Northern Wind

I really want to look more at and practice a throw (and all its variations) called kuchiki daoshi . It's not one we've ever looked at much in our school, although I think in randori it can pop out spontaneously even without training! It starts around the 5:20 mark.

Again, sorry it's been a while since I've posted. Lots of things on my mind, naturally. Here's a few: To my recollection, it seems like I've always been told in aikido (I wonder if any of my teachers would say, What? I never told you that! ) to maintain ma'ai , to maintain a certain distance at all times. I've tried to follow that over the years, and really, it's worked pretty well. But lately, I've been thinking more and more about changing the distance. Specifically, about creating space, or creating a kind of vacuum that sort of sucks uke in, and about entering, or closing in. This goes hand in hand with my earlier thoughts on likening our movements to a wave: not just the crashing down part, but the drawing in, undercurrent part as well. That concept has, of course, overflowed into my judo work as well. I also noticed an interesting secondary throw to hiza guruma this morning. (Here's a lovely competition example of hiza for your own enjoy...

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I was out of town for several weeks taking some time off, and have been super busy since then. Not that I haven't been thinking about budo, 'cause I have— I just need to find more hours in the day to write them all down! There's been a number of things I've been thinking about and that we've been focusing on more and more in morning class. First off... Where is your "other" hand? While many, if not all, of the techniques in aikido involve both hands, there's usually one dominant hand, one hand that's doing the main thing, executing the throw or performing the lock. Spend some time thinking about the other hand and what it's doing, what it's job is. Sometimes it's helping or supplementing the first hand. Sometimes it's just in uke's face to keep him off you. Sometimes it simply lies in wait. But always ready, alert, involved; never limp, casual, neglected. Think about it with thes...

One of the greatest potential weaknesses of any martial art is the fact that it's hard to fight what you've never seen before. The Gracie family proved that quite effectively when they took every kind of fighter who signed up for the UFC and took them to the ground. Virtually no other style ever spent time on the ground, so the jiu-jitsu folks had a field day once they got down there. Aikido is like that. No ground game whatsoever. Our particular school or ryu or whatever has a supplementary system of very basic, self-defense ideas for aikidoka because our organization historically has also been involved with judo as well. It works pretty well against people without much training should things degrade to a ground fight. Against a trained grappler, however, you're more or less toast. But even in judo, which of course has a grappling component, has left out certain aspect of the ground game, namely in the interest of sport. There's no wrist locks, for instance, no ank...

Well, it's that time of year, isn't it? Time to look back at and reflect on the previous 12 months, and then to look forward to the next 12. I've been doing as much in my overall personal life, but I thought I might share a few thoughts as they pertain to my budo Path. Looking back at 2010 ♦ I missed quite of training this year, but fortunately not due to injury or illness. My wife, on the other hand, had the misfortune of undergoing 3, count 'em 3, operations: a C-section, a hernia and a tonsillectomy (which is a much more difficult recovery than one would think). Which meant I spent a lot of time off from working staying home and taking care of the kids and missing some budo. It's a tough thing to go without training, but I tried to at least keep my mind in the game as I thought and pondered and watched videos. And since I used all my time off, I never got a chance to participate in either the shochugeiko or kangeiko intensives. ♦ I feel like I might se...

A lovely demonstration of sensitivity, touch, and a bit of the ol' "on/off" principle.

I've discovered that, after all these years, I was never really getting the balance break for shiho nage quite right. The same goes for mae otoshi , or any other technique that begins the same way. I think it comes from starting our training looking at a technique from the stand-point of choreography: step here with this foot, put your right hand here, step there, turn, etc. etc. I think that's the way we need to start, working on ourselves first. But after a while, we find that, though we have the movements down (kind of), the technique still isn't quite working right, or maybe only works some of the time. That's the point I think we all make a transition from thinking about what I'm doing, to thinking about what's happening to uke. We move from an inward focus to an outward one. We think less about how to do something, and more about why we do it. Shiho nage, for me, is one of those techniques about which I'm starting to make a number of realiz...