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Hard work this practice! I have been practicing for 1 1/2 year now and today was my first encounter with the fabled yonkyo. We practiced different tecniques from elbow gi-grab, which I've forgotten the name for, and the last one was yonkyo. It didn't hurt as much as I though it would, I still got bruises on my lower arms though. Yonkyo, however, was the first technique I've encountered that didn't make sense at all to me. For all other I've instinctively understood why they work. Something like "If you bend the arm that way, it hurts" but not with yonkyo. I talked to sensei about it and he said that the "best" thing with yonkyo was that it didn't have to hurt. Nage controlls uke's arm completely and correct hip movement will take uke down even without pain. Naturally it works better if it's done right though. My 3rd kyu practice partner took his advice litterally and that's where my bruises come from. I went face first into the mat pretty much every time.
We also some kokyonage awaze, I need to work alot on my timing for it to work. I think it has to do with the break rythm to it: fast in, slow down in the breath-in/arms-up and reaccelerate in the hipmovement. The slow down, read blending, part is the hard one. It feels like I crash into uke and give him a solid elbow to the throat, dead-stop, and then comes breath-in/arms-up etc, etc. Sensei pointed that I rely on strength through part of the motion, I couldn't realise his advice.
Interesting practice today, finally figure out my falling problem. I've merged normal rolls with breakfalls into "fall over and hurt your self" ukemi. We did alot of different iriminage today and when I take a fall from iriminage I do a very obvious "mixed" fall. I think it comes from the fear of breakfalls that I had this spring.
Why is it that after a practice or two where I've learned alot there comes one or two where I just stink and cant get anything right.
Practice started with bukiwaza assorted Jo suburi and then the 13-kata. Managed allright, the ups and downs in bukiwaza aren't as big as the taijutsu ones. I worked in the kata faster than the 31(maybe because there are fewer moves .
Taijutsu was just disaster, my head was elsewere all of the time and I even botched tai no henko and got a lecture, a well deserved lecture even, on different kamai and good hanmi. We did alot of ryokatatori kihonwaza, 4th kyu test prep i think. I botched most of it, only got shihonage to work at all. Shionage mental notes: Keep the bloody head down and after the hipmove: think bokken cut.
I definately need to work with my attitude, or maybe "angle of attack" when it comes to learning aikido. My approach has so far been a mix of "well it's good exercise" and "Practice makes perfect or at least O'Sensei says so". Have to give it some though.
Today it finally happened. I moved and blended with and opposing force, guided it and got to the point where I could apply a technique. I think that this was an intentional result of senseis teachings. About halfway though our regular warm-up drill sensei completely dropped our regular moves and started with some paired push-and-keep-your-balance exercises. This happens now and then, we do a few of thoose and continue with warmup. But not today!
It started with a simple exercise where uke should keep pressure on nage's open hand with a closed fist. Alot of "running around chasing nage" later we moved on to a kote-gaishi entry with the same "rules", i.e. uke keeps up pressure and nage finds an opening for kote-gashi. This worked fairly well and felt natural. By this time everyone was panting and/or bathed in sweat and I was so into it I've forgotten which techniques/entries we did. It was way over my skill level but on the third or fourth variant with alot of instructions from my 3rd kuy uke it happened. He applied force, I met it a little bit, did a tai henko, kept up the rotation, turned and voila, uke had to take a breakfall(a little one but still a breakfall). The whole process was entirly without force, read strength, from my part. I just stood there and scratched my head, no clue of how I did it. I know that I felt it, when he was just the right amount of balance and going, for him, the wrong way. Man this Aikido stuff is cool! I'm convinced that the fatigue had a pa
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I did my first practice since spring yesterday and it went great. I started out with a feeling that I'd forgotten everything and it was a great feeling to find out that I really remembererd alot. It was even better to find out that my "muscles" rememberd more than my brain did and moved correctly on their own accord a few times. I the bukiwaza class we did the entire Jo 31-kata, my first time doing the entire kata. It worked great except for moves 9 and 10, where I constantly ended up with the wrong fot forward going into 11.
In the regular class we did different techniques with a yokomen uchi attack. It was my first time doing most of them from that attack but I picked them up real quick and even got a flow of sorts going in some.
The sankyo grip almost worked as well. I have had alot of trouble with it, misaligning my hands so the grip looses it's effectiveness.
10-16-2004 07:06 AM 
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