Xmas is coming, and the end of the year.  At Enmei, we have lost a few students and gained a few.  We need more people, if we are to survive.  We have tee shirts, both short and long sleeved.  Come to the dojo and buy some.  Buy one for yourself, and buy some more for Xmas presents.  We also have certificates for a month free aikido, value $80!  Give these as presents too.

We are having a meeting of all members at the end of class, this Saturday (17th).  Please come if you can.  We will talk about how we are doing, and where we go from here.

After looking for over a year for a yoga teacher, we have gone ahead and started a yoga class at Enmei Dojo.  The first class was to have been on October 5th, but was pre-empted by preparations for hurricane Mathew.  The first actual class was last Wednesday, 12th.

Classes are free for the month of October.  We will probably work out some introductory offer for new people after then, but at this point we have not decided on a schedule of payment.

We had a good attendance at the initial class, with 6 of us.  It seemed the response was very positive, so we will continue it for the foreseeable future.  If nothing else, it makes me actually get out there and practice, which I tend to do very sporadically at home.

So tell your friends, come along, and try it out.

Wow.  It’s been a while since I posted.  However, this is a forum for everybody, not just me!  Send your postings to Jeremy, Doug, or me, and we will post them.

Remember the seminar is this weekend.Enmei Spring Seminar 2016  I didn’t see the flyer here, so I added it to this post.  Hopefully, I did it right and it will work.

Let’s have a good turnout for Doug.  He will need lots of ukes, but even if you can’t be uke, come along anyway.  Encourage any potential students to come watch the demo (maybe around 4) and party.

We have been having good turnouts on Saturdays and Tuesdays, and I like that, but remember the other classes, morning classes if you can make that time, and Thursdays.  Thursdays in particular, we’ve had a couple of times nobody showed up.

Wow.  It has been a bit since I posted.  But some of you should be posting too!

Tonight I was thinking about rhythm and timing.  Rhythm is generally a good thing, but it is predictable.  If you can pick up an attacker’s rhythm, you can exploit it by being just a bit ahead, or sometimes a bit behind.  And of course, he can do the same to you.  A broken rhythm is unpredictable, and can’t be exploited by either of you, which is good and bad.

Very rarely in combat does a rhythm last long, so you need to be quick in picking up and exploiting one you do see.  Maybe a bit like those games where you hear a few notes and have to guess the tune.

Often, each partner provides alternate notes.  In kumi tachi #1, for example, you start synchronized, with your swords touching.  Aite 1 starts by stepping back and putting their sword in hasso gedan.  This is a suki, an opening.  It is also a taunt – ‘I dare you to come and hit me’.  Aite 2 accepts, and steps in with the obvious attack.  Aite 1 can respond in various ways, but the kata calls for him to step aside and deflect the strike, stealing its power for a counter strike.

Now if Aite 1 stays with the rhythm, Aite 2 can easily block and the exchange can go on for ever.  Instead, Aite 1 waits until Aite 2 is fully committed, and so breaks the rhythm.  Picking up a bit extra energy from Aite 2’s sword helps.  Just as Aite 2 thinks he has got Aite 1, Aite 1 moves and counter attacks and then keeps the pressure on Aite 2 until the end of the kata.

Keeping the pressure on is like playing notes as fast as you can.  If Aite 1 could attack a little faster, he could win sooner.  If Aite 2 could defend a little faster he could turn the tables on Aite 1.  The kata calls for Aite 1 to make two strikes and “win” on the second.  I put quotes around “win” because a kata is a cooperative activity and both win when it looks effective and inevitable, but where this would end in a real life duel in medieval Japan is with Aite 2 dead.

However, this is a bit of a different way of looking at pairs practice – kumi tachi or kumi jo.  So try it out for size, and see if it helps you move a bit further.

We had a fantastic class yesterday, with 14 of us there.

Jerald is back from a tweaked shoulder – so I have been stressing that people should keep their arms in omote position – in front of the line through the shoulders.  This is where we are strongest and least likely to get injured.  And don’t strain, especially on the mat.  If you are straining, you are doing something wrong, either as uke or nage.  Of course, a force that is on the limit of straining is greater for a bigger person.  So a big person can be doing good aikido and be more forceful than a smaller person.  Smaller people have to be technically better – Segal throwing Matsuoka is not impressive.  Matsuoka throwing Segal would be.

Position is very important.  Much of aikido is about positioning your body so that you are able to overpower uke without even trying.

Several of the students are working on their 4th kyu, so we did a lot of techniques from shomen uchi and yokomen uchi.  While both are strikes, they are very different, even though they blend into one another.  Shomen is more direct, both for uke and nage.  Yokomen is more flowing.

We finished with randori, as we often do.  I don’t know if it was the larger class size, but most people seemed to do better than usual.

We were all feeling a bit old and stiff today, so we worked on the jo. Very necessary too.  It has been way too long before I spent a lot of time on the jo.

In the basic suburi, it is important to have good solid technique, developing power from the whole body.  That requires good foot positioning and body posture, even little things like holding the jo firmly but not rigidly.  We worked through all twenty of the suburi.

Aiki jo is probably not too close to jodo.  One reason to practice jo suburi is to improve your body movements, so that your aikido works better.  Another, of course, is to provide a foundation for kumi jo.

In the kumi jo, good technique is necessary, but also good timing and distance.  In fact, those are probably the most important reason to do kumi jo, especially as the ma ai (fighting distance, with implications for timing) is different from empty handed ma ai.

We got through all five of our basic kumi jo, though we didn’t have long to spend on the fifth one.   Aside from just knowing the movements, it is easy to get the timing wrong.  A good way to think of a kumi jo is as a series of suki – how you expose one target after another for uke to strike at.  Otherwise, there is a tendency to run the whole thing together and forget the timing, and then the movements become trivialized and simply don’t work

Of course, you can go through a kumi jo and just agree where each party should be striking.  Trouble is, you don’t get much from it, and what you do learn won’t be useful.  Kinda like life.

On Tuesday, we worked on basics, then I tested Shaun and Stavros.  Both did fine.  Afterwards, we worked on kumi jo.

Last night, Friday, was Downtown night.  Rhiannon helped me set up.  It always seems to be windy when we set up – maybe because it is getting towards dusk.  Still, we managed.  She also walked around and handed out flyers, for a bribe of spring rolls.

Today we worked on ikkyo and shihonage for 6th kyu, 5th kyu, and 3rd kyu.  None of us are so good (me included) that we can not benefit from more basics.

We also worked on flow – doing kote gaeshi and flowing to maximize effectiveness and minimize effort.  We did it a la Barbarella, with a sword, and empty handed.  All of these ways should be the same.

Flow is particularly important for smaller people, as they can’t just muscle their uke when they don’t quite get it.  But if you move well, even a small person can be effective.

However, we then worked on kaeshi waza and henka waza from ikkyo, mostly for the advanced folks.  It is all about flow there too.  For either one, it is important to not take uke back along the same path you used to take his balance.  If you do, you will put him back on balance.  Instead, you should be like the Boers, and go back by a different route.

We did the 7 bokken suburi and shihogiri, then finished up with randori.  Very important to keep moving and keep turning, so people don’t sneak up on you from behind.

Had a good practice today.  We worked a lot on the motion for kote gaeshi, doing a lot of Barbarella exercises and bokken to work on the movement, both for throwing and ukemi.  Though when we went back to regular kote gaeshi people had to be reminded to keep moving like in the exercises.

At the Hut, there used to be solid steel bars about 1″ diameter cut to 3 and 4′ to represent a bokken or jo.  You had to move your whole body to move those bars.  Maybe we need to get some for Enmei.

We also did a lot of shiho nage and nikkyo.  For any technique, we need to keep thinking about all three parts, but especially kuzushi.  If you take uke’s kuzushi, the rest is easy.  If you don’t, you are vulnerable to a continuation of uke’s attack.  And aikido is a martial art.

There are also three phases in learning a technique.  In the first phase, learning the movements, more than token resistance is counter productive.  In the second phase, learning how to use the technique, reasonable resistance is useful.  In the third phase, practicing executing the technique, resistance is futile.

The downtown event went well, thanks to Rhiannon helping me set up.  It was quite windy, and would have been difficult on my own.  Thanks to the folks who showed up to man the booth.  There were not as many people downtown as I would have expected for Mahdi Gras, but we did chat with half a dozen prospects.

We had our usual Saturday morning class, with a new guy for the first hour.  Welcome Jeff.  He is nidan in TKD and juijutsu.  We worked on testing techniques again, for 6th, 5th, and 3rd kyu.  We finished up with randori, empty hands and then with a jo.

Then I rushed home to drop off Rhiannon and Teddy, and on to the cross training.  We started off with ukemi, as both myself (for aikido) and Ricky (for karate), were going to do some throws.  We segued into throwing with irimi nage, to practice both backward and forward rolls.  Then we did some kaiten nage, which besides being good practice for front rolls was related to what Ricky was going to teach.

Ricky did some throws and takedowns that were a lot like what we do in aikido.  Casey wore me out with a big iriminage-like throw.

Bill Wahne, who just got promoted to 4th dan in Goju Ryu, taught kubitan techniques.  They are definitely painful, and useful for control.

Finally, I taught some exercises on connecting and taking uke’s center.  This allows nage to either do aikido or karate techniques.  We started with uke not moving his feet, and then without designated ukes and nages, with either party able to do a technique if they can.  This is a lot like the tai chi pushing hands technique.  You maintain contact and jockey for advantage, then do a technique.  Usually what led to a successful technique was one partner not being flexible enough.

Overall, the cross training seminar went very well.  Lots of interesting stuff, and nobody got hurt.  I didn’t do a count, but there must have been over 20 people there.