A Crash Course in Falling

It was a small class tonight and for a few minutes I thought it would be just Sean and me, but two more came so it was fine. A pretty good workout and I was tired by the end which is all the more fulfilling.

We focused mainly on ukemi tonight and the first technique laid the ground work for some really cool falls from irimi nage (entering throw).

The top video looks a lot lot like what we practiced although we are all pretty green we at least got in the vicinity of what the video shows

Sometimes we even got close to the fall demonstrated in the Christian Tissier video below although we never did really roll over nage's leg



And finally, one of my favorite Aikdio Youtube clips, which also just happens to be of Christian Tissier.

The thing is, if you don't know what is going on you might think it is all just some sort of choreographed routine. Especially the first half of the attacker's respnse to the irimi where they fly around nage, go to one knee and come back up again.

BUT once you have been the Uke to somebody who REALLY knows how to do irimi nage it is so powerful that if you didn't relax and go down you would lose all control and simply crash to the floor. Sidney has blessed me a few times with the power of the irimi force, and it is something to experience. I sometimes think on some techniques like that we should have a class where we all just line up feel the power of the throw.