I just got back from a four hour seminar with four different instructors, and I thought I'd whip up a quick seminar review.

Introduction

Today's seminar was held at City Aikido in San Francisco, and it was my first time at that dojo. (The parking in that area kind of sucks, although a lot of it might have been due to my not knowing the area at all. I hate one way streets.) They were holding the seminar to help them pay for new mats in their space, a good way I believe to raise money.

The four instructors were Alan Gardner, Elaine Y (I totally forget her last name), Kayla Feder, and Cindy Hayashi. They taught in that order, each of them with an hour's teaching time. There was a nearly two hour lunch break in the middle there.

Overall, there were probably about twenty-five people on the mat, about a third of whom were yudansha.

The Seminar

Alan worked with us on moving from a static position, using the hips as the source of power. I've taken a few classes with Alan up in Mill Valley when he fills in for one instructor or the other, and I have to say that his aikido is wonderfully clear and crisp -- a delight to watch and experience. I got to work with him a few times through the day. He is really, really great at taking my balance just enough so that I couldn't move forward, backward, or anywhere else than where he wanted me to go. Neat stuff.

Elaine went through a nice series of techniques including ikkyo, iriminage, and various techniques from yokomenuchi. She gave me some really nice pointers on my iriminage which I really liked. (Basically, when it came time to throw uke (by putting the throwing arm in the "wave" motion), I was backing up. She told me to stay with uke and "insist" upon the throw. In other words, "Stay connected." Duh.)

Lunch

I ate with Peter Ting (who teaches at City Aikido) and a beginning student at City Aikido. Peter has an amazing history from what I found out. He's been doing martial arts for 70 (!) years since he was four in his uncle's kungfu dojo. He said he saw "the little old man in Japan throwing people around as though it was fake" back when he was stationed there with MacArthur. His right hand is mangled (fingers crooked), but he showed me some nasty clawing movements he could do with his fingers and thumb. 70 years. Wow.

The Seminar Continues

In the second half, Kayla went through a whole bunch of stuff from yokomen uchi sankyo with variations into kotegaeshi, iriminage, and shihonage. It's always amazing to watch Kayla chucking people left and right -- that lady can produce some awesome power (and she takes truly awesome ukemi). Kayla went through each technique in a "static" manner (enter, put uke off balance, then enter behind) and in a very "shortened" energetic manner. Quite impressive. (I love watching her throw people. Have I said that?)

Cindy went through some interesting stuff from tsuki that progressed into uke's doing a tsuki to a "turn around" elbow, then shomenuchi to a tsuki, and so on. She then went and had a whole bunch of people from yudansha to the beginners through randori. The yudansha usually had one beginner and one experienced person as uke. She emphasized that we as nage should be able to accomodate our throws to uke's experience; we should only have to do as much as necessary to affect them. She then had the beginners do randori with two yudansha so as to allow the yudansha to guide them through the motions and to give the beginners a sense of accomplishment. Oh, and she kept reminding nage to smile a lot.

Conclusions and Such

I went "incognito" to the seminar -- in other words, I went with a white belt and without a hakama. It's always really, really interesting to see how people react. Once again, all of the yudansha were very respectful of my skills and the way I moved; most of them were quite happy to throw me around in highfalls, and most reacted as expected as uke.

Interestingly enough, the brown belts felt like my most "problematic" partner. One person when we were going yokomenuchi ikkyo (where nage steps in quite powerfully into the yokomenuchi elbow to take the balance) popped me in the face three times or so with an atemi when I was uke. She said "I thought you would learn to put your hand up." Although I wanted to ask her whether or not she expected uke to always ancitipate of nage's action (which I highly disagree with -- I always treat all practice, "preordained" or not, like jiyuwaza), but I didn't. (Who knows? Maybe my reaction really was slow or something...) She and another brown belt were more than apathetic when they were uke for me, too. Once again, I held back in saying anything, or pointing out openings left and right; was it my place to do so?

Who knows? Maybe it was that they just weren't impressed with the way I moved or with my sloppy techniques. But, I guess my gripe here is that I didn't feel like I was being treated with a lot of repect from a few of these people -- but then again, I guess that's what I pretty much expected from at least one or two people by going as a white belt. Sad statement, huh?

However, it did allow me to reflect upon the way that I might react toward people who, on the outside, seem like a beginner; I should see if I'm respecting them... I'll leave the moral of this story (if there is one) as an exercise to the reader.

Jun