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Attended another basics class, as I can't make Friday class due to work
This time we had a completely new student on the mat, for his first ever class, and Sensei ran through a LOT of techniques!! I hope the poor guy wasn't thinking he ought to remember any of them by the end
The new guy was very keen and very flexible, so applying shihonage to him was a bit of a nightmare - he kept twisting out of the technique instead of flowing with it Sensei explained that he had to go with the flow, as we wouldn't be applying techniques hard and fast to him until he has learned to take the ukemi As it was, he was suffering from the usual tangle of legs and lack of co-ordination in lowering his body to the ground, so we were taking it easy on him! Towards the end of class I cranked a shihonage on him with a little more power and heard / felt his shoulder crunch whoops! but he didn't twist out of that one He said he was ok, and that was probably what he needed to help him understand where he was supposed to move to
I got to train with our 2nd kyu student for one technique, ai-hanmi nikyo. This is a fun one, because a few years ago I learned how to apply this one in the context of controlling uke's centre, rather than relying on the pain response Asked uke to resist with full power, and after a bit of a struggle, was able to do it, keeping the wrist fairly close to my centre, staying relaxed, and aiming my power through his arm, down his body, and straight into his centre with the thought "DROP". He dropped I don't know if this would work on a big hairy 5th dan with wrists like tree trunks, but as we don't have one, anybody stronger than me will do
We did some knife defences as well, which I have always enjoyed doing. One of our ungraded students was being a little sloppy about the blade (it's a wooden tanto) so I told him that back in the old days we used to use live blades (I did my 2nd kyu test knife defences against one), and that you must always think of a wooden tanto as being a live blade. He asked when he'd get to have a go with the real thing, and I laughed and said he wouldn't, as we are not insured for such practise, and we stopped using them a long time ago
After class Sensei said that he couldn't believe it's been more than 2 years since I was training, as I don't seem to have lost anything in my movements I admitted that I had surprised myself with my ukemi, and was very pleased that nothing had caused any problem to my injury so far
In terms of technique, I am sometimes struggling to remember how to do things Aikikai syle as I always default to Traditional, having trained mostly in that before, but fortunately Sensei is patient and corrects me when I get it muddled up
06-03-2009 10:28 AM 
Sensei explained that he had to go with the flow, as we wouldn't be applying techniques hard and fast to him until he has learned to take the ukemi 
As it was, he was suffering from the usual tangle of legs and lack of co-ordination in lowering his body to the ground, so we were taking it easy on him! Towards the end of class I cranked a shihonage on him with a little more power and heard / felt his shoulder crunch 
whoops! but he didn't twist out of that one 
I don't know if this would work on a big hairy 5th dan with wrists like tree trunks, but as we don't have one, anybody stronger than me will do 
