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.