to simple striking and we looked at both how striking and also taking strikes is affected by your breathing. There are some nice pictures of the guys below avoiding or simply deflecting the energy of the strike using small body relaxed movement and breathing.







After using movement in breathing to avoid or deflect strikes we then moved up a gear and looked at actually taking the strike. Again this was driven through breathing. It was important to breath as this allows you to keep the defense up while still being free to move. Also holding your breath is really quite tiring! Really, this is not something you would ever aim to do - it is far better not to get hit in the first place - but it is an interesting exercise as it allows you to experience what it is actually like to get hit and also builds confidence in the face of an attacker. The unknown is always more scary than the reality - is this true? The guys did well and I think that they benefited from the opportunity to work outside the comfort zone.

So what about some aikido then?

Well, although atemi (striking) is not allowed in Tomiki aikido competition, and so doesn't feature much in most of the training system, it is actually the case that atemi is vitally important for many techniques to work. The myth that movement alone can always off-balance an attacker is probably based in years of work against ukes who are over extending their attacks. Of course don't get me wrong there are many techniques that can be done without atemi but I believe that some just don't work and most are vastly improved with some suitably timed strikes.

We briefly looked at a few standard aikido techniques where atemi is useful. Tenkai kote hineri is a classic. There are plenty of opportunities to strike the uke, both to help with off-balancing them and also to prevent uke being able to strike or counter your movement. We also looked at slightly unusual versions of oshi taoshi, wake gatame and ude gaeshi.

Here is a picture of Andy about to apply a nice atemi with the elbow to Jun before effecting a form of ude gaeshi.



Of course not only is the defender able to use strikes but they should be aware that the attacker may well use them too. This can be very educational. A good way to discover weakness in your technique is to have your attacker pop you one when you have not broken their balance correctly or have not positioned yourself well.

To round up we had a few minutes of free play where atemi was encouraged on both sides. The guys looked good although there was a tendency to stop the movement in order to place the atemi rather than allowing the strike to come freely from the movement of the technique in the first place.





Unfortunately by this time we had all forgotten that we were supposed to be focusing on our breath (including me) but I think it was fun to experiment with some striking and to see how this fits into aikido, which many people believe is not a striking art.

Thanks to all those who turned up and see you in two weeks.

Next Tuesday

I incorrectly informed everyone that there would be no class next week. Sorry I got my dates mixed. There is a class on the 3rd April and no class on the 10th April.
Hope to see everyone there next week.

More movement

Class number two came and went. Still good numbers, I assume that I am doing something right. Although, there were definitely some faces missing who were there last week.

We continued the theme of encouraging movement under pressure. This time it was through use of the jo (big stick). I thought this would be less intimitading than the bokken as the standard attack is more of a poke than a swing. As it turned out the ease with which you could adjust your attack to ensure that it impaled the defender was just too much for most of the class. This meant that what would have been a set of good movement drills from nice straight, smooth, clear attacks turned into a bit of a shambles of movement with people being caught left right and centre. Of course this emphasized again the importance of good movement but perhaps didn't actually give most people much opportunity to learn from the experience.

We then looked at some strong grip aikido, where the defender allows the attacker to grab strongly and clamp down, for want of a better description. This means that the attacker has no momentum for the defender to use as we often aim to do in aikido. In reality people don't actually come up to you, grab you and then stand there strongly. They usually have some kind of goal, like taking your head off or removing personal items from you. But this situation does give food for thought when considering the angles and use of the body that benefits the more fluid movements to which we are more used.

Modestas proved to be a valuable tool in this practice as his immense grip prevented all but the most accurate movement from even beginning. I always find with this kind of work that at first you feel completely trapped and unable to move, especially if the attacker is doing their job properly. It is at this point where getting all excited, fighting their strength or trying to trick them with fast movements is pointless. Most effective from a learning point of view is to slow down, relax and think. What we noticed was that in most cases the first thing to do is move your feet. This gives a change of angle that allows more freedom of motion and often leads nicely into the technique. It is important that the attacker does hold strongly because it is very tempting to force a technique if you are slightly stronger than the attacker or if they are just being too nice.

The idea of moving the feet fitted in nicely with the general theme of the classes, which is movement: movement away from being struck or grabbed; movement into tactical positions to allow more effective technique; and movement to keep the mind and body relaxed, aware of potential threats and open to all possibilities.

Since we had a first timer and some students who had not been training for some time, I broke the last section of the class in two. The more experienced students had some fun randori and the others worked on their breakfalls. This worked out nicely as there was a fairly obvious split in experience.

Interestingly we have finished both classes with a period of prone relaxation. During this period I have encouraged everyone to think about what we have done during the session. This is the one area where I have received lots of positive feedback so expect to see that happening alot in my classes.

Survived First Class

So the first class came and went. Eight brave souls turned up and we had a great time.

We got the bokken out and used them to practice movement - the extended reach and harder edge of the wood encourages more avoidance and awareness. It was noticeable how quickly people lost their posture and self control. Even with only a single attacker striking slowly and straight, shomen, it was not long before people were leaning around and forgetting to move their feet.

When we introduced a second attacker it became overwhelming. Some people found themselves stuck in a spot. Some moved but only enough to avoid the swipe of the first strike, the lack of movement left them open to the second attacker. Others moved well but found that moving between the attackers was a risky option as it gave the next attacker an easy route through therefore putting defender under more pressure. That being said, going round the outside all the time, tended to cause a bit of circle running where the attackers seemed to be happily stationary in the middle while the defender exhausted themselves running round and round. A compromise between going round the outside and cutting through the middle, with an awareness of the risk, seemed to be a reasonable strategy. Of course, if the defender was allowed to do more than just avoid then they have more options and this simple strategy needs to be modified but at least it provided a starting point for discussion.

I wanted the bokken avoidance to provide the majority of the aerobic activity of the class but as it was really quite hard to avoid without getting overwhelmed we weren't able to increase the pace to a level that would really get people's blood moving. In the end it was more of a mental and emotional workout.

We played also with some techniques that showed the connection between the techniques of empty handed and sword based aikido. I find that the sword helps with posture, particularly keeping centre: it is difficult to let your arms drift out if they are attached to a sword. We also looked at how the movements in tandoku undo related to sword movement. For me, the most important is the last of the tandoku undo where there is a one hundred and eighty degree turn, which I related to a kaeshi men deflection followed by a turn and cut.

I forgot to take my camera along so no pictures but will certainly put some up after next week's lesson. Thanks to all those who turned up. I am interested in any feedback from those who were there.