AikiWeb: The Source for Aikido Information AikiWeb's principal purpose is to serve the Internet community as a repository and dissemination point for aikido information.
Hello and thank you for visiting AikiWeb, the
world's most active online Aikido community! This site is home to
over 22,000 aikido practitioners from around the world and covers a
wide range of aikido topics including techniques, philosophy, history,
humor, beginner issues, the marketplace, and more.
If you wish to join in the discussions or use the other advanced
features available, you will need to register first. Registration is
absolutely free and takes only a few minutes to complete so sign up today!
current status: not sure, tired
location: home
sounds: nada
class tonight was fun. i brought cupcakes to celebrate a few things. sarah obtaining her 4th kyu rank, and jeff obtaining his green belt in tang soo do. also, tj gonzales tested some of us for our advanced white belts in modern arnis/the progressive system. we all passed. roman had us doing some more advanced techniques, but hey... we all rocked.
so, after our short test, we joined the rest of the class. we went over the basic takeaways for strikes 1-9. very awesome since i think i'm pretty adept with 1-4. five was a toughie... but i worked with roman and he was pretty awesome with his patience.
after the arnis section, we took a mini break... and grabbed our tanto. we proceeded to do two kevin blok shihan kata. i'm not sure if they are those of his own making, or if they were created by others... either way, there are three and we learned (again) the first two. perhaps next week or the week after, we will learn how to do the kata two-person. the kata is designed, nage with tanto, uke with bokken.
then we picked up the jo staff. to my surprise, i actually knew more of the two jo kata than brian did. egad. i didn't realise he didn't know the second to last hidden strike, which explains why he was totally lost when i tried explaining it to him. luckily, sarah came to the rescue and mentioned it. she also showed me hidden strikes for #13, and #17. i guess i'm ready to work on those now. i'm getting better at my blocks. now that i know both kata pretty well (well enough for me for the level i'm at), i am able to focus on blocks more.
brian is also 7th kyu. it is my hope to test with him since he's a little bit a head of me. it is my hope, actually, that fred, brian, and myself all test together for our 6th kyu. hopefully, i can be ready in time. it is also my hope that fred, brian, and i will continue our aikido/aikijitsu journey together at the same pace.
the bokken portion was fun. we went over "the long kata". does this kata have a name? i dunno. perhaps i will find out this weekend. "the long kata" was kinda neat. i think i'd like to learn it more thoroughly, but my first taste of it was nice. i really wanted to go over shiba/chiba (?) kata for bokken... but since ken is testing for 2nd kyu on sunday, tonight was really for him.
we picked up the jo again and did some jo-waza and jo-dori. then we picked up the tanto and did "gokkyu" or something. now... i'm only 5'2", and fred is a good foot or more taller than i am. my performing the technique on him was quite interesting. "jump sita!!" egad. after goofing off for a moment or two, he was nice and lowered his arm so i could do the technique.
gene once mentioned that seeing fred and i work together as almost like seeing his two pets, daisy (the petite little cat) and auggie (the doggy) play together. daisy's usually in charge while auggie is more apt to just roll over and let daisy do whatever. and that's almost how it is. almost. fred's pretty gentle with me, while i tend to crank it on him a tad.
most of my partners are like that, though. i had to keep telling jeff, one night, to grab harder... or whatnot. jeff is learning!
the last 20 minutes of actual class time went by fast. i think tucker-sensei just wanted to go over things quickly as a refresher for ken.
so, yah... 2nd kyu testing... sunday... at 10am. i'll be there at 10 and be in my dogi just in case. will snap pictures also. i've seen shodan testing and nidan, but never 2nd kyu. should be oodles of learning!
after class... a few of us meandered on over to the downtown starbuck's. they all had the same thing, tazoberry. i had water. sweets didn't seem appealing at the time. we talked... and exchanged some inside-dojo humour about how to obtain nidan in less than a year!
07-19-2003 01:20 AM 
