Thursday Thoughts, 7/22/10

"Flexibility without strength is instability"

I heard some yoga teacher on television say this and it stuck. I'm naturally very flexible, but pretty out of shape. I need to correct that. I've been interested in doing some yoga anyway.

Mysteries

Life is full of things that are simple, yet profound. I found one such dichotomy in the BLT I made for supper tonight. It increased my faith, it was that good. Nothing special; toasted bread, mayo, and the aforementioned B, L, and T. Oh, I did cook the tomatoes a little in the bacon grease, but only a little.

Nom nom nom.

Aikido Playday, 7-17-10

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.

Thursday Thoughts, 7/15/10

"Your name, for better or worse, is associated with your dojo and not just for the technical teaching that goes on there. You do not get to choose who will make that association and how it will be done."

~Dave Lowry

The Karate Way; Discovering the Spirit of Practice

Aikido, 7/10/10

So I finally made the return trip to Pat's. The dojo was being painted, so we trained out in the driveway. We started out with tegatana no kata, and it's a whole different thing when you're doing it on sloped concrete, with shoes on. We did one rep, then turned 90 degrees and did it again. Changing the slope affected the kata as well. I told Pat a few months ago that I hated tegatana; now I feel like that was more of a temporary spat.  I'm not gonna say I'm in love with it, but I don't feel like I hate it any more.

We moved on to Releases, 1-8. I am very rusty, as I suspected. We focused on #2. We looked at how when you emphasize the "up" motion in that release (and #4 for that matter), it makes it much harder for uke to turn back around toward you.

Pat transitioned from Release 2 into Ju Nana #15, Maeotoshi. If you look at the brief "up moment" in maeotoshi as being at the top of a hill with uke, I kept trying to push him down off the hill. If I do that, uke has a chance to react or respond to what I'm doing, and compensate for it. However, if I just hang out with uke until he makes the move to get down, I can respond to that and take advantage of it to "send him on his way." This idea of letting him do what he wants to do rather than trying to force him into what I want him to do seems like the very essence of aiki to me. Incidentally, I found that tactile sensitivity was required to do this best. When I tried to guess when he was going to "come down" it didn't work so well - but when I felt when he was coming down through my connection to him, I got better results.

"Your eyes can deceive you... don't trust them"

~ Obi-Wan Kenobi

Next Pat previewed Ju Nana 16 and 17 for me, then backed up and we took a quick look at 11 through 14.

We ended our lesson with a discussion of karate, and had a brief look at Sanchin kata.

Back Again

Where do I start? My training has been very topsy-turvy the past few months. I'll try to summarize what's been happening.

Since I've been training at Pat's, I've been getting up at 5:30am most Saturdays, and driving almost an hour and a half to his dojo (one-way). That drive began to get really old. So four or five months ago, I made the difficult decision to stop training there, at least temporarily, but possibly for good. I was still training BJJ at the local Gracie Barra school at the time, and thought I would a) get out of BJJ what I loved about judo, and b) be able to just discontinue my aikido training.

I was wrong on both counts. Training at the GB school wasn't like training at Pat's. I've since stopped training there for two main reasons: First, on the nights I trained, I didn't see my lettle girl at all. I left for work before she was awake, and got home after she was asleep. That's okay for some people, but I didn't like it. I spend enough time away from my family during the day, for my taste. Secondly, I was tired of rolling with people who didn't wash their gis. It seemed like a third of the people I rolled with there smelled like sour milk.....or worse. I didn't want to learn the art that badly.

As far as thinking I'd be able to cope with not training aikido any more, that was just silly thinking. Aikido is what I consider my "main" discipline (even though I'm still pretty new), and by far my favorite.

I addition, I felt Pat's philosophy of martial arts in general lined up with my own, and that's not something that's easy to find, especially not around here.

So after much consideration, I decided it was indeed worth it to continue making the drive to Pat's every week. Maybe all I needed was a break to get a second wind. But once the decision was made to resume, for several weeks, things kept coming up that prevented me from returning. Talk about discouraging.

But the encouraging thing is I'm back. I made it back to the dojo yesterday for the first time in four or five months, and it was great. I'll return to posting regular training logs and other stuff on this new blog.

There are lots of exciting things coming up in terms of my training, our dojo, and our organization, that I'll touch on when the times are right. For now, stay tuned.

It's really good to be back.

~todd

BJJ, 2/23/10

I’ve never choked someone completely unconscious…until last night...

Last night I decided to go to our school’s “BJJ Fundamentals” class instead of the regular class. I really enjoyed it. The format was laid-back, and the Professor went over some very basic concepts. We worked on the basic collar choke, and looked at key details for making it work. These included the deepness of the grip, turning your thumbs toward the guy’s head, turning your knuckles toward you, how to grab his shoulder over the top if he’s blocking your second hand (hard to explain by typing), and “answering the phone” or ducking under to defend against the choke. We also worked on 2 butterfly guard passes, one as a response to bottom guy trying to choke you. I need to remember that if I’m in someone’s butterfly guard, I want to get them on their back, and not let them sit up (but careful not to push in a way that exposes my arms to attacks).


The fundamentals class doesn’t include rolling, just instruction, and drilling the basics. While we were drilling the standard choke, we did so from standing, just to work on the details. On one rep, I apparently accidentally got the choke correct right off the bat, because my partner evidently didn’t have time to tap. I was about to ask him “Do I not have the choke? Am I missing something?” when he crumbled to the floor, unconscious. He was an older guy, so I was worried about what might have happened – not a good feeling! Thankfully he was fine, if a bit confused. He got up looking like he didn’t know where he was. I kept apologizing to him, because this was his first class, and assured him I had no idea I had put it on him like that. He was gracious, and a good sport. I can laugh about it now, but I felt horrible about it last night.

I'm becoming more dangerous by the day, haha.

Judo, 2/6/10

Still behind on some posts, but catching up…


In our Judo lesson, we worked on our 3 entries to hip throws (mostly uchikomi). That’s what we ended up working on for most of the lesson. We did play with Osotogari a little, with the same three entries, then we looked at a combo for a little while: failed hip throw, to ouchi, to kouchi.


Lastly, we worked on something from goshin jutsu that’s sort of like a shomenate/osotogari hybrid that felt completely, incredibly bad@$$. Taking a fall from a normal osoto is bad enough, but at least you have tori’s gi to hold on to. Not so with this technique. It’s would be a bad fall to take full force, at least at my skill level of ukemi.

Aikido, 2/6/10

Okay, I'm really behind on posting lately, but I'll catch up this week. I have an additional aikido, and 2 judo posts to write. So here are my notes on our aikido lesson from February 6::::

We started with Tegatana. Pat said he was thinking about the need to get the following foot back under your center quickly. He gave some examples of how this shows up in karate as well. It’s funny how throughout the rest of the morning, this idea came up again and again, both in our Aikido lesson and Judo.


We went through releases 1-8, camping out on #4, which I seemed to be okay at that day. I was only thinking about timing it with uke’s footfall, and it seemed to make a big difference. We camped on 4 and 8 for quite a while. Numbers 6 and 8 usually give me trouble, so we looked at what was causing my feeling of “discontinuity” during those techniques. I think my steps have been going something like “Left, right, right” on those, instead of “left, right, left, right”. Once we dealt with that I started getting better results. It sort of went back to Pat’s “Happy Feet” idea.

Then we played with variations of #4, leading into Chain #4. We finished up class with some light randori.


You know how when you eat an incredibly rich dish, it’s really good, but so good you can barely eat it? That’s sort of how both our Aikido and Judo lessons were that morning – so chock full of savory richness I don’t think I retained most of it. Hopefully it will stick in my subconscious though. ;o)

BJJ, 1/26/10

Last night I debated on whether or not to go to class. Right before class I got a splitting headache, but since I missed last week, I forced myself to go. In retrospect, it may have been better to skip – I don’t think I’m 100% bounced back from some sinus/cold crud I’ve been fighting nearly all of January. Consequently the intense physicality of the BJJ class seemed to wear me out more quickly and more thoroughly last night than usual. But, I persevered almost until the end. I sat out the last 2 rounds of rolling because my headache was getting worse, and I just didn’t have any more energy.


One of the blue belts was working with a couple other noobs before class on sweeps, and I joined them. He had us drilling the Elevator sweep, and the Scissor sweep. They do the Scissor sweep a little differently here than what I’m used to. We started class with a more-vigorous-than-usual warmup, and our normal armbar drills from guard and mount. Then we worked on a Single-leg / Fireman’s carry takedown. I was doing it wrong, in that the guy kept ending up behind me. When the instructor did it, he was ending up almost in kesagatame with the guy. I may have started to improve a little with later reps. It’s going to take more drilling to develop the feel for that thing. Next we worked on how to transition from that setup into a double-leg takedown, in the event your opponent resists the single-leg.


We moved on to groundwork next. We worked on a basic Butterfly sweep, then a drill for passing the Butterfly guard. Butterfly guard is brand new territory for me, so it was pretty awkward.


I rolled with a couple of blue belts at the end of class, and feel like I fared better than I have been, although obviously, they’re not going 100% on me. They’re still trying to teach me, which I appreciate. In particular, I feel I did a better job of not being flat on my back, (although sometimes there was nothing I could do about it). Also, Pat showed me something last week that helped me a bit when trying to shrimp to guard; I mentioned in another blog post about moving the top half of my body to get better angles and get my knee in. I saw some success with that last night that I’m sure will improve with practice. There were also some things I feel I did worse this time: namely remembering to relax and breathe, and to not trying to muscle my opponent so much (which gets me exhausted more quickly).