Today we had an all day aikido playday at the dojo. Lots of people were invited to share their magic with the rest of us. The only instructer that showed up besides Pat was a super nice guy named Tony, who's had experience in not only aikido, but wing chun, tai chi, and kali. I'll go ahead and admit right up front that we covered a wide variety of things today, so there's no way I can touch on everything; I'll just hit a couple of high points.
We started out with releases into ukemi to warm up. We pretty quickly moved into a (CMA flavored) variation of Pat's "cow catcher" as an entry to a one-handed shihonage. This was fun to play with, partly because we were working it as a defense against a traditional punch (as opposed to aikido's zombie arm attack), and with more speed. It was neat (encouraging) to see and feel the thing work against a more realistic attack.
After we came back from lunch, we explored some kali stuff for fun. I noticed an odd similarity between the "Heaven 6" kali drill we learned and our movements for shomenate. We also looked at some stick disarms.
One other thing I noticed; one of the attendees was one of Pat's other judo students, who's had no experience with aikido. So during our first exercise, ukemi out of releases, I needed to show him release 1. While I'd love to pass on the art someday as a teacher, that brief experience (before Pat thankfully stepped in and did his thing) showed me how far I have to go; I was not explaining the thing successfully. At this point, I can barely do the stuff, much less teach someone else to do it. Maybe one day.
It was a fun time, and a really great day. Thanks for putting this together, Pat.
I had lots of fun and learned alot, thank you all very much!
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