¡I Have Eyes But Cannot See!

Saturday we had an all Katatetori Day ..., Irimi Nage and Ikkyo are what I remember and from this I compose this thought for a day.

In Aikido sometimes the “point” of the technique is obvious even if you can't quite master it and sometimes it is NOT obvious.(pretty great huh?)
Here is an example of Katatetori Ikkyo

Usually the heart of a technique is something like “Get off the line of attack, unbalance Uke, perform the technique”. Today the Iriminage response to a wrist grab made sense and I could see that if I had the skill it would work on anyone. But then I worked on the Ikkyo response with the only regular black belt at our dojo (aside from the two Senseis) and besides his Aikido ability he knows other martial arts and is just plain strong.

Quick aside:
In Katatetori Ikkyo you don't step “off” the line you take control of the attacker's line that goes through his center and then perform Ikkyo.

The matter came to a head when I just could not get my partner into Ikkyo, I never “felt” that moment when Uke was ready to go down. I never really saw the unbalancing and so I tried to use muscle. THAT was a mistake that I still feel with every word I type.

The troublesome part is that when I was Uke I could not tell whether I was thrust to the floor because of Aikido or just the strength of my OBVIOUSLY stronger partner so I never saw the essence of the thing. He was wonderful in trying to show me what I was doing wrong, but he is one strong guy and if I was going to perform this technique there was no way my inadequate strength would compensate for a lack of Aikdio technique.

To my despair I never “Got It”. Maybe next time.

¡Tal Vez Esto Va a Ayudarme!

I found some of the Frank Miller graphic novels in Spanish so I'm trying to read them to augment my exotic Rosetta Stone program. There can't be a better way to learn a language than comics, can there?

Above and below are some scans of my self imposed assignments. Please excuse any obscenities in Español.

Break Down Break Fall or Un-Break This Part

Sidney Sensei (or is that Shiba Sensei?) was still on vacation so brown belt Mark taught tonight and it was all good stuff. But for some reason what comes to mind now is an Aikido video I found.


Just look at the evolution to a break fall that comprises the first half of the video. If I can ever do a decent and even half way elegant break fall I think my Aikido career will be complete. Even though I can more or less handle a break fall situation now, it usually scares the Nage too much since I land with the arm at about the same time as the rest of my body. I'm fine and it doesn't hurt, but....

I have seen Aikdo instruction videos that don't even worry about the softness of a break fall but once you've seen it, you realize how beautiful it is.

Anyway watch the arm of the Aikidota. I think that is the key. I tried it a little tonight before class, but one of the drawbacks of not having a real dojo means you have less free mat time than other dojos.

¿Again with the Cansado?

I just felt too wiped out ( mejor dicho, "Estoy cansado") to go to Aikido tonight. Simply not enough sleep the night before, plus a little stress of trying to squeeze too much into too little time. And with me being a lazy person by nature I sometimes just give in and go home.

A contributing factor may have been the my arm and shoulder muscles that hurt more today than they did yesterday after Saturday's Aikido gymnastics.

I tried to use the extra time to catch up some with español and to report on the first animation assignment from www.eclecticacademy.com.

I finished Unit 3 (lessons 1 – 11) of Level 1 of Rosetta Stone. So far so good I guess, although I'm still not working very hard as the beginner stuff is pretty easy. Plus I paid all that money to Rosetta Stone so it would be easy didn't I?

Here are some good Spanish words
tiene avergonzado
tiene orgulloso
está cogiendo

Plus “Son las dos pasados” which I guess means a little past two.

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The picture is from the my very first assignment with the cheap online Anime Studio beginner's class. Very simple, but I wanted to archive the result to compare to to what comes after the other 5 weeks of exercises.

I posted a question on the Anime Studio class form and got a reply today with an answer. So event though the start is pretty rudimentary I guess there is not much room to complain with a $20 Internet course. Plus so far there is a one day response form the teacher.

Here is the link to where I will post my results... www.virtual-weltanschauung.com/astudio/

Ukemi or The Art of Falling

Today was Ukemi Saturday with the peak being what I wouldn't categorize as Aikido Ukemi. Two people face each other with one (#1) holding the wrists of the other(#2). Then #2 twists around as if to give the other a back stretch. #1 kicks their legs up and and over the head of #2 and bingo they are facing each other. It turned out to be amazingly simple, but unfortunately after a few times I started to think about what was happening and apparently made things difficult for my partner.

I couldn't find a clip of the what I describe above but here is a clip of which we did some of the falls.

¿El tiene frio, hambre, calor?

I fell even more behind in My Español but my new plan is try and fire up the ol' Rosetta stone at least every other day if not every day and spend even just a few minutes chipping away at it.

Tonight I made it to Lesson 7 of Unit 3 and we started in with us being hungry, hot, full, cold and thirsty. Pretty basic stuff but along the way I encountered some new words which is nice. I'm curious to see when it starts to become really difficult, but I should think I'll have to really start the hard work around Unit 5. So I better build up some steam for that.

But for now..
¡Yo estoy cansado!

Yonkyo and the Forearm of Pain

YONKYO: Fourth teaching. Refers to pressure applied on a nerve point in the lower forearm to bring the attacker into a pinning position.

Tonight we mainly worked on Kokyu Nage (Breath Throw) of which the number of actual techniques seem endless. However, for a short time we switched to YONKYO. Yonkyo is a really fascinating technique because while learning it you might say "Yes this could be effective". But once a master of the technique has applied Yonkyo to your forearm you know that somehow a dagger has mysteriously been inserted to the center of bone and you MUST drop to the floor.

All the talk of harmony, flow, blending...it all disappears. All that matters is that you go down. When learning we mostly approximate it and sometimes I suppose the situation will mean Yonkyo is less piercing. And I'm told the more often it is done to you the less fearsome it becomes to you.

But for me the memory of Sidney Sensei softly controlling my arm followed by the stab into the center of my forearm as I dropped, is a reminder of two things.

1. Aikido started as a way to effectively control and manage an attack
2. While techniques can be learned in a reasonable amount of time. A real master is just that. A master of techniques.

The above video demonstrates Yonkyo but watching is such a pale intimation of the real deal.