Mokuren Dojo - Aikido and Judo

Police searching for armed robber

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:15:00 +0000

Wow! I just heard about this.

Posted: Thursday, May 16, 2013 4:03 pm
(http://www.enterprise-journal.com/)

McComb police are searching for a man suspected of stabbing a woman during an attempted Thursday afternoon armed robbery. Officials said the suspect is a a black male wearing a white T-shirt and blues jeans and is possibly in north McComb.

Officials and witnesses said a man attempted to rob a woman at the Medical Arts Building on Rawls Drive around 3:15 and stabbed her in the left shoulder. The assailant took nothing, and police brought the woman to Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center for treatment. Police were searching for the robber in the vicinity of Delaware Avenue, West Street, Kendall Street, Rawls Drive and around Edgewood Park.

I was walking by that building about that time with my four children, and saw nothing! Gotta stay prepared and stay alert!

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The fundamental kata of the Kodokan

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:25:00 +0000

If you were to take a guess as to which of the Kodokan Kata was the fundamental kata that Kano based the other katas off of - which would it be? Which kata did Kano have in mind when he developed the DNA of the Kodokan?
.
Maybe Nagenokata?
.
Maybe Koshikinokata?

Nope.

In Kano's Memoirs...

... I finalized the eight seated and twelve standing techniques for Kime no Kata. This was, incidentally, the fundamental kata from which the other Kodokan katas were created. (Judo Memoirs of Jigoro Kano, Chapter 57)

What WHAT? Kime No Kata!?

WHO would have thunk that?

photo courtesy of C. Gilmore

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Kodokan Goshin Jutsu - Sato demo

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:53:00 +0000

I enjoyed this demonstration of Kodokan Goshin Jutsu (the demo at the beginning of the film a lot. Things that I found especially noteworthy -

the large amplitude of the kotegaeshi throws
in the separated empty-hand section, uke's attacks are great! not the overly simplistic or telegraphed feeds that we usually see.
in the knife section, uke's mind apparently slips and he changes the attack but tori seamlessly slips into an appropriate response.

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Kodokan Goshin Jutsu is not a kata (again)

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 17:44:00 +0000

Some time back I had a discussion with several bloggers about Kodokan Goshin Jutsu. I contend that It is a group of exercises or drills or starting points and not a formal kata. Some of my honorable opponents contend that it is a formal kata with one right way to do it. We basically agreed to disagree.

Today, upon revisiting the JudoInfo page on Kodokan Goshin Jutsu, I came across this that I found interesting...

re: Haimen zuki (pistol against the back) - the last technique in the set.

Attacker steps forward with the right foot. As gun is placed against the back as the attacker says te o age (or hands up). The defender glances to see what arm is raised. As attacker reaches for wallet, defender turns to the right, drops the right hand under the gun hand, raising it up to lock the gun arm against his chest. He then grabs the gun with other hand disarming attacker and striking him with it or applying kote gaeshi to throw him.

I thought the option there was real interesting. Take the gun away and either pistol-whip uke with it, or throw uke with kotegaeshi.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any formal kata in which there is an "either-or" in the description of one particular technique. Sure, there are either-ors in Junana and in Koshiki where uke's reaction forces either this technique or that one. But this is within one technique in which tori has an option A or B.

To me, this seems to support my idea that these are not formal kata techniques, but bullet points for discussion and exploration - categories of things to work on in a self-defense program.

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Spring 2013 ABG

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:19:00 +0000

This weekend, April 26-27, we will be having an Aiki Buddies Gathering (ABG) at Magnolia. This will be a great few sessions - not to be missed - we have a lot on the agenda, including...

3 new shodans!
several hours worth of Kodokan Goshin Jutsu - Mokuren flavored
a sack or two of crawfish

Looks like the class schedule will be something like...

Friday 4/26 - 5:30pm
Saturday 4/27 - 9:00am and 1:00pm

.
I think the crawfish will be Saturday PM, and if it is cool at night, a bonfire Friday is not out of the question...

photo courtesy of Jmarkb

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Call me "Trim Tab Sensei"

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:03:00 +0000

This weekend I'm going to be talking at Union University about kuzushi (off-balance) among other things.

Kuzushi is a force magnifier. Suppose, in a given situation, it would take 100 units of force to throw your opponent, and you only have 50 units at your disposal. Unless you do something to weaken uke or make him at least 50 units more susceptible then you will not be doing your technique.

That is not too hard to imagine, but what if you only have 10 units of force at your disposal... Do you suppose you still might find a long enough lever to do a 100 unit technique?

What if you only have 1/2 unit of force that you can use... Is that sort of force magnification even possible? I mean sure, Copernicus or someone said if you give him a lever long enough and a place to stand he'd move the Earth, but I'm talking about in real-world situations. Is it possible to get good enough at actual skills (not jedi magic tricks) that you can magnify your potential 200x or minimize the opponent's strength by 200x?

Sure. There are examples from physics of force magnification much greater than that. For instance, from the Wikipedia article on trim tabs...

The engineer Buckminster Fuller is often cited for his use of trim tabs as a metaphor for leadership and personal empowerment. In the February 1972 issue of Playboy, Fuller said: "Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary—the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, call me Trim Tab."

Apparently the old dead Chinese dudes were right when they suggested that a force of an ounce could turn a force of 1000 pounds.

It's not too much of a stretch to believe that this sort of leverage exists. The REAL trick is learning to do it on a scale that is useful in combat, without tools, in real time, and under stress.

;-)

photo courtesy of JD Hancock

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These guys got rhythm!

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:44:00 +0000

I've been watching and re-watching this demonstration by T. Suga Sensei. He makes an interesting, creative use of weapons (like the sheathed sword, or knife vs. sword), but what I find most interesting is his relaxed, rhythmic motion and his complete lack of robotic formality (there is rei there, but it is not robotic).

Watch how his knife and arm swings freely, the blades bobbing up and down, and how he effortlessly matches the motion of the knife to the motion of uke to express a technique. He does the same with the jo, switching from hand to hand, tapping the stick on the ground, letting the end rest in a downward slant sometimes, sometimes swinging up and down. His relaxed walk is imparting a motion to the weapons that he is not suppressing (like most folks try to), and the rhythm of the weapon always ends up being appropriate to the rhythm of the uke's attack.

You know what this relaxed rhythmicity reminds me of? Tokio Hirano's remarkable, distinctive motion in his demonstration of judo technique.

Here is another demonstration of Hirano's impressive (albeit confusing) kata. This one, if not better, is at least more accessible and understandable...

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Turn ukemi on its head

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:28:00 +0000

I've stated on many occasions, my opinion that safe falling skills are the most important things we learn in judo and aikido and are probably the best self-defense anyone can learn. Ukemi (falling) is a big deal.

But how do we teach ukemi? If your class like most, then beginners spend a few minutes at the beginning of the first few classes working on rolling and falling before they are thrown into the deep end of the pool. If your class is among the best, perhaps you make every student (new and old) spend a few minutes on ukemi during every class - before we get to the real meat of the class. See, even in classes where it gets a lot of lip service, ukemi is mostly relegated to a secondary role or a minor skill.

So how do we put ukemi in its proper place in our training?

One way (and I'm not sure I want to go this far, but it is one possibility...)

How about in aikido, we make our basic pre-shodan curriculum consist solely of how to fall appropriately out of the most common 30 odd ways (8 releases, 17 junana, 10 owaza) that the other guy can push/pull/knock you into the ground?

How about in judo, our pre-shodan curriculum could be how to survive 20-30 of the gokyonowaza?

I mean - what if we take the emphasis completely off of teaching tori how to throw uke down, so that we make tori's role into a spotter rather than a thrower?

So tori's job would be to help uke get a proper offbalance (kuzushi), turn into a proper position (tsukuri) to spot uke, apply just enough force (kake) to make the thing go smoothly and then help uke land right at the end (zanshin).

The whole class could be an assisted ukemi class, with the following potential benefits...

produce better ukes faster
beat up uke less
drag tori along for the ride - that is, tori would be passively developing the offensive skills and motions typically associated with the tori role.

I know... Crazy idea, right?

photo courtesy of DefenceImages

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BOTH partners' responsibility

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 05:13:00 +0000

No analogy is perfect. They all break down eventually. But my analogy from my previous post (aikido/judo is like a game of catch) holds.

For instance, doing aikido with someone who wants to win or wants to force you to be uke is about like playing catch with someone that is always trying to hit you with the ball or who is always throwing the ball over your head so you have to run to get it every time.

It is BOTH partners' responsibility to keep uke from being the loser's role. Uke has to keep in mind that he is not the loser but the receiver. But the guy that ends up being the tori has to keep in mind that tori is not the winner's role either, because if there are only two people in the relationship and tori has decided to be the winner, uke has to be the loser.

photo courtesy of Beausaunders

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Initiative in ukemi

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:36:00 +0000

We have this tendency to see uke as the loser. Even when sensei explains the non-confrontational, non-competitive, mutually-beneficial nature of the relationship to us over and over and over for years on end, it still sometimes feels like losing - and it chafes. Even though we can't even express what it is that we are losing, it still sometimes feels like losing. Intellectually, we know uke does not mean 'loser,' that it means something more akin to 'receiver,' but it still often feels like it is a painful, shameful loss that we are receiving.

Aaron Williamson writes in an amazing article on his blog...

Though the 'uke' in 'ukemi' means 'to receive' in Japanese, 'ukemi' can also mean 'to have lost the initiative'; which is an important part of understanding what the purpose of the practice actually is. As you progress in Aikido, you realize that the purpose of ukemi is to regain the initiative in a situation where you have clearly lost it

So, we're not competing and contesting and winning and losing - our practice is more like a game of catch - tossing initiative back and forth, occasionally for the fun and experience of it, stretching or challenging each other a bit, but still playing catch instead of keep-away.

What is this initiative thing that we're talking about? In common parlance we use initiative as nearly synonymous with motivation, like, "Take some initiative, you slacker!" But in martial arts it is a timing and rhythm idea something akin to who gets to take the next turn.

Or maybe a better understanding of initiative is who has the power to make choices and affect the relationship.

So, after uke has attacked and tori has taken his turn and uke has countered and tori has flowed and the initiative has flipped back and forth from one partner to the other several times, eventually one of them gets in a bind. The other one has actually "gotten a technique" and the receiver of that technique is out of altitude, airspeed, and ideas, and he has to take a fall.

Does that mean that tori came out on top and uke lost? No, that means that tori has used his turn/initiative to put such an interesting bind on uke that uke's only choice to get the initiative (the power to keep going in the relationship) back is to take a fall.

Uke is not the receiver of the loss, uke is the receiver of the initiative.

photo courtesy of PacoPH

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Initiative, kuzushi, and lapses

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:19:00 +0000

My blogospheric buddy, the Aikidokie from Muskogee recently posted this great post on the Controlling Whack of Peace and Harmony. But you know, Japanese is a tricky language. How do you know that should not be translated as "The Harmonious Whack of Peaceful Controlling," or maybe even something like, "Love busts in?"

Anyway, There's a lot of principles/ideas/jargon in the Japanese martial arts that a lot of times us Westerners seem to mis-understand, mis-appropriate, or conflate (myself more than anyone, I'm sure), and some of these terms Okiedoka either mentions or suggests. Things like...

disbalance (kuzushi)
initiative (sen)
weakness or opening (suki)

These are all sort of different things that work together to be one very confusing, almost numinous idea. I thought I'd discuss today how I understand/misunderstand/divide these concepts.

Initiative is primarily a timing or rhythm concept. Basically who gets to take the first turn to do their thing.

Different sensei have discussed a three-part model of initiative...

pre-emptive timing - I take my turn before you have a chance to take yours
in-time - you and I act at the same time
responsive timing - I let you take your turn first so that I can counter your actions.

In my mind, I sort of divide it into a five-timing model

pre-emptive timing - To me, this is sort of a-hole or bully mode - but I guess all is fair in a fight, right?
provocative timing - I act on you in order to get an expected response that I know how to deal with.
in-time - This is difficult to do - We both take our turn and I hope to come out on top just because my action is better than yours.
responsive timing - There's this eternal debate about whether the guy that wins the initiative has the advantage or if the advantage actually lies with the defender or responder - the second to move.
victim timing - You act upon me and I hope to be able to survive/endure long enough to eventually get a turn.

As children we are taught to take turns - I go - you go - I go - you go. But in a martial sense, we would like to use our turn to accomplish something while at the same time depriving the other guy of his turn, so we get to take this turn and the next one and the next one... So, how do we deprive the opponent of their turn?

Kuzushi is typically thought of as dis-balancing the opponent or disrupting his structural integrity so that he begins to fall. Some of my senseis have said before, "Kuzushi is anything that forces the other guy to take an unintended step." This sort of confounded me when I was thinking of kuzushi as unbalancing uke, but when I began thinking about initiative events, If you can cause the other guy to take some random, unintended step, then he just used his turn to do nothing, so it's your turn again.

There is also this unending debate about whether kuzushi is a thing that uke does to himself or if it is a thing that tori does to uke. Is tori learning to recognize states of kuzushi in uke and time his turns accordingly, or is tori doing something to uke to weaken uke and make him lose a turn? Potentially both, but this provides an opportunity to talk about a third martial arts concept.

Suki (gap or lapse or opening). I usually think of suki as any momentary lapse of attention or mis-positioning that I have done to myself that has cause me to be open to the opponent's attack. Basically suki is when I offer the current turn of initiative to the other guy because of some weakness in myself. Kuzushi, on the other hand, is when I do something to take the turn from him.

Interestingly, it appears to me that folks from grappling-type aiki- or ju-jutsu (like those descended from kito-ryu) tend to be obsessed with the kuzushi idea, while folks from a more striking-based aiki- or ju-jutsu (like daito- or tenjin-shinyo)tend to jive better with the suki idea. But they are just different facets of the same thing.

photo courtesy of Paco PH

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To strike the un-strikeable strike

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:29:00 +0000

So, in my previous post I basically said that Aiki guys need to use strikes to be "real martial artists", but not really. Some of my readers jumped in on my FB group and said, "That's stupid, there's nothing keeping an Aiki-guy from knocking someone senseless (in a loving harmonious way) if'n they so desire.

You guys are catching onto a couple of my big secrets...

I am not infallible in my opinions - sometimes I'm even completely full of B.S.
No blog post is complete - that's the nature of the beast. In fact, the most successful blog posts are selective enough to stir enough controversy to elicit a reader response.

But, let's get back to the idea of atemi - to smash or not to smash. I gave several rules of thumb yesterday about why percussive atemi is non-preferable in aikido. Today maybe we could point out and discuss some specific instances where we like the effects we get from percussion. Here's a handful of my favorites that might not be as intuitive as a knuckle in the nose...

I am a big fan of the outward hammer from naihanchi/tekki applied to the corner of a jaw. I frequently tell folks if they end up on the inside in control of one arm and want to slow down or eliminate the threat of the other arm, to turn uke's face away by pushing (or hammering) on the opponent's jaw. This is one of my favorite atemi in aiki situations.
I also enjoy cuffing ears with a cupped palm - certainly not on ukes or partners, but I will often indicate in iriminage where the head grab could just as well be a percussion to uke's far eardrum if you needed to disorient him more or dispose of him sooner. This air-pressure cuffing strike is also extremely disorienting when applied to the orbit of an eye.
I have found that a straight, open-handed strike/push to uke's hip joint can be very disruptive and helpful in situations like kaitennage, udehineri, gedanate, or sukuinage.

How about you guys - where do you find some unusual atemi in aiki encounters?

photo courtesy of SigurdR

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Thoughts on aikido atemiwaza

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:17:00 +0000

I've said before, several times, that atemi (striking) is a vital part of aikido - at least aikido that is done as a martial art or self-defense. Remove the strikes from aikido and it becomes an especially boring form of modern dance.

But I've also said before, atemi is probably not what you think of as a typical martial arts strike. Even bloggers as dumb as Sensei Strange have figured this out. ;-)

It turns out there are about 2 different ideas about striking in martial arts -

percussive impacts intended to cause severe structural damage - what you think of as karate and boxing strikes.
non-percussive bumps and pushes intended to distract and disrupt the opponent's balance and posture - like you may see more often in jujitsu and aikido

There are plusses and minuses to both kinds of striking techniques. Whichever one you favor, you can certainly find some justification for it - but whichever one you favor also has some potential problems to consider.

Percussive atemi is direct and intuitive and fairly quick and easy to learn. Percussive strikes can also end a fight very quickly. So boxing and karate may be a shorter path to quick self-defense than aikido atemi. It also makes you feel powerful to be able to defend yourself with your fists - so that may appeal to some folks.
But in a litigious society, percussive atemi may create legal entanglements. I know a fellow that was blind-sided and managed to collect himself enough to lash out with a hook punch, breaking his assailant's jaw. Even though there were witnesses and it was a clear-cut case of self-defense, the assailant still sued. It may be more defensible in cases like this to be able to say, "He attacked me and I was afraid so I pushed him away and I guess he fell down." Pushes also look more innocuous to witnesses than do skilled-looking punches.
Punching is a higher-precision activity than pushing or bumping. Pushing someone is a much grosser motor skill than punching, and is a much more easily retained skill under pressure than punching properly.
Pushing is a more automatic, autonomous response than punching. If you push against a mammal, they tend to push back automatically, whereas, surprised people often have to collect themselves a bit to prepare themselves to punch or kick.
With punching, there is greater potential for self-injury. That is largely why boxers tape and pad their hands. People that fight with bare fists tend to get their hands cut up if not broken. These particular injuries don't often occur to people that fight open-handed.
There is less potential for control with percussive strikes. Since there is no way to know just how much force you need to put on someone to disable them, the common strategy is to generate maximal force and apply it to the opponent's weakest spots. This means greater potential for injury and less potential for control.

From reading those bullet points, I'm sure that you can tell that I personally favor the non-percussive aikido-type atemi. It's no skin off my back if you disagree - I'm sure there are a lot of kick-punch folks that could beat me up. But per my analysis, the benefits of non-percussive atemi clearly outweigh the benefits of percussive atemi.

What do y'all think?

photo courtesy of Germaine

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Aikido in Mississippi

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:25:00 +0000

For a long time, there has been relatively little Aikido in Mississippi - at least relatively little that could be found. We were all doing our own private things in our own little private ghettos with a few of our own people. But now there are several established aikido groups throughout the state and we seem to be interacting with each other more. So if you are looking for an aikido class, here are some starting points...

Aikido of Hattiesburg
Hattiesburg, MS

http://aikidohattiesburg.com/
Instructors: Adrian Castillo and Danilo Mezzadri

danilo.mezzadri@me.com

Coastal Winds Martial Arts
Long Beach, MS
http://www.coastalwindsmartialarts.com
Instructor: Dallas Lloyd

info@coastalwindsmartialarts.com
228-234-8928

Eight Winds Aikido Society
Gautier, MS
Instructor: Carmen Pelusi
(228) 497-9899

Eight Winds Aikido Society

Pearl, MS

Instructor: Mike Chapman

601-941-1456

Mokuren Dojo
Magnolia, MS
www.mokurendojo.com
Instructor: Patrick Parker
mokurendojo@gmail.com
601-248-7282

Tupelo Aikikai
Tupelo, MS

http://tupeloaikikai.weebly.com/
Instructor: William Gibson

tupeloaikikai@yahoo.com
662-871 - 1027

University Aikido
Starkville, MS
http://aikido.org.msstate.edu
Instructor: John Usher
usher@ise.msstate.edu

Vicksburg Aikikai

Vicksburg, MS
http://vicksburgaikikai.org/
Instructor: John Porter
vicksburgaikikai@yahoo.com

Of course, this list is bound to be incomplete and/or incorrect. If you teach aikido in Mississippi and would like to be on this list or if you have corrections, don't hesitate to contact me at mokurendojo@gmail.com.

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Controlling rebounds and misses

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:09:00 +0000

So, you have practiced your staff forms religiously for 20 years or so and you have developed good precision and footwork and gotten pretty good at running through your routines without dropping your jo too often.

But then you actually have to use a stick to hit something hard for real and you learn a couple of new lessons - lessons you can't learn by waving your stick in the air for years without actually hitting something.

You learn that when you swing hard and actually connect with something solid there is that equal and opposite reaction thing from physics! your stick rattles in your hands and hurts like hell and the end tends to bounce off into space instead of staying on the centerline where you would like it.

Or you exert hard in your swing and unknowingly shorten your arms a bit and swish past your target, sending the end of your stick off into space again!

So, how do you deal with the reverb and rebound off of a solid hit or with the uncontrolled momentum of a near-miss? Besides just beating a pell a million times for real (and letting the reverb wreck your joints), are there any techniques that take rebound or misses into account?

I have found a couple of hints during my aikijo studies. You can try...

shortening the circle - assuming you are swinging the stick with a 2-handed grip on the end, like honte or gyakute, when the end of the stick gets out of control, pull the center of mass of the stick back through your lead hand, damping the vibrations out and letting you get the front end of the stick back under control rapidly. This trick helps to control rebound and misses.
switching ends - if the front end of your stick shoots out into space, throw the back end of the stick at the opponent. This has a similar effect as pulling the COM of the stick through your hand - it damps the vibrations, but it often lets you start a second attack sooner.

I definitely recommend really hitting something solid sometimes so that you can get used to the feel, but doing enough pell work to learn these lessons can be punishing on the joints, so search for places in your forms where shortening the circle or switching ends to regain control shows up - they are hidden in there.

photo courtesy of privatenobby

A little bit extra on this topic...

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Pre-positioning in martial applications

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:34:00 +0000

Back in the day, when I was teaching Ergonomics and Work Design classes at college, there was this concept that we talked about - pre-positioning. If there was a tool that you were going to have to use then you wanted to define a standard location and orientation for that tool so that when you reach for it, you can find it without searching for it and grasp it ready-for-use instead of having to waste time rotating and re-orienting the tool.

The same applies in martial applications in many ways. For example...

With many tactical folding pocket clip knives, you are able to change the pocket clip to hold the knife tip-up or tip-down blade-forward or blade-backward so that you can pre-position the knife in your pocket the same way every time, ready for deployment with your dominant hand (left or right).
In aikido, most all of the operations that the aikidoka needs to make with his hands he would prefer to do directly in front of his chest, where he is strongest and most coordinated, and hand actions most often happen in the plane between uke's and tori's centers - where the conflict is happening. So, when a hand is not otherwise doing something in a technique, it is usually pre-positioned on the plane between tori's centerline and uke's centerline. This way, the hands usually have the least distance to move to do their next action.
In judo, consider the common 3-step turn-in for seoinage. If tori tries to turn in with his feet in any random position then it will frequently take several tiny steps. But if tori makes his first step (before he turns his body) by turning his foot inward as far as it will go, then the subsequent steps will be easier and it will almost always take 3 steps (or sometimes just 2) to turn in. By pre-positioning the foot in preparation for the turn, you make the actual turn more efficient.

I bet y'all could come up with a bunch more examples of pre-positioning in martial arts.

photo courtesy of DVDSHUB

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Lori O'Connell's When the Fight Goes to the Ground

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:18:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I was very pleased to receive a review copy of Sensei Lori O'Connell's new book, When the Fight Goes to the Ground. This is an excellent text on counter-grappling.

It is common knowledge among martial arts folks that you want to avoid going to the ground if you can - especially against multiple opponents or armed opponents. But it is also common knowledge that pretty much all fights go to the ground. A few years back someone asked one of my instructors, "Is it true the rule of thumb that says 80% of fights end up on the ground?" and that instructor responded, "No, 100% of fights go to the ground - at least one guy or the other - sometimes both." I also recall a great quote from one of the Gracies - I want to ascribe it to Rener but I couldn't find where I'd heard it, when asked about fight strategy on the ground, he responded, "My ground strategy in a real fight is get off the damn ground!"

That's where Lori O'Connell's book comes in. Everybody knows that they're going to end up on the ground and that they are going to want to get off the ground - that's common sense. But how do you do it?

O'Connell spends nearly 20 chapters poking holes in the most common situations that you can end up in on the ground, whether against Joe Blow on the street or against a jujutsu trained fighter. She demonstrates the use of tooth and claw and everything in-between for biting, cuffing, gouging, pinching, crushing, butting, grinding, and breaking small joints and vital points.

In other words, playing totally unfair against the weaknesses in the assumed rules in ground-domination situations.

And as such, this book also represents a VITAL lesson for ground grappling artists as well as folks that want to defend against that sort of potential aggression. For the grappler this book exposes potential weaknesses in your favorite techniques - things that you need to consider when you think you're going to put someone in a controlling position and apply a submission.

192 pages of clear and concise explanation, beautiful and clear photography, excellent binding, and a DVD full of bonus video explanations make this a great book for grapplers, stand-up artists, and self-defense enthusiasts.

Highly Recommended.

Shop Amazon for Lori O'Connell's book, When the Fight Goes to the Ground (or for anything else) and Mokuren Dojo will get a little bit of commission!

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Getting all the pieces in

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:02:00 +0000

There's this idea that you have to go really slow in aikido, and for practice that is generally a very good idea because it is usually safer but mostly because it allows both people to learn more and learn it faster. It is not necessary that you go absolutely as slow as possible, but you should go slow enough that tori can get all the pieces of the technique in and slowly enough that both partners can feel the natural consequences of tori getting all those pieces in.

There is this concept in judo that fits well in aikido practice - the 4-step technique, which says there are 4 parts to any technique, and that they generally go in this order -

kuzushi - unbalancing uke or disrupting uke so that his structure starts to crumble - or even just catching him unaware. The idea is that you have to either catch uke by surprise or else disrupt his balance in order to get a technique to work properly.
tsukuri - fitting in - the act of tori getting himself in the proper position/structure/relationship with respect to uke to do the technique. We usually say that we do kuzushi before tsukuri, but sometimes they happen simultaneously or the tsukuri causes the kuzushi. The point is, you have to get both of them in or the technique will not be as easy as it could be.
kake - The actual effort or exertion. Sometimes we call this, "Pulling the trigger." Again, the main point of this model is that you have to get kuzushi and tsukuri before you pull the trigger (kake).
zanshin - remaining aware. We sometimes state this as, "Watch out! because uke might have something sneaky up his sleeve." Just because you have thrown uke does not mean that the encounter is ended. We typically say that zanshin is the 4th stage of a technique, but it is actually a state of mind that should be a constant before, during, and after the technique.

photo courtesy of Paco PH

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Stillness in aikido

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:29:00 +0000

A few days ago, a blogospheric buddy of mine posted a cool article in which he talked about (among other things) fast vs. slow movement in aikido. He used this great video of a cheetah hunting as an example of the fast vs. slow thing that he was talking about...

Watching that cat hunt, a different phenomenon struck me as significant. He (she?) is not just changing speeds - fast and slow. He has a connection with the prey and the cat has the ability to be still and do absolutely nothing at just the right time, letting his natural camouflage do its job.

We usually don't think about this as being a skill - particularly in our lineage of aikido - because we have been indoctrinated from day-one that once you get your center of mass into motion, you keep it moving unless uke stops you or changes your direction. But there are times when tori wants to wait for a beat or two, not adding anything to the encounter, just biding his time waiting for something to happen in uke.

I'm not saying that the constant motion idea is wrong, it is a pretty good heuristic but no rule-of-thumb fits reality all the time 100%. If you let a highly-ranked aikidoka from a non-Tomiki lineage look at some video of one of us (Texas, Oklahoma, etc...) Tomiki guys, one of their first complaints is likely to be something like, "indecisive footwork" or "poor stances." That comes from our constant motion idea - when we come to a point that we need to wait, we tend to keep cycling our feet up and down. This does keep our center in motion, but we know for sure that every time we drop a foot we are susceptible to being otoshi'd by uke, and every time we pick a foot up they might float us.

At a recent retreat I attended we worked through a neat set of heuristics for toshu randori, one of which is, "Don't ever take a step you don't have to take," and I would add to that, "...because each step you take exposes you." It is surprisingly hard to steel yourself to stand and wait long enough to actually see the results and consequences of our actions. We are used to doing and moving on, and because we have moved on it is hard to trace the consequences back to the actions that initiated them.

What? You don't think it takes skill to just do nothing? Try the following exercise and see doesn't it make you bat-stuffing crazy within about 3-4 minutes...

See, we go through our lives accustomed to going and doing and exerting and acting upon the world and kicking it into the shape we want it. It doesn't take but a couple of minutes of inactivity to make us acutely feel like we need to move - to do SOMETHING.

You also see this stillness in Chinese martial arts like Taiji and Yiquan, and in their derivatives, like the following amazing thing. Notice his steps are deliberately placed. So far as I can tell from reading up on it, the way to develop this sort of motion is to pause for just a moment at the beginning and end of each step, hovering your foot an inch off the ground balancing on the other foot. These guys develop an amazing sense of balance and they don't drop their weight onto the other foot until they intend to. They don't fire their center of mass in ballistic trajectories like most folks do in normal walking.

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Compare this guy's motion to the cheetah above. Both have the ability to stop in mid-step, hover, doing nothing, then continue or do something else.

Whatever success I had at that recent retreat at following that "don't step" heuristic was because Rick Matz goaded and coerced and even shamed me into working regularly on the Zhan Zhuang exercise above. I recommend trying it out (the above is the first in a 10-video series of tutorials) and if the quiet stillness makes you insane, stick with it because like me, you probably need some mental and physical and spiritual (sanchin - three things in conflict) endurance because of our insane lifestyle.

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Poetic description of kuzushi

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 01:45:00 +0000

I perceive a big problem in our aikido, and to some degree, our judo and jo practice also.

We are all concerned with balance - maintaining ours, breaking the other guy's, etc - but we (especially westerners) seem to lack the language we need to discuss issues related to kuzushi.

About all we ever ask is "did you or didn't you 'get' kuzushi?" as if balance and kuzushi were discrete, mutually exclusive states of being. But it seems to me that there are lots of inbetween states - like balance and falling are opposite ends of a continuous spectrum. It seems to me that there can be lots of kinds and flavors and feelings and effects within that balance/unbalance spectrum. But all we can figure out how to think about is did or didn't it happen.

So, how do we talk about non-discrete touchy-feely sorts of things? How about poetry?

A while back, Nick came up with a scheme for characterizing and classifying different ways aikido folks transfer energy from tori to uke using the metaphor of the five elements - earth, fire, water, air, and the void. This resulted in a pretty interesting way to think and talk about and experiment with different aikidoka's feels, but this energy transfer model seems to me to mostly deal with the kake phase of the throw. What if we use the 5 elements metaphors to classify different kinds of kuzushi?

I propose five kinds of disbalance. Have you ever felt...

Earth kuzushi - like being crushed between a rock and a hard place by having to deal with the weight of the earth through tori's structure - or like walking down a flight of stairs and stumbling at the bottom when you think there is one more step - or stubbing your toe - you have met the proverbial immovable object!

Fire kuzushi - like being cut down by a laser - Fire is the irresistable force that shears through your structure - Fire kuzushi can be explosive.

Water kuzushi - has a back and forth feel - turning 90 degree corners - flowing around obstructions - taking the shape of the space between tori and uke - erosive.

Air kuzushi - flowing - leading - uke feels like he is grasping at vapour - centrifugal - makes uke move so fast that he can't keep up with himself - feels like the air pressure in front of the attack blows tori out of the way

Kuzushi of the void - Occupying the space'that uke needs to stand up - no contact - effects at a distance - uke is unbalanced by tori relaxing rather than exerting.

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Shoulders in aikiage

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 12:00:00 +0000

Interesting video about how to improve your mechanical advantage by mis-aligning uke's shoulders slightly...

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Aikiage in Tomiki aikido

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 17:56:00 +0000

One of the things that I have wanted to work on for a while is aikiage - this weird trick for amplifying or projecting uke upward into a rise so that you can subsequently drop them. Aikiage makes an occasional appearance in the Tomiki curriculum, although we have never called it by this name until we started playing around with some Daito-Ryu folks. In the Tomiki curriculum it is seen in several of the Koryu no kata as a suwariwaza ryotedori attack often followed by a sukuinage or kokyunage or shihonage.

Several years ago, one of my instructors came up to me when I was sitting in a chair and said, "Let me show you this cool thing." and he proceeded to do aikiage to me with me seated in the chair and him standing over me. It was a very minimal motion (nearly invisible) and I literally exploded upward out of the chair to end up standing on my tiptoes in front of him. This trick amazed and confounded me for several years (no, he wouldn't tell me how he did it - just said it was "ki").

But this past weekend I got to play with a couple of folks with some insight into aiki-age and between the three of us we sorta got to where we could emulate that upward projection. It was nowhere near as sophisticated as I'd seen from our instructor several years ago, but the motion was happening and I can see how it could be worked on to make it better.

Photo courtesy of Joshua Smith

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Why not stiff-arm in randori or shiai?

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:17:00 +0000

Stiff-arming in judo - it is much-maligned especially in randori, but everybody still seems to do it in shiai. So... if champions stiff-arm and still win, why is it so bad?

I can think of several reasons right off the bat...

Stiff-arming reduces your opponent's ability to attack to some degree - but it reduces your ability to attack to an even larger degree. You are not only holding them away - you are holding yourself out of position.
Keeping your arms rigid when the opponent is not attacking you burns energy for no gain - so it is maximally inefficient.
Keeping your arms rigid makes it easier for your opponent to feel your motions - so it telegraphs your intent.
Your opponent can use your stiff arms for support, preventing you from unbalancing them.
It is a reflex - and therefore an unthinking, unconscious thing. Trained, strategic actions that happen without thought can be good (mushin) but instinctual defensive reflexes are often dysfunctional when faced with a thinking, trained opponent.
Studies have shown that once we exert more than a few pounds of pressure with our gripping muscles, our higher brain functions shut down. We can't think very good while exerting strongly.
When you refuse to allow your wrists, elbows, and shoulders to move, you essentially turn off the proprioceptors in those joints, reducing the amount of tactile and kinesthetic information you are getting from the opponent.
It is against the spirit of judo because 1) it is a reflexive refusal to yield, 2) it is inefficient, and 3) it is essentially a refusal to learn or allow the other guy to learn.

So, you get into a fight/match with someone that you know to be trained/skilled, and you immediately grab them and lock your arms out, preventing yourself from attacking, telegraphing when you do attack, burning energy at a tremendous rate, and turning off your tactile sensors and your brain...

Yeah, that sounds like a sound strategy.

Now, it is sometimes a good idea to stifle the opponent's advance or to create space, but that is pretty much always an instantaneous thing. You turn the stiff-arms on, then immediately off - and only when the trained, thoughtful, strategic part of your mind tells you it's the right moment.

So, again... Why do champions do it and still win and then teach stiff-arming as a good thing to do? Basically just because everyone is doing it and they have figured out how to do it a little bit more strategically or effectively than the other guys. For the vast majority of judoka in the vast majority of practice and shiai situations, stiff-arming does you more harm than good.

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Modality in randori

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:12:00 +0000

I got the opportunity this past weekend to do a lot of toshu randori with some amazing players - some of whom I don't get to lay hands on very often and some of whom I'd never met. A couple of observations about our randori in general...

The modality of randori was really noticeable this weekend. By that, I mean, we seem to have aikido mode (longer ranges, less power, more flowing, more atemi) and judo mode (closer, tighter, stronger, more mechanical offbalances). Most everyone at this randori was comfortable in both modes and we were switching pretty freely between modes - going from far to close to kneeling to newaza and back as the situations developed.

But the fact that the two modes exist sorta bothers me. Frequently when I found myself getting stuck making mistakes and taking falls it was because I got in my mind that we were playing within one mode and my partner would switch modes on me. It didn't really frustrate me because it was all good experiential, experimental randori whether I was throwing or falling, but it did make me curious. We would like to be non-modal (aikido=judo=same thing) but we are not.

A second thing I noticed was, I suppose, an artifact of new randori partners that had never met or played with each other. In my club, when we are practicing aikido randori and an atemi to the face comes up, we frequently are not trying to use that atemi to throw the other guy down. We have an understanding between partners that if I can touch your face and keep my hand there for a second or two, then I could have gouged an eye. So, if I make face contact for a couple of seconds, the other guy takes a fall.

Some of my randori partners were used to playing in a different mode (there's those modes again). I suppose they were used to our face-touches being either percussive atemi or throws - like mechanical knock-downs. So, they would often let me lay a hand on their face for a couple of seconds and they would look at me like I was an idiot as they proceeded to pluck my hand off their face and throw me down with a hineri.

Again, I'm not complaining about being thrown or not "winning" - I just thought this was an interesting thing. Depending on how you look at the atemi (eye attack vs. throw) we were both "winning." But we were also both discounting something important. I should definitely watch out for some sharp opponent grabbing my atemi, and my partners probably ought to watch out for the potential for a fight-ending eye gouge.

Photo (which doesn't really have anything to do with this article - I just think it's a beautiful pic) courtesy of Stefan Schmitz.

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I'm sick - can I come to judo?

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Parker) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 17:54:00 +0000

Occasionally the question comes up - someone has been sick with the flu or stomach bug but feels better - can they come to judo practice? Working at a hospital and having small kids, I am so familiar with this situation that it almost seems trivial to me, but sometimes it is hard for some folks to make that decision about whether or not to participate.

The basic guidelines that I follow and recommend -

If your club is part of a school or university then follow their closings - if the parent organization closes due to weather or epidemic, then you do not have classes. If you are not part of a school or university, it is still a pretty good idea to identify the 1-2 closest schools or colleges and abide by their closings for weather and illness.
Do not allow participation by anyone who has been acutely ill with flu-like symptoms, fever, vomiting, or diarrhea within the past 24 hours.
Keep Germ-X or something like it, and pass it around to everyone before class (even when there is no known bug going around). If you know a bug is going around, then pass the Germ-x around before, during, and after classes.
If a bug has been going around, you might want to consider banning certain techniques and practices - like shomenate and newaza.
Clean your mats frequently - and perhaps even more frequently when you know that there has been a bug going around.

photo courtesy of Svenstorm

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