Mokuren Dojo - Aikido and Judo

How is the forward roll structured?

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:07:00 +0000

Yesterday I mentioned that ukemi is a coordinated blending of structure and softness, form and pliability. Today I wanted to point out several of the points during a forward roll where you need structure. Basically, the places where you can't tolerate pliability in the forward roll include:

Lead shoulder - if your body first hits the ground on your shoulder (sometimes you overturn and hit on your lats instead), then you want to make sure that you contact on the back of the shoulder, not on the top or point of the shoulder, as this is more easily broken. The best way that I know to insure that you strike the mat on the back of the lead shoulder is to pronate, or rotate the entire lead arm inward and palm-downward as far as it will go. This rotates the deltoid muscles of the shoulder over the point of the shoulder and locks the shoulder in a relatively stable position.
Head and neck - as you contact the ground, you will need to clear your head out of the way. The best way to do this is to look away and tuck your chin, as if trying to stick your nose into your rear armpit. With the lead shoulder turned as detailed above, and the head tucked into the read armpit, your upper corner becomes very round.
Abdominal control - as you roll across your back, you want to follow a path from the back of the lead shoulder diagonally across the back, passing the spine between the meatiest parts of the lats, to the side of the rear hip. It takes fine coordination of muscular action in your abs and back, as well as slikked placement of your legs as counterbalances to make yourself follow this path every time.
Landing position - As I mentioned in a comment in the previous post, there is difference of opinion on this point, but I teach the classical judo landing position with the upper leg bent with the knee pointing upward and the foot behind the lower leg. The lower leg is mostly straight-ish and you end on the meaty, muscular part of your outer thigh and calf. There are more specifics to this landing position, but the important point is to land with the upper leg behind the lower leg - not crossed over in front.

So, if you get those four points of structure in place, the rest of the roll before and between and after can be relaxed and pliable and soft and you won't go too far astray.

I want to make a little film in the next few days of a kneeling forward roll, because it's the best way to explain some of the little details of the abdominal control thing I'm talking about here. Stay tuned!

(Photo courtesy of Camilla Hoel)

____________
Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
____________
Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo
____________
Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

Softness and structure in ukemi

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:55:00 +0000

Ukemi (falling) is an interesting coordination exercise. Your have to embody a mixture of pliability and structure - and each at the right time. One of my favorite demonstrations of this involves a jo stick and a judo belt.

The jo is the embodiment of structure - it is all structure and no pliability. Take the jo and drop it onto a hard floor. It hits and clatters and bangs and rolls around. Unless you threw it down really hard it's not likely to have been damaged because of its excellent structure. But it sure took a lot of abuse banging around on the ground. It's pretty obvious that if you were to make your body all stiff like the jo, you'd take a lot of abuse when you hit the ground.

So, most everyone immediately thinks, "softness must be the solution." Try this - take the belt and drop it onto the floor. Sure enough - it lands with hardly a sound. The belt, in its softness and pliability is much, much better than the structure of the stick! You could throw the belt as hard as you possibly could at the ground and it wouldn't hurt it because of its pliability. But if you look at the way the belt lands you'll see it lands in loops and curls all in a jumble. Think about that for a minute and you realize that you wouldn't want to land on the ground with your limbs like that, all overlapping and tangled up, or else you'd end up doing things like hammering one leg with the heel of the other foot. So all-soft is not the solution either.

You have to be soft at the right times and structured at the right times - and both qualities coordinated in the right proportions. That is the major trick in learning to do soft ukemi.

Sean Ashby is doing an excellent series on Excellent Ukemi. I can hardly wait for the next installment. It has inspired me so much that I wanted to throw in a handful of points of my own. (I hope I'm not scooping him.) Head over there and check out his ukemi series, and then come back tomorrow for some of my thoughts on how you can develop this specific coordination of pliability and structure in your ukemi.

(Photo courtesy of Marius Zierold)

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

3 ways to avoid a punch

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:36:00 +0000

The other day, Zacky Chan asked me to elaborate on a post I made a while back about a certain kind of evasion motion in aikido. I think I need to put it into context a little.

Suppose you are standing, facing north in a natural, upright posture and someone is throwing some sort of relatively straight-ish punch directly southward toward your face. Further suppose you 'decide' that you are going to evade toward your attacker but offline roughly 45degrees forward to your right. Got it?

In this sort of situation there are three basic ways of evading...

stepping - when you decide to pull the trigger on the evasion you lean your center of balance over your left leg, pick up your right leg, put your right foot back down somewhere over there, lean your center over your right leg, pick up your left leg, and put it back under you. You have moved out of the way (off the line of attack), but it took you 2-3 weight shifts to do it and you passed through the plane of the attack twice -once when you leaned left and once when you stepped right. Japanese teachers call this ayumiashi.
dropping - This is a more favored technique for getting out of the way. here, without leaning your center of mass to the left, you pick up your right leg, your center starts falling to the right, then you put your right leg back down under your center and bring your left leg with you. Here yor weight shifts are minimized and you only pass the plane of the attack once as you fall to the right. Japanese teachers call this tsugiashi.
stepping over the hill - But, there is a situation where ayumiashi can actually be faster than tsugiashi. Suppose you are walking along and you just put your right foot down when they attack and you have to evade right then. Your right foot is stuck and it's hard to pick it up to drop to the right. So, you have no choice but to pick your left foot up and step forward and to the right, past your right foot to get off line.

When you are in a natural, upright balanced posture you can (sort of) choose whether you want to step or drop out of the way (but dropping is usually better). But when you are already in motion, you may not have a choice but to step over the hill because it's easier and faster than dropping in some situations.

Did that make sense? I promised you a better description, Zacky, but this might just be more verbose. I will try to film a short video sometime soon to augment this descriptive text.

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

Elmar Schmeisser's kata bunkai rules

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:07:00 +0000

Over the last few years, several authors have tried to put together sets of rules or principles for decoding kata - for figuring out what the kata movements mean. One oft-cited set of kata rules comes from Elmar Schmeisser's several books on Shotokan kata and the bunkai (analysis) thereof. Schmeisser's rules, stated somewhat generally include:

Each movement/position must do something useful to the opponent from the defender's point of view.
No opponent may be left in a condition to continue or resume an attack.
There must be a safety margin in case of the failure of any technique to have full effect.

...and restated more explicitly...

Damage the incoming limb(s) while avoiding the main vector of the attacker.
Keep control of the opponent by using offbalancing movements and remain physically attached.
As far as possible, always have both hands engaged with the opponent.
Move away from or interdict any remaining threatening limb(s).
Have a backup and/or a continuation available if any techniques fails.
Escalate defense combinations with progressively more damaging counters that move inward towards the opponent's body.

Interested in reading more of Schmeisser's ideas about kata, bunkai, and self-defense? Check out his book, Channan; Heart of the Heians:

Ukemi, balance, and sidedness

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:16:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of Whatnot

This past week has mostly been a bust for yoga practice because I had other stuff that captured my attention, but there were a couple of really interesting practices.

falling out of balance poses - in aikido I often preach that when you are working on your ukemi skills, you want to practice slowly moving through the arc to the "point of no return" - the place where you can no longer control your balance and you have to fall - and then falling from there instead of jumping through the "point of no return" into your rolls. This has several benefits, including chalenging your balance. This past week I practiced rolling out of virabhadrasana III (Warrior #3) and out of ardha chandrasana (half-moon posture). By having the ukemi as a safe extension of the pose after the "point of no return", it allowed me to move farther into each pose with less resistance, and my balance was better, and it made for nice, gentle rolls.
Exquisite sidedness - I also noticed this week (I notice it every week) that my practice is very different from one side to the other. In side-bending from a simple cross-legged posture, I am much tighter bending to the right (stretching my left flank) than I am bending to the left. Also, there's an obvious difference in janu sirsasana (modified hurdler's stretch) from left to right - but it's not in my hamstrings. The difference is on my back and flank again. Stretching toward my right leg (stretching my left flank) is much easier than stretching toward my left leg. The interesting thing is that my limitations are opposite in these two postures - I'm limited by my left flank in one posture and by my right flank in another posture. Curious.

Well, not a complete bust I guess... ;-)
.

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

My stupidest idea yet!

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:04:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of OpalandtheIdiot

What do you think has been my dumbest idea so far here at the Mokuren Dojo blog?

This blog has been chugging along for nearly 4 years with near-daily updates. That adds up to nearly 1600 posts in my archives! There's no way in the world that all those articles were as thoughtful, inspiring, and mind-enhancing as I must have thought when I hit PUBLISH. Some of my ideas must have really sucked!

I want to know which idea in which article you think was the most ill-conceived, least helpful, most retarded thing I've written in the last four years! Leave me a comment and let me have it!

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________
Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo
____________
Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

The most important muscle

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:22:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of SweetJ

A few years back an instructor pointed out to me an interesting journal article about aging and frailty.

As I remember, the scientists were trying to figure out what was the difference between elderly people who become frail and elders who thrive. So, they got a big sample of elders and divided them into two groups (triving and frail), and measured lots of physical variables to figure out what caused the difference between the groups.

Among all the variables that they measured they only found one significant difference - the thriving group had significantly greater strenth and flexibility in the muscles surrounding the ankle (specifically the calf muscles).

That can't be right! What in the world does the ankle have to do with how you age?

Well, think about it for a minute.

Every time you sit down or stand up, you have to either pick your heel up off the ground (putting a lot of stress on the knee) or you have to stretch your achiles tendon so your heel can stay on the ground. If you can't stretch the ankle and you can't withstand the stress at the knee, then you can't sit or stand in a controlled manner.
Every time you have to step down off of a step or a curb, it's the same story - stretch the calf muscles and make a controlled descent, or hop/limp down and risk falling.
Every time you walk on any uneven surface you have to make many small adjustments in your ankle to control your balance.

So, if you don't have the strength and flexibility in your ankle to control your balance, then as you age, you're going to have to stop walking outside and stop climbing up and down steps and stop going places where there are curbs. You basically have to stop moving - and that's a prescription for disaster!

So, who'd have thunk it - the ankle is the most important part of your body for continued health into old age?

And that's why activities like taichi and aikido have been demonstrated to be so good for aging people - they carefully and deliberately exercise the ankles under weightbearing loads!

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

How to choose a martial art

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:10:00 +0000

Another great comment and question I got via email a day or two ago, relating to my recent self-defense articles...

I really like your martial arts articles. I am a guy looking into different MA's to find which I want to study. I was reading one of your blogs and in one you say that Aikido is best in self defense and better than Karate by a wide margin. But in another, about a contest between Karate and Aikido, you say that Aikido sucks and Karate rules, and that you can never rely on Aikido in the street. These ideas seem opposite. If you have time, could you clarify. I'm tending toward Aikido because though having decent athleticism, I'm starting brand new at age 40 and I'm fascinated by the idea of using another's force against them. I've heard that Tai Chi also can really be used at full speed as a viable martial art. Ideas on that? I'm considering taking tai chi to start just because I can get into a free class. Thanks for any thoughts you might have.

I'm glad you've been reading my blog and getting something valuable from it. I also love answering questions and helping folks figure out if aikido is right for them.
.
Sure those ideas in those 2 articles are opposite. That was sort of my provocative way of responding to a guy who had asked me if an aikido guy could beat up a karate guy. The straight answer for you is this, there is no "best" martial art. Each one has its pros and cons that fit or miss your personality and preferences. You might become great at any of them, and as for a fight between a karate guy and an aikido guy, it'd basically be a question of whoever was luckiest that day.

Aikido works great for self-defense, I think aikido is the best self-defense art I've ever studied (see this article too), though there are some caveats (check out my latest post on the subject). Also, look thru my archives for the topic, self-defense.

Probably the biggest caveat is this - your mileage will vary a great deal depending on what kind of instructor you get. Some instructors teach the art as almost a dance form, while others teach it as a violent, self-defense thing. Other instructors fall all over that spectrum.

Tai Chi is also a martial art with combative applications, but in my experience, it's far harder to find a martial-minded (self-defense) tai chi teacher than it is to find a martial-minded aikido teacher. Most tai chi teachers teach the thing as some sort of eastern health improvement thing instead of as a martial art.

I'd say, go watch several aikido classes (more than one) and see if you seem to jive with the instructor. See if there is a connection there. Then make your decision. The connection with the instructor is probably one of the most critical factors.

.____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

Yoga measuring sticks

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:05:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of YoGeek

I don't remember if I got the idea of "measuring sticks" from aikido and it translated into my yoga practice, or vice versa. In any case, the idea crops up in both artforms.

What I call a measuring stick is a reference technique or asana that is repeated periodically throughout a workout in order to see what effect your workout is having on your posture or technique. For example, I might do a sukhasana (simple cross-legged position) with a forward bend at the beginning of class in order to observe where I'm tight or tired. Then I'll repeat it some time in the middle of the workout to see what the intervening postures have done for me this day. At the end I might repeat it again, this time settling into it for a prolonged breath count.

Other common asana that you might see used as measuring sticks include tadasana (the mountain posture), trikonasana (triangle), adho mukka svasana (down dog) or uttanasana (forward bend). I particularly like to do malasana (deep knee bend) as a measuring stick.

By repeating the same posture throughout the workout, you can gain some insight into what each set of postures is doing for you in relation to the measuring stick technique. Do you find your hips more flexible the second time? Is it easier to breathe the third time, etc...

Should I do aikido for self-defense?

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:20:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of TXD

I got a great comment on my last post via email...

Your latest post certainly got me thinking, particulary when you said "That's not really what we want to be learning. Aikido and judo are about improvement of the self, and only peripherally about self-defense..." It made me inwardly scream "say it ain't so!" Because I'm not really interested in improving myself. Not through martial arts, anyway. The foremost reason I put myself through what I do (aikido, judo, and bjj) IS about self-defense...

Good point. And you are right that this stuff was originally solely combative. The turning point (from -jutsu to -do) was in the aftermath of the Meiji restoration with the advent of judo and aikido and jodo and kyudo, etc... from the original combative arts.

But there are some things you have to watch out if self-defense is your primary motivation for training...

Non-verifiability - You can almost never tell if your self-defense training is successful. In our society, dangerous as it is, most of us never have to really defend ourselves. So I could be selling you a load of malarkey, betting on the chance that you'll never get a chance to verify my teachings (though I don't think that's what I'm doing).
Non-measurability - You can't measure non-events. If you are never attacked, is it because you're lucky (or because of God's Providence) or is it because your aiki training improved your awareness and self-confidence enough that villains never targeted you? Or is it because your aiki training made you better at de-escalating potential problems?
Correlation is not causation - Even if you are attacked and you beat the other guy up and save yourself, can you attribute that to your aikido training or is it due to luck or providence or your innate strength or what?
Diminishing returns - if you make self-defense the center of your motivation, you can attain that goal as good as anyone can teach it by about green or brown belt. Any martial arts instructor in the world that's worth a darn can easily teach you everything he knows about self defense within about 40-60 mat hours. But there are folks that spend a lifetime studying aikido - so what are they doing with all that time after the first hundred hours or so? Self-defense as a motivation is subject to diminishing returns.

But self-defense is as good a motivation as any - none of the other reasons for practicing are objectively measurable either. If you claim that you are practicing for "self-improvement," how do you define self-improvement and if you do achieve that self improvement (whatever that is), how can you tell that it's the aikido practice and not simply the passage of time that is improving your character? Practicing for health benefits is likewise shaky - can you say that having no negative health outcomes is due to your practice? If you do have an heart attack then can you say that your aikido practice was a failure? You might as well just say, "It's fun. I enjoy it."

So, my assertion was that un-measurable, un-objective goals like self defense could not really be the center of what we're doing (at least not for long). The central motivation for most folks that stick around for a long time seems to be an intangible, subjective benefit that has something to do with health + confidence (or lack of fear) + fun + socialization.

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

Aikido is unrealistic

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 07:19:00 +0000

A perennial complaint against aikido involves the supposed un-reality of the training methods. Apparently some people who watch aikido from the outside would like for aikido to be more realistic. And aikido practitioners on the inside are not even immune to this idea either - we get a lot of suggestions about how to improve the realism in our training.

But if you think about it a minute, not only can our training not be much more realistic, but people don't really want it to be more realistic. Consider this... if some really bad person were to attack another person for real out in the dark, gritty, realistic street, then the defender is likely to try their best to really, really hurt their attacker. One person or the other (maybe both) is going to end up really broken, cut, or shot with their eyes really mangled and their head really smashed open on a real curb.

Is that what we should be aiming at simulating in regular everyday classes with regular, non-superhuman participants who have families and jobs and lives outside the dojo? Of course not.

So, why can't we come up with some protective equipment or something that would let us inject some small additional fraction of that reality into our learning? Several reasons...

That's not really what we want to be learning. Aikido and judo are about improvement of the self, and only peripherally about self-defense against realistic attacks. Now, aiki and judo can be helpful when attacked, but that's not the center of the idea behind the training.
Reality is chaotic, and your mind sucks at learning in truly chaotic situations. You have to systematize and organize and compartmentalize that chaos so that you can actually experience some of it more than once in order to learn from it.
Chaos is threatening, and your mind sucks at learning when you are threatened and stressed. It's not that you can't learn under stress - people do it all the time. But it's more difficult and more unpleasant to learn that way.
Chaotic, threatening things are dangerous, and cannot be made non-dangerous. Most normal students are not willing to increase the danger level by increasing the realism even slightly.

Aikido is unrealistic, and can't be made much more realistic. But so are karate, judo, jiu-jitsu, taekwando, boxing, wrestling, krav maga, sambo, kendo, iaido, capoiera, target shooting, and every other martial art. That doesn't make any of these things less worthwhile. It just makes them not-the-same-as-reality.

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

If it ain't broke...

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 06:17:00 +0000

If it ain't broke... then what do you do with it?

We've all heard the old axiom, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," suggesting that we shouldn't make un-needed modifications to a system that is serving its purpose sufficiently. Well, I don't particularly subscribe to that line of thinking. I prefer a variation that I think I remember hearing from Tom Peters:

If it ain't broke

you'd better break it and rebuild it better

before your enemy has a chance to break it!"

At my dojo, we are the inheritors of some pretty darn good methods for teaching aikido and judo. Methods that stretch back more than a century, retaining and preserving the best of the old, while occasionally incorporating the best judgements of masters, each of whom had more than half a century of experience. These days we really don't have to think too much about how we teach these things - if you mostly teach like your teacher taught, then history suggests your students will generally have pretty good outcomes.

But, having said that, I am still in a constant process of tearing my syllabus and teaching methods down and re-building them to see if I could do better. This is generally a private exercise for me - I've found that it doesn't do much good to inject all that chaos into my students' lives. I try to reserve any changes that I want to make to my syllabus to occur right at the beginning of each year so that my students don't feel like the ground is always shifting under their feet.

But I've found that it is really beneficial for me as a teacher to constantly review the hows, whys, and what-if's of our syllabi. How we arrange and present the material, why we choose to do it that way, and what if it were arranged and presented differently.

Because... if you don't break it and re-build it better, your enemy might break it first!

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

Small ashiwaza IS classical judo

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:16:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of Simmr

A couple of years ago I posted one of the cool old judo vs. jujitsu stories for Dojo Rat. Of particular interest was the story of the Metro Police tournament at which the Kodokan judo guys won 8 out of 9 fights against jujitsu guys and fought the remaining one to a draw.

Well, I stumbled across another account of this tournament in Toshiro Daigo's Kodokan Throwing Techniques book where he gives some more interesting details. All that you ever hear about that tournament was that the inventor of the yama-arashi technique used it to win one match. Well, per Daigo (p131):

"In those matches, Kodokan players used small and agile techniques like ashi-barai, kouchi-gari, hiza-guruma, and ouchi-gari to defeat the other side, who used osoto-gari and newaza."

Did you get that? These Kodokan demigods in the late 1800's were dominating their opponents with small ashiwaza! That's a far cry from some judoka of today who seem to only want to throw huge uchimata and osotogari throws.

Some folks claim that the idea of classical judo is a myth, but I say not only is classical judo not a chupacabra, but small ashiwaza was (and still is) at the technical center of classical judo.

Want to be able to do judo like the Kodokan demigods of the late 1800's? Put in a little more study of ashiwaza.

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

3 ways to rescue a failing hip throw

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:33:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of Simmr

It's happened to everyone who has practiced judo for any length of time - you get what you think is sufficient kuzushi, turn in for your favorite hip throw, and uke blocks it or slips it. Sometimes you might want to start over with a new kuzushi, but sometimes you can rescue that dying hip throw. Here are three of the best, most common ways to save a hip throw that's not quite there.

reset the fulcrum - If you enter for a hip throw and can't get it to go, reset the fulcrum (your hip) lower. Change ogoshi to tsurikomigoshi. Change ukigoshi to hanegoshi or haraigoshi. The lower you get the pivot point, the more likely uke is to fall over it. If you can't lower the fulcrum then you might try raising your grips (eg. ogoshi to sodetsurikomigoshi). This can have the same effect.
guruma - Sometimes you can't set (or reset) the fulcrum because uke is holding back from you. If you can't get your hip into position against uke, try a guruma action - particularly ashiguruma or koshiguruma. This tactic seems to be favored by larger judoka when fixing a hip throw that is failing against a smaller opponent, perhaps because larger, slower judoka have more trouble getting turned all the way in before they are blocked or slipped.
sacrifice - Sometimes, despite getting as good a fulcrum placement as you can, you still can't make the thing go. Maybe the thrower is too small or the uke is too big. In this case, switch to a sacrifice version of the hip throw (like seoiotoshi or drop-knee seoinage or makikomi). This tactic seems to be favored by smaller judoka when throwing larger opponents because it lets the smaller player use more of his mass and it's easier for the smaller guy to drop-knee between a larger guy's feet than vice versa.

So, next time you are working your hip throws in randori and you're blocked or slipped, you might try one of these ideas to breathe some new life into a dying hip throw - reset the fulcrum, guruma, or sacrifice.

Seated or standing - mind, body, & breath

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:12:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of Stephcarter

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I prefer my seated yoga practice over my standing yoga practice. But one of the interesting things that I've known for a while but was pointed out to me lately is that the practice is a wholeness thing. Whether you're doing seated or standing or lying down or standing on your head, you're doing yoga.

Funny thing I've found is that my seated practice makes me better at my standing practice. On days when I can't drag my mind and body kicking and screaming into a standing practice, rather than fighting against that resistance, I do a nice, comfortable seated practice and more often than not I can come back to the next standing practice in a better frame of mind and performing better.

Another way of looking at the same thing is this - yoga is a wholeness - you are training your mind, body, and breath (like sanchin in karate, huh?). Whether you are doing standing or seated practice with your body, you're still training mind and breath the same, and those aspects carry over to the next training even if there is little or no crossover between the physical skills of the two practices.

Interesting, huh?

Helpful handful; 3 most common hip throw mistakes

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:27:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of Mundoo

One of the distinctive features of judo is its many varied forms of hipthrows. Judo has named hip throws from every conceivable grip with the thrower standing on two legs or one. But despite teh amazing variety of hip throw techniques in judo, they are all doing about the same thing - planting a fulcrum (tori's hip) against uke's body, taking a grip somewhere on uke's upper body, and using that grip to spin uke around the fulcrum.

When you are learning to do hip throws it seems like there are an impossible number of things to remember - where to put each hand, where to put each foot, what part of your hip to place against uke and where to put your hip, etc... But it turns out that there are only about 3 things that you can possibly mess up with a hip throw.

slippage in the grip - If you do not have a good, tight connection to uke's upper body then he can slip around in your arms and escape or your fulcrum might slip upward on his body, reducing your leverage and making the throw harder. Whatever type of grip you are taking on uke, make sure to take all the slack out from between him and you.
misplaced hip - your hip is the fulcrum that you will spin uke around. Generally you want your hips lower than uke's, and you want to place the correct part of the hip depending on the type of throw (side of hip or back of hip) so that uke doesn't slip to either side.
misplaced feet - you have to set your feet so that your weight and his is borne through your legs into the ground efficiently. This generally means getting your feet closer than hip-width apart and making sure that your feet and knees and hips are all pointing in the same direction.
I think you'll find, as I did, that the first of these three common mistakes is the easiest to fix - just take a tighter grip with less slack. The second two mistakes take a lot of repetition and experience to correct such that you can step into uke and get the correct hip and foot placement on the fly.
This is where uchikomi becomes most valuable - uke does not have to take a pounding for tori to learn to set his feet and hip properly. In fact, only doing nagekomi when learning hip throws slows you down and punishes uke unnecessarily. You can learn proper hip and foot placement much, much faster doing uchikomi and picking uke up to the edge of falling then setting him back on his feet. Also, when tori is inexperienced at setting feet and hips properly, he has to apply much more force to uke to make the hip throw work, and this leads to more awkward, punishing falls. Learn hipthrows using uchikomi and when you do start throwing nagekomi the ukemi will not be as bad.

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

How to get kids to slap when they fall

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:15:00 +0000

I had another triumph last night at the kids' judo class. This one was about how to get kids to slap properly when they fall. We'd been through all the standard exercises - rock on the back and slap, sidefall and slap big, etc... I'd told them to, "swing big," and "hit the mat harder than it hits you," and all that. But in forward rolls and airfalls, most of them would still either slap with the backs of their hands or curl the arms up against their bodies and then land on them. I'd just about worn my voice out, telling them, "don't land on your arm!"

Then it came to me. I put a spotter in to hold the hand of the lead (rolling) arm, and just before they would roll I'd have them give the spotter five with their free hand. Each time they slapped the spotter's hand I'd say, "This is your slapping hand." The fix was immediate and complete. 100% of the kids stopped landing on arms and started landing on their sides, slapping big, and slapping with their palms instead of their knuckles!

There are lots of this sort of breakthrough in teaching martial arts. Instructors strive for the right way to say it or demonstrate it to get the idea through the students' skulls, then suddenly the students get it perfect, as if you'd just now told them the right thing to do for the first time. One of my instructors long ago liked to say, "apparently the speed of sound is different for everyone because I've been telling you this same thing for years and my words have just now gotten to some of you."

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

Immunization against being thrown

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:34:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of Tcg3j

Have any of y'all noticed that in a room full of aikidoka, the person that has taken the greatest amount of light, compliant ukemi is often the hardest guy to throw against his will?

That's just the way it works. Some instructors have suggested that taking thousands of light, compliant falls for a specific throw is a lot like being immunized against that throw.

That's part of the reason that we practice with partners instead of opponents and why we preach for uke to be compliant (there's other reasons too). Even if you're not learning anything else (but you really are), then you are at least learning:

how to survive being thrown, and
how not to be thrown when you don't want to be

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

Questions about innovation in aikido

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:47:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of Can3ro55o

Is aikido perfect just the way it was handed down from Morihei Ueshiba? Was Ueshiba's magical aikido transmitted to your teacher and on to you with perfect fidelity?

Where does the innovation in the art come from? That is, who is in charge of innovating; every individual aikidoka? the mid-level instructors? only the greatest masters? Who owns aikido, along with the rights to preserve or change it?

In what other form of art is the object to faithfully reproduce the master's skill and performance?

I don't know what your answers are - I'm not even wholly sure what my own answers to these questions would be, but the traditional Japanese answer is shuhari - the three-stages of learning

Shu - to keep - your object is to learn to copy your master's skills with as perfect a fidelity as possible. This stage generally lasts to some rank around shodan (first black belt)
Ha - to break - After about shodan, you are given progressively more freedom to adapt the art to your own body and personality and preferences, while staying within the confines of your master's system and framework for the art. This stage generally lasts from about nidan (2nd black belt) to godan (5th black belt) or longer.
Ri - to leave - Eventually you are expected to transcend your master's understanding of the art, creating your own personal expression of what the art is. Many practitioners never get to this level, but if they do, it is typically after rokudan (6th black belt).

What do you think?

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

Stake standing seems to be tadasana

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:00:00 +0000

Lately, Mondays have been my day to post a yoga idea. Here's what I've been thinking about and working on lately - actually it's a martial arts/yoga crossover.

What got me thinking more about this standing introspection thing is Rick's repeated insistence that the Stake Standing practice found in some Chinese internal martial arts had benefited him in other areas, including relaxation within his martial arts techniques.

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

Explode early or ooze?

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:58:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of Simmr

For years now (nearly 20), one of my main ideas in newaza with respect to escaping hold-downs has been to see the hold coming and to explode into the proper escape technique just before the opponent got completely into it. Of course, I could still do the technical, methodical, high-leverage, maximal-efficiency escapes, but I was taught and I have been teaching that the escapes happen best when you pull the trigger just before the holder gets set. And that's a pretty good way to teach escapes.

But it's been working differently for me lately. Lately I find more and more times when I don't see the hold coming and he's pretty well settled before I can pull the trigger on the escape. In these instances I'm finding that my strength is not as explosive as it once was, so my age-old strategy has been getting me bogged down under people.

But I've still been coming out on top a lot of the time - just not by exploding early. I have found that I have been having good success controlling the top man's position so that I'm not taking as much punishment, and using that time to relax, take a breath, let it out, find the weakness in the hold, and start oozing or rolling or sliding toward that weakness.

Different strategy for me - been having good success with it.

Posture facilitates relaxation

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:58:00 +0000

One of the best ways I know of starting to relax in the context of martial arts is to get your posture working properly. Here is an article I wrote some time back on correcting posture starting at the feet, since that's where we directly interact with the largest force (gravity) and the largest object (the Earth) in our lives. Following are a couple of good videos about getting posture working rightly starting from the shoulders. Matt A. at Ikigai turned me onto the Esther Gokhale video some months ago, and I've really found it helpful.

Can you rise and fall at the same time?

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:46:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of ISAFMedia

One of the strangest phenomena in aikido (and judo and karate, etc...) is the motion of the Center of Gravity (COG) of the body as we move around. Consider this example...

From a natural, upright, relaxed posture (shizentai), take one sliding step (tsugiashi) forward a couple of feet with the left leg, then bring the right leg up under your center. During the first part of this step, as your left leg is moving, is your center of gravity rising or falling?

Falling, right? Sort of... But it's also rising at the same time! How can your center of gravity be both falling and rising at the same time?

As you take the first part of that step, your center of mass (approximated by the knot of your belt) gets closer to the ground. voila - your center is falling!

But as you separate your legs to take the step, your knees and the bottoms of your feet get closer to the top of your head. This means the mass of your legs is moving upward, floating your center of gravity along with it. Your center is no longer approximately under your belt knot - it has risen some. Voila - your center is rising!

Rising and falling at the same time! Now that's odd! But what does it mean in a practical sense?

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

Rob Redmond's Folk Dances of Shotokan

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:56:00 +0000

In case you've somehow missed out, Rob Redmond has made his very informative and detailed Folk Dances of Shotokan book available for free to download as a PDF. If you are interested in karate kata, this is a valuable resource with a unique and interesting perspective.

.
____________
Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
____________
Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo
____________
Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter

Lenten Challenge at Mokuren Dojo

pat.parker@swmrmc.org (Patrick Parker) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:25:00 +0000

Rick at Cook Ding's Kitchen has issued his yearly Lenten Martial Arts Challenge. The challenge is to work out every day during Lent - no exceptions - no excuses. I figure to ramp up my yoga practice from nearly-daily to daily, and I am also going to ramp up my aikido walking kata practice from my current 4-5 reps/week to 2-3 reps/daily. As a guide to my walking kata practice, I'll be going back to my list of 100 Terrific Things to Try in Tegatana, and focussing on each of the hints for 1-2 reps.

I don't figure to bore y'all with the daily details but I'm liable to update y'all every so often in addition to maybe posting insights that excite me about the walking kata whenever they come to me.

Anyone interested in taking Rick up on his Lenten Challenge? Hop on over there and check it out.

____________

Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮

____________

Subscribe now for free updates from Mokuren Dojo

____________

Send me an email or let's connect on Facebook or Twitter