Shochugeiko, day 4

We're four days into Shochugeiko, with today's technique being sankajo.

In the early morning class, we looked at shomen uchi sankajo osae II in depth, focusing on the strike, pivot and entry into the sankajo lock. Sensei emphasized the importance of the circle that uke's wrist makes, starting with the strike, moving down a little as shite pivots, bring the arm back, and then the wrist moves back up as the sankajo lock is applied. Easy, right?

My goal for Shochugeiko

Today was the second day of Shochugeiko (暑中稽古), or mid-summer training. For 10-days over the two hottest weeks of the year, our dojo challenges the students to train every morning. We did eight ikkajo techniques this morning, spending about 5 min on each one.

Last year I was almost a complete novice during Shochugeiko, and so didn't understand most of the techniques. I just tried to mimic what I saw and did my best to keep up. There's not really any time to focus on any technique in depth. This year, I understand a little more but I'm still missing a lot of detail on the techniques. I'm able to mimic the motions well enough, but the techniques don't actually feel like their working.

We have a fair number of beginners doing Shochugeiko and I'm finding this to be both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that I can practice the techniques on someone that responds more like some would in a "real" situation, and the curse is that beginners respond without understanding what the shite is doing.

I know that's saying the same thing, but the reason it's good is because an inexperienced uke forces you to be more sure of your balance and movements than an uke who knows what you're going to do next. At the same time, an inexperienced uke has trouble blending with the shite, making the learning process for shite more difficult. The uke will put up more resistance, and personally, I find myself resorting to powering through the technique when I feel uke's resisting too much. Finding the "no-power" line in the technique is tough when you know you can get through the technique by applying a little muscle.

My goal for the rest of the week, "no-power" Aikido. Relax the shoulders, sink my weight into my center, and keep my energy forward.

Osu!

Saturday Night Special

It's been another good week of training, with me being able to attend every class this week. I'm still pretty wiped after two hours of training in the morning 3 days a week, but I can already feel my body getting used to it. But I'll be glad when the heat isn't such an issue.

Tonight Saori ran the class, as both Sensei were unable to attend and it was a great class. The four people who came each chose a technique and we did ikkajo, sankajo, shihonage, and kotegaeshi. We mostly did shomen and yokomen uchi, along with the suwari waza counterpart, but for the sankajo, we did ushiro ryotemochi sankajo osae I & II. I had only practiced this technique maybe once, and it's nice to train on techniques I don't know so well.

A frustrating thing about kotegaeshi, when turning the uke's hand to move into the kotegaeshi, right before the throw, I can conceptualize the correct movement, and at times I feel I have pieces of the movement correct, but I have yet to feel I have the uke locked before the throw. Tonight I tried to connect the movement of my hips with my arm, hand, and into the uke, but I think I need a full class on just that part of kotegaeshi.

So many flaws, and so little time to fix them. See you on the mat. Osu!

Summer has arrived

I started attending the early morning class last week and this combined with the rising temperature and accompanying humidity had me pretty wiped out by the end of the week. However, I did make it to all but the Friday morning class, making a total of 9 hours of training last week. Not bad.

The Friday and Saturday night classes were really enjoyable. In spite of being incredibly hot and humid in the dojo, both classes were fast paced and with more focus on fluidity and speed, obviously an essential element in Aikido. Friday night we worked on yokomen jiyuwaza techniques, shihonage, ikkajo, katatemochi and udegarami. In Saturday's class, we worked on katatemochi techniques, the first being a kokyu-ho, followed by strange, shihonage-based technique.

I really need to work on my flips, if only to use less energy when taking uke repeatedly. I'm so jealous when watching someone talented flipping and getting back to their feet. It looks like it takes no effort at all.

Semi-hajimi with Yonkajo

We worked on yonkajo this morning. This is a technique I've learned to like. I had trouble understanding how it worked at the beginning, but now I find it fun to do, and it effectiveness is gradually increasing. Roland Sensei had us practice shomen uchi yonkajo osae I & II, finishing the class with a short hajime-like training. It wasn't a full-blown hajime, as he had us start slow and gradually picked up the pace.

A new student came to the dojo for his first class and ended up training with me. He's done Tomiki Aikido before, so he understood the idea behind the techniques, but the details were quite different. The class was pretty fast paced, but he walked off the mat with a big smile, so I think he had a good time.

quick note on Saturday night

Last night we worked on shomen tsuki shomen iriminage I and II. We practiced the two techniques and then did them both in hajime (continuous doing the technique quickly over and over) for 10-15 minutes. I hadn't done hajime in a little while and really enjoyed it. We finished the class with a kokyu-ho technique in kagarigeiko.

During class, a few times I found myself using the strength in my shoulders. I need to be sure to focus on starting the movement in my hips and using that power instead.

Chino Sensei at Honbu Dojo

Last night I made the trek out to Honbu Dojo for Chino Sensei's class. There were twenty-five students or so on the mat, a good number for the size of the dojo. Surprisingly, a large portion of the students were brown belts. Usually when I go to Honbu, a most of the students are black belt, with a few browns and whites sprinkled in, but for some reason, most of last night's class were browns belts, with some white belts and just a few blacks. Strange, but in no way was that a detriment to the class.

We did a number of techniques that I either had never seen before or have only done once or twice. Here's a list:

katatemochi ikkajo osae I (suwariwaza & tachiwaza)
I was wondering how to do this one few weeks ago. I'm glad I got a chance to try it out.

katatemochi kotegaeshi I & II
My kotegaeshi experience to date has mostly been with shomen uchi. I found these techniques rather fun, with the interesting direction change in the middle of the technique.

To finish the class, Chino Sensei did another variation on katatemochi kotegaeshi II, but with just one pivot from ai-hanmi and a shuffle forward. I couldn't get the handwork on this one, but I'm not discouraged; I'll get it to work eventually.

Osu!