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<blogEntries>
<blogEntry id="3735">
	<title><![CDATA[culture]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[I often wonder if there's so much politics in Aikido because we've adopted enough of a Japanese view point to be offended but not enough of a cultural understanding to recognise that certain behaviors would be insulting in a semi-japanese space.]]></body>
	<date>11-24-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3715">
	<title><![CDATA[Change ukemi!]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[So the instructor calls out, "Change ukemi!" I've already taken ukemi for the person closest to me so I get up and sprint down the mat for the other person. I arrive there and I can feel this feeling on the left hand side of my face. I look over and Sensei had jumped up from the grading panel to take ukemi. 

So I stared him down. :D 

Got complimented on my ukemi, apparenly it's "excellent." :D]]></body>
	<date>11-09-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3708">
	<title><![CDATA[Grading panel]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[Today we held junior gradings and for the third time Sensei had me sit next to him while he conducted them. I wasn't asked my opinion this time though, although I was immediately put to work correcting them all after the grading while he made up his mind on who had passed, which turned out to be all of them.

You know something though, when I was called out by Sensei I thought of it as a great privilege, thirty minutes later I wasn't so sure as my legs had gone to sleep. Mind you it was better than the excruciating pain I was in. :D]]></body>
	<date>11-07-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3705">
	<title><![CDATA[Guard differences]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[Sporting guards: e.g boxing guards. Short to allow opponent into optimum striking range, allows full range of attacks to be used. Relies on physically stopping the blow. Leaves the centreline undefended to allow jabs and crosses easy access to the face. No need to overcome the guard before attacking the defender as defender and the guard can be attacked simultaneously. 

Martial guards: Extended with hands placed in front to physically control the centreline making attacks along it easy to deflect or block and forcing the attacker to attack from outside of arms reach and allowing the defender better control of mai-ai. Both aspects limiting attackers choice of attacks and forces the attacker to defeat the guard before attacks can be made to the body of the defender, potentially forcing the attacker into over commited attacks in an attempt to smash through the guard.  Uncommitted attacks are defeated by a combination of distancing, movement and parrying.]]></body>
	<date>11-04-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3640">
	<title><![CDATA[Quirks I like in our dojo]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[I hear through the grapevine that in actual fact things at HQ seem to have improved. People are working together rather than bonking  heads.

In other news a new guy showed up at our dojo. Apparently he likes our atmosphere, he visited some other dojo where there "Was no talking when everyone came in, no talking when everyone got on the mat, no talking when sensei came on the mat and no talking when everyone went home."

Sounds like a cheery place. :p  Sensei commented that he wished we'd talk less; it is one of his ongoing battles and I doubt he'll ever win it. 
Our dojo at times can be rather rowdy and rauchous with pleanty of banter; it's a very lively place with lots of big personalities.
Most of that is a ton of communication between uke and tori that I've not found in any other dojo. Uke will tell tori what they felt and will actively tell tori what to do during the technique so that tori can adjust their technique as they're going.
And then in the interval where tori and uke swap over there's some kind of banter or repetition of a running joke, "It'd be far easier if we just used guns you know" "Lacks finesse though" "We could do a western style shoot out" "Ahhh, that's a good idea" *bow*. :D 
Or, again unique in my experience, there'll be a brief discussion between uke and tori about what tori is working on and what they want from uke or what uke wants from tori. Or perhaps uke will tell tori what he needs to do next time, "You need to cut up more, you're almost there, just needs a little bit more." "Get that heel down!" "Why are you so tall? It disrupts my awesome technique, I want you three inches shorter by next week!" :D 

And when Sensei demonstrates we don't always just sit there and watch sometimes we can end up in full blown discussions and debates. Training doesn't start until everyone's clear in their mind what Sensei wants. Or Sensei gets fed up and says "Enough, practice."
Uke also has a unique role during demonstrations in that he's expected to floor or hit Sensei if possible. We have a score board in fact. 1 point for a punch 2 points for a strike with a weapon and 3 if you manage to floor him. I am top of the leader board. :D 
Sensei and the uke work in partnership, Sensei as part of his demonstration will make deliberate mistakes and uke is expected to expolit them to demonstrate to the class why techniques are done as they are.
This occasionally means that if you screw up in practice someone will floor you, enter in with the wrong foot in our dojo and you may end up learning what sukui nage is. Goof up irimi nage and you'll get thrown with ippon seoi nage.

All in all our dojo is a much more interesting place to train than any other Aikido dojo I've been in.]]></body>
	<date>09-23-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3631">
	<title><![CDATA[Hai ho Hai Ho.......]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[I don't want to go training. It's a course and I hate courses, no-one trains with kyu grades on courses; we're avoided like the plauge.
Then there's the reason I'm going. I'm off to brown nose some shidoin so that finally I can pass 1st kyu.
Not that after two years of failing it I care about it, but Sensei wants me to pass it and so I'm playing "Sensei says." Sensei says pass 1st kyu, I do it.

Not that anyone gives a flying f*** about shodan because the way the past two years have gone has pretty much devalued rank to the point were no-one in my dojo sees any value in grading. Last night Bob said, he's said it before, that he probably wont bother with Shodan because the only way to get it is to kiss ass and if he has to do that then it instantly devalues shodan to the point of worthlessness. I totally agree. In fact all the senior students are struggling to find a reason to take shodan.

I hear the shidoin are bitching because 1st kyu gradings interupt the teachers course. Which is ironic because the reason 1st kyu gradings were moved to teachers courses was that most shidoin found something better to do when gradings were held and so putting together a panel was becoming impossible.

Not that 1st kyu gradings are held in front of a panel even on teachers courses. Nope usually we're shuffled into a back room where we're asked a bunch of interesting questions about which teachers we've been training with. Then after we've failed we're politely told not to train with other people and advised that perhaps if we trained with them that we'd be 1st kyu by now.

So here I am again for the fourth time. It's something when your instructor says that you need to kiss arse at HQ in order to get your grading. I feel an attack of honesty coming on.]]></body>
	<date>09-18-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3610">
	<title><![CDATA[Opening your hip]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[I found this video of Bas Rutten: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5iTWCwlZyM 

The insert link thingy hates me by the way.

How many Aikido techniques is that hip opening movement found in really?]]></body>
	<date>09-05-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3602">
	<title><![CDATA[Drinking]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[We were wandering from bar to bar, as we do when we get fed up of our usual drinking spots and we found this bar. The decor was a bit funky, but it was quiet and importantly the bar was well stocked and looked capable of supporting a long night of binge drinking so we decided to stay.
We get our drinks and find a spot close to the dance floor. At this point there are three of us and maybe five guys by the front door where we’d come in. 
It occurs to me that there aren’t any women in the place. But there were only a handful of people there so it was reasonable to assume that this was the reason for the lack of women. The music was a little too loud to chat and there was no atmosphere in the place so we’re sort of looking around, checking the place out. Soon we stop looking around the room and we start looking at each other with that look that says “There’s something not right here.” The walls are covered with pictures of glamorous female movie stars from the thirties and the whole place was just a little camp. 
My mate to the left of me leans in and he says, “Those guys by the door keep looking us over.” I have a look and sure enough they’re looking but there’s no hint of hostility. Then one of the guys gets up, walks in the campest fashion ever to the dance floor and begins dancing rather provocatively about three feet away from us.
“Lads” I say, “There are no women in here, the décor is just a little bit camp and there is a guy in front of us dancing like a loony.” “Yeah” my mate says, “and those guys are eyeing us up and it might just be me but the barman looks just a little bit camp.”
Everyone sighs.  “We’ve walked into a gay bar” I groan “No wonder we haven’t been in here before” laughs my mate. “Ok, nobody panic, let’s just drink up and fuck off.” Everyone agrees this is a good idea. 
At this point our experiences with Irish car bombs came into play. For those who don’t know an Irish car bomb is a drink. You get maybe 2/3 of a pint of Guinness and then, in a double shot glass, one shot of Jameson’s whiskey and a shot of Baileys. You drop the shot glass into the Guinness and then knock the whole lot back in one go. Awesome drink. For about three months my dojo’s Saturday night drinking was pretty much Grolshe, Absinthe (Parisienne not that Bohemian nonsense) and Irish car bombs. Yes. I know; our drinking habits are alarming. The owner of a bar bet us that if we could drink a bottle of tequila he’d buy us glasses with our names engraved on them. He lost. 
Suffice to say that we proudly carry on the tradition of uchi deshi going out drinking. Fortunately we don’t have to worry about O-Sensei leaping out of the dark and hitting us with a bokken when we roll in in the morning and Friday night is always a dry night because of Saturday’s training. 
I digress. So we knock back our drinks and head for the nearest exit. The rear exit. Jokes were made about that all night.]]></body>
	<date>08-27-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3592">
	<title><![CDATA[Alternative training]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[Three man attack: Good training for mosh pits. :D]]></body>
	<date>08-17-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3589">
	<title><![CDATA[To flip things around]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[Can you stop 10-14 stone of charging Aikidoka with jab? :D 


Answers on a postcard.]]></body>
	<date>08-15-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3581">
	<title><![CDATA[Karate and Ketsan's exercise]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[On wednesday night I trained at my mates father's dojo, which I do from time to time, after all they need regular visits from me, being as I am 8th Dan shihan in Karate...........:D 
That's what my friends dad tells his students anyway. :D  Once a student asked who I'd trained under in Japan and I just said "Serious people." No-ones yet clocked on why I can't do a single kata correctly yet though.:D 

I actually find Karate classes to be a doddle. There's no getting slammed into the floor or put in a submission or being made to drag my tired body off the mat when I'd rather just lay there and make sure there are no bumps in it. :D  Somehow getting kicked and punched just doesn't bother me anymore. I think once you're used to having a bokken getting bounced off your skull getting hit in the head just isn't a worry.
Even the cardiovascular stuff isn't that taxing compared to my normal Aikido practice.

Sparing was fun, I can't believe anyone thinks of it as training for real fighting, but it is fun. Caught the instructor good and propper once. I used a hooking kick to sweep his lead leg, which brought him forward onto my punch. I managed to keep all the dan grades on the back foot, I wish there'd been a mat. I'd have had so much fun.

I find that when I spar with my mates from striking arts they're ok provided you trade strikes with them, as soon as I cover up and enter in though I find that something like irimi nage or tenchi nage becomes inevitable. I find that I end up.........I call it climbing all over them, I climb all over their guard, all over them in fact. 

I reccomend that any Aikidoka spar with a striker and just see how close they can get and see what they can get a hand on. I have this little exercise, let's call it Ketsan's exercise.

Try hugging the dude, try tapping his elbows when his guard is up, then shoulders, then wrists, then try tapping with both hands at the same time. Tap with your palms though, not your fingers. And try making atemi at their face through their elbow, good things come from it. Remember your taisabaki, keep off their centre line while keeping them in yours and just play patti cake with them, keeping your guard up.

Then when you can get a palm on them, grab. Just little grabs and when you can grab places at will with one hand, do it with two. Then add entering movements and mix in some tegatanas. So you're entering and grabbing. When you can do that, enter, grab and push or turn.

The final phase is to execute this with intent. As soon as you've touched gloves or bowed or done whatever, you charge in. 

To be honest Ketsan's exercise doesn't really teach anything that Aikidoka don't already know, it's just a vehicle for teaching an Aikidoka what they've learned.]]></body>
	<date>07-30-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3557">
	<title><![CDATA[More paintball injury!]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[It was my own fault. I play very aggressively. :D  I forgot to organise suppressing fire and forgot about the element of suprise and so got well and truely lit up. I have twenty welts on me that are about one and a half inches across. So I was already limping from that when the second game started.

My second attack worked much better, I organised it futher back so that the enemy couldn't see me marshalling people for an attack, whispered my intentions to the people around me rather than yelling and organised pleanty of suppression fire. 

Everything was going so well. I counted down "Three, two, one.....GO!" I lept up, everyone else went with me and we stormed forward the noise from the guys laying down fire for us was awesome, they were really laying it down. So I'm dashing up the field with my suicide squad, paint is flying around all over the place, we bunkered about 5 people on the way. I come dashing through the smoke (smoke grenades are a must in this kinda situation) a guy pops up from behind the bunker we were running for and he got lit up by the guys laying down suppression fire. I didn't see the other two guys get hit so I hit the deck slid into the bunker.

No, not into cover behind the bunker, INTO the bunker, car crash stylee. :D OMG does my knee hurt. Not that I cared, no, I just popped a grenade over the bunker, then crawled around. Then I rolled around in agony. :D 

I think between paintball and Aikido I'm now largely indifferent to pain. Earlier in the day some dude with an angel opened up on me as I was running, I felt a load of balls hit me and all of them bounced, I could feel my body start to curl up, but I forced it to keep running, got off a few shots, nailed him, slid in behind a bunker superman stylee.:D 

The good news is that sensei is on holiday for three weeks, so there wont be any questions or wise cracks about how I got my welts and bruises. :D  And I wont get moaned at for getting injured.
Sometimes I feel like a football player or something, it seems like he's not so much bothered about any pain I might be in but that he has a player out! :D]]></body>
	<date>07-20-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3545">
	<title><![CDATA[Sensei's only student]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[I feel like Sensei's only student at the moment. For whatever reason there have been at least four classes recently where it's just been me and him. I feel like I'm in the Aikido fast lane now though. Who else gets one on one tuition around here?

Yesterday Sensei asked me if I was willing to put in some hard slog and go for the 1st kyu grading on the 19th. I can't resist a challenge like that so I agreed. They're going to fail me regardless of what I do, but I enjoy the odd couple of weeks of really intense practice where I'm putting in six days a week or so. I like that feeling of being ground down and just carrying on and of settling into a rhythm.

Plus a couple of personal projects I've been working on for the past seven months are, well, on hold for a while and the training is a useful distraction. You could say one set of intense training has been replaced by another.]]></body>
	<date>07-09-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3544">
	<title><![CDATA[Scary posture]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[I was having coffee with a friend of mine that occasionally practices Aikido and a man walked past that had very good posture and I remarked upon it. She agreed and I, jokingly, said, "It's almost as good as mine." "Your's is different" she says "Different, how?" "Your's is more centered and he's just walking as if he has a purpose. Your's is menacing, when you walk into a place people look at you and they get worried." "I probably get that from Sensei." "No, he's more of a stealth assasin, you're getting that way but you're not there yet. He doesn't look menacing and imposing, you do. You look like you're about to amush someone."


This explains a lot.]]></body>
	<date>07-09-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3534">
	<title><![CDATA[Life is war]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[Saturday night was a watershed moment in my training. There wasn't a fight or anything like that. In seven years of training I've changed beyond all recognition. The shy, angry, ignorant, insecure person that walked into my Sensei's dojo seven years ago has died. The last vestiges of him slipped peacefully away about 12am on saturday night.

I feel this break with the past and the hours since then have been spent mulling over how I got here. The answer is budo. I am obsessed with it and it dominates my thinking. I'm hesitant to say Aikido though, I don't think it's O-Sensei's message that has got me here, not on it's own. For me budo is practical, it is how I live my life. 
The attitudes I display towards uke is the attitude I take with me into life day to day and the attitude I have towards training is the attitude I have towards life as a continuing process.

In the face of uke you must act decisively, you must end the situation before it can get out of hand, nip it in the bud. He must not even be allowed to complete his attack. Half way through shomen he should hit the mat.

You must be filled with resolve and admit no doubt into your mind. No limiting thought can be allowed to dwell in your head, you must enter in boldly. You must embody "katana ore ya mo tsuki." 

I always think of my mind as my spear, my physical Aikido as my sword, and my game as my yoroi doshi (cuz once the spear has got her where I want her I draw my yoroi doshi and I go up and under the armour or through a gap in it and straight for her heart :D ) if I loose one weapon or if it isn't appropriate I draw another and another and another until I win. 
I use everything at my disposal. And I'm always seeking to add weapons, every new skill is a weapon in your arsenal. And you must constantly be sharpening and looking after your weapons. My sword is not complete, but with every class, with every correction sensei makes it becomes more complete.
Confidence is my armour. To make armour I should imagine requires hammering a lot of metal, confidence is born out of getting a lot of hammering and coming through it. Each hammer blow might be tiny but it makes the armour stronger.

You must, however, be aware of what is going on, you can not just be bloody minded and push through regardless, that leads to your own destruction. You have to be in tune with reality, aware of your ability and aware of ukes ability, aware of the circumstances.

In life you must be continually growing. You have to have the guts to look at yourself in the mirror and see everything that's wrong with you and you have to train yourself up to remove these negative aspects. Just like in training, if your shiho nage has a flaw you can't just accept it and move on, you acknowledge the flaw and correct it.

You also have to have the wisdom to see all the good bits too, there's no point beating yourself up. Imagine if you went training and all sensei did was lay into you. Wouldn't be training long, would you?
In fact you shouldn't really get emotionally involved with your problems, there's no point, you're in the process of getting rid of them, why get emotionally attached? Just let them die.

Then you apply this thinking not only to yourself but to the rest of the world. You want something? Go train yourself up for it and go and get it. When I realised that I could do this I thought to myself "The world is a candy shop, and I have daddy's credit card."
It occurs to me writing this now that I have the shop keeper at spear point, therefore, I de facto own the shop.

Then when you have this training you know what to do, you know when and where you can resolutely push through and when and were you can push all you want and get no where. At this point you can still be slowed down, unexpected things will show up, things you have not trained for. But you can learn from that, modify your training and push forward. You become unstoppable, each trip, each fall only makes you better prepared in the long run.
Your mental weapons, your skills, unlike steel weapons, do not become blunt through use, they become ever sharper, ever more effective.

If you only have the resolve to keep trying and the wisdom to learn and adapt to circumstances victory is certain. Resolve is the easy bit too. 

"I can't do this" is the single most stuipid thought ever to pass through the human mind. "I've tried, I can't do it" is the second most stupid thought. Try a different way. Try a different henka of the technique, try a different technique. Have you tried all the henka of all the techniques? No, so you haven't tried and failed, you've made a half arsed effort and wussed out. Are you sure you were trying correctly? A crap technique will not work even if attempted a million times. 

The point is, how do you know you can't do it? How do you know you've given it a serious shot at trying. Well it's very difficult. So "I've tried, I can't do it" is a very bold statement. In that case, since in all honesty you haven't really tried, why would you give up?

As we say in budo "Just train."]]></body>
	<date>06-22-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3522">
	<title><![CDATA[keep your helmet on]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[The two most important things Aikido has taught me: 

1. If you're not dead, you can still win. In judo you get thrown you've lost, in Aikido getting thrown means nothing. You get up and fight until you can't fight any longer. Seven times down eight times up. Nine times up, one thousand times up, more, if need be. And what do you do when you get up? You get back into the fight. 

2. Whatever the challenge, you can train yourself to deal with it. Someone else has probably found a way of dealing with it, copy them. "I can't do this" is a daft view point. "I don't know how" is a more productive and accurate one.

My particular area of interest is women, but it applies to everything. I hate it when guys are like "she's out of my league." Defeatist talk of any kind annoys me but this especially. To misquote Iida Harima no Kami "You should at least see the colour of the enemy's flags."

Now, admittedly, he did get shot in the head just after saying it, but still, I think that reinforces the point that one's helmet belongs on ones noggin at all times whilst on the battlefield rather than discrediting the general principle that it's better to have a go, fail and learn so that you can win next time than not try and never succeed.

It's also my feeling that in all situations one should put some atemi in to see what happens. You can't say "It's impossible" until you've put in atemi and gauged the reaction.

In paintball, one of my other passions, it is said that if you don't get shot, you're not really playing the game. I think this is too is a principle of martial arts. 
I know, generally we think of martial arts as the avoidance of getting shot, but it isn't. It is learning behavior that lessens the risk of getting shot. On a long enough time scale, you will get shot. Incidently it is commonly held in my dojo that getting shot in the head (with a paintball) is an excellent hang over cure. You have to be mad to train where I train.

This is where the whole "way of the warrior is found in death" thing comes from and why it is critical to everything. It's just the same as saying "At some point, no matter how good you are, you will fail" and on the battlefield failure meant you came home minus your head, which it has been said, can result in a serious and often perminent case of death.

So denying that you can fail or hiding from it isn't the way to go. The only sensible thing is to seek failure, to seek death, and get past your fear of it. So when she, to return to my previous theme, rejects you, you just brush it off, learn from your mistake and succeed elsewhere.

Life is so much like taking ukemi. You get flattened, you get up, you get flattened, you get up, you get flattened and if you're smart you learn from it and you learn to let go of your fear of it.

Life is also so much like study of technique, in fact life is largely the study of technique. Whatever you want you can have if you simply study how others got it in the same way you study how your instructor does shiho nage. Once you know how, you just keep taking ukemi until you get there.]]></body>
	<date>06-14-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3521">
	<title><![CDATA[So basic, it's advanced!]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[Yesterday I got to teach. I was teaching n00bs so I tried to simplify things. For instance they were using their shoulders too much so I started teaching a variation of irimi nage which didn't use the shoulders. As in I chucked out half of the technique and stripped it down to essentials.

Then sensei insisted that I teach basics because what I was teaching was too advanced. Confusion reigned.]]></body>
	<date>06-14-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3515">
	<title><![CDATA[Power and butter.]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[What a week. I've always had the feeling of applying technique to uke. This week has been quiet though, usually only myself and Bob training so Sensei has been fine tuning us, going though things slowly and stuff. Mainly we've done kokyu ho rather than technique.

Then on thursday both Bob and I found that the feeling of applying technique had gone and has been replaced by a feeling of pushing a hand through very warm butter.

We were doing tenchi nage and I was searching for the applying feeling and Sensei stopped me and asked what I was doing, told me to stop and corrected me back into the warm butter feeling.

Thing is the warm butter feeling was making me think that I wasn't  doing anything and that therefore Bob was jumping. Bob told me it was just as powerful as before though, Then we swapped over and Bob, to me, felt just as powerful but again he had the warm butter feeling rather than the applying feeling. So, like me, he changes his technique back into the applying feeling and like me, get's told off and corrected.

Que ten minute discussion with Sensei. Then kokyu which was fun because both of us were quite excited about being able to casually belt each other up and down the mat with no effort.

I'm confused as hell about what I'm doing differently though, I really have no idea. I can't even describe the feeling, I get a headache just thinking about it because it just doesn't make sense.]]></body>
	<date>06-06-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3510">
	<title><![CDATA[Jo work]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[So I go out to the garden to practice the 26 count kata. He (my bro who's like 42? He's an old person :D ) comes running out with a bokken raised in jodan. So I enter in, drop on one knee and make tsuki for his throat. Attack stopped. I try to go back to training. He attacks, I parry and again make tsuki for his throat. This degenerates into a fight with him cutting at me and me poking him in the knee, ribs, belly and throat.]]></body>
	<date>05-29-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3509">
	<title><![CDATA[atemi]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[My bro's up for the week. As usual he's driving me nuts by constantly laying into me. Even more annoying is that he attacks me 24/7 so I have to  be on guard all the time I'm in the house. I can't make a cup of tea without risking a punch in the ribs.

I have found a solution though, atemi. It's amazing how much peace and quiet I've got since I started putting him off with atemi.
Today I had to squeeze past him in the hall, which usually get's me a poke in the ribs, c'ept this time I threw a punch at his face and darted through while he was distracted.]]></body>
	<date>05-27-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3491">
	<title><![CDATA[violence]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[If a self defence system was created that was highly effective, quite easy to learn but required no physical contact I reckon it would be a highly unpopular art because it wouldn't involve beating someone up.]]></body>
	<date>05-04-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3483">
	<title><![CDATA[Victory]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[So my friend gets thrown and he takes ukemi, gets up, picks the other guy up and has him across his shoulders in kata guruma.
The instructor then informs my friend that he'd lost because he landed on his back when he took ukemi.

"Oh. Right. Sorry" says my friend and shrugs. The thump was loud.]]></body>
	<date>04-18-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3447">
	<title><![CDATA[&quot;Learning to take a punch&quot;]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[I love how these sporting types bang on about sparring and the virtues of "learning to take a punch." They work under the assumption that Aikidoka never get hit and so aren't used to it.

They should try getting hit with a bokken. Most people I train with don't even react to it anymore.]]></body>
	<date>02-27-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3435">
	<title><![CDATA[Jo kami]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[I can see why bushi often thought of their weapons as being devine and having personalities.

Tonight we were doing jo awase and it wasn't going well for me at all, as in, I think I have a broken finger and I'll have a few welts tommorrow.
Then suddenly it occured to me that I just had to trust my jo, just let it do the work and I'd be ok, my jo acquired a personality and I trusted it. Suddenly the fear went.

Just after that it occured to me that I'd just had a mental conversation with a lump of wood and the fear came back. :D]]></body>
	<date>02-09-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3429">
	<title><![CDATA[We're all beginners!]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[The new question about hakama reminded me of an incident that happened a little over a year ago. A karate instructor joined our class.
A few of us were on the mat warming up when he comes out of the changing room and onto the mat. Where upon he states "Oh good, we're all beginners."

This produced a few smiles as it was obvious that he assumed that we had the same kind of coloured belt system as karate, or at least his karate school. I suppose no-one was immodest enough to challenge the idea of us all being beginners or maybe it was just too early on a saturday morning, but anyway.

So he asks my friend "How many classes have you had?" No doubt expecting an answer like six or seven. My friend frowns thoughtfully and says "Well, we've all been training about six years" his face was priceless "So what rank are you?" he asks "Oh, we're 2nd kyu" my friend replies. "Oh" he says, quite shocked "So you're all quite advanced students then?"]]></body>
	<date>02-01-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3414">
	<title><![CDATA[Aikido and paintball]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[Our dojo is off paintballing on saturday. Paintball is most of our guy's other passion in life and it's taken at least as seriously as Aikido.
I think training together is what makes us such an effective unit, we all know each others personalities and how we'll react to things. There's no need to refer to each other in a tight spot. Sometimes you see/hear n00bs or WOWs having lengthy discussions about how to get out of situation, while they're in it. Or arguing over who owes who how much for lending paint. 
Obviously they don't trust their mates to pay them back. For us it's simple, I have paint, you need paint, therefore I give you paint. If I leave you in a weakened state then I am in a weakened state. On a paintball field there is no you and me there's just us. Mind you we're the same with money off the field. "I have no money" isn't an excuse for staying in on saturday night.

There's no leadership issues either, everyone recognises everyone elses strengths and weaknesses, and their own, and everyones committed to winning the game, so command shifts easily to the person best suited.

Also I think Aikido is what gives us discipline, everyone works as part of a team, no-one goes off glory hunting. No-ones off on a trigger happy, adrenalin fueled rampage. 
Actually the interesting thing is the lack of an adrenalin rush, everyone is very calm, I've seen it in real confrontations too.
There's a hightenend sense of awareness but that's it, no narrowing of vision or heavy breathing, the heart rate stays normal.
If anything the calm is interesting.
 I reckon it's a product of Aikido as well, the endless meditation-like practice makes us very aware of our emotional states and ability to control them and the hard, fast randori teaches us to deal with pressure and builds confidence.

The confidence is major part of it also, we expect to win. Dropping a game doesn't phase us, we shrug it off and make sure we win the next one. Three game loosing streak? Fine we'll blitz them on the next two games so that there's time for an extra game and beat them 4-3. We have a definate can do ethic. 

That and one of our guys can put down about 1000 rounds a minute. We joke that we need him to aim and fire, one of us to keep his hopper loaded, one of us to pass ammo to the loader and one more to piss on the barrel so it doesn't overheat.:D 


I can't claim that Aikido made his ability to fan the trigger any better though. :D]]></body>
	<date>01-12-2009</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3400">
	<title><![CDATA[No resistance, eh?]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[Random thoughs.

Aikido is the only art that trains against resistance. Judo (at least in theory) is non-resistive: it's push when pulled, pull when pushed.
The heart of Judo training is randori where (again in theory) this theory of non-resistance is put into practice. Good Judo is the art of throwing a non-resisting opponent, he pushes you, you pull him over, etc. 


Aikido, on the other hand, is at it's core about training the body to have immovable posture and to be enormously powerful. Aikidoka spend all their time attempting to throw progressively more statue-like people. Perversely, except in the extream lower levels, Aikidoka never truely have a non-resisting uke the way Judoka do in randori.
 Even when an Aikidoka makes an energetic attack, if the attack is made correctly, ukes posture is never given up and still has to be broken by tori, not with uke's power, but with tori's e.g. the tenkan on irimi nage ura.]]></body>
	<date>12-25-2008</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3348">
	<title><![CDATA[Hmmmmmm]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[So, I've been doing all these weird and wonderful exercises and keeping a close eye on my posture and they seem to be paying off.

We were doing suwari waza kokyu ho, which I am usually terrible at and I'm with big phil, who naturally enough is big and since he's only been training a few months he's a stiff as a board.

I'm sitting there struggling to move him, as per, and I adjust my posture a bit, suddenly I feel a weird kinda tension in my lower back and it starts spreading along my spine, up my sides and into my arms.
I concentrated on this feeling, took a deep breath to relax and now I find that moving big phil is really easy. So this weird feeling gives me TONS of power to lift and push, within a limited range of motion.

My new goal therefore is to explore this new power and see if I can develop it.]]></body>
	<date>09-20-2008</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3307">
	<title><![CDATA[Mai-ai, sparring, bjj and tactics]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[The past couple of weeks have been interesting for me. My friends father teaches Karate and so from time to time I'm invited to go and train there.

   Usually when this happens all the rest of my friends invite me to train at their place too and so for the past couple of weeks I've been dojo hopping, along side my normal training.
I look forward to a day when I have a dojo of my own and can return the favour.
 It's quite humbling to go somewhere else and be treated with a level of respect I really don't deserve. 

   So I'm very sore and very energised, I'm still mulling over what I can learn from all the different arts and things I've done, it's provoked a few realisations about my ability..........not so much in a technical sence but more in a tactical sence, my ability to adapt my training on the fly has been tested and I'm quite happy.

  In particular what's caught my attention is the way I use tai sabaki and mai-ai in sparring matches. I'm very good at not getting hit and very good at getting in close. On one occasion I went in with a front kick and threw a cross, my opponent covered up and I ended up in a situation where I put a tegatana in my opponents elbow and could quite easily have snatched his shoulder, as for chudan irimi nage.

 This got my mind working and I started entering in more aggressively and I found that with atemi I can dash in and get VERY close both on the dead and live sides. My opponents reaction was invariably to back off to create room to strike. 

 The thing it reminds me of is seeing some of the bjj guys dash in and go for a take down. So now my line of thinking is that basically Aikido and BJJ both utilise the same tactics, we both dash in, clinch and take down. Obviously there are major differences in what we do after we break our opponents posture but the theory behind the opening gambit is the same; dash into an opening.

 This got me mulling about all the different types of attack we train against, not so much the strikes but the bewildering array of different grabs, morote dori, ryote dori, kata dori etc.
The ones that really interest me are Kata dori tsuki, morote dori and ushiro ryote kata. Obviously at some point someone decided these were all smart ways to attack someone and therefore it was logical to learn to defend against them.
  The reason I'm going down this line of thinking is because of the oppertunities I had in sparring to take hold of my opponent, so I'm wondering what happens if you attack someone with one of these holds. 
  I can get in close, what happens if I take hold of his right shoulder and punch him? What happens if I can get hold of his right shoulder with my right hand? What happens if after I've made him cover up with atemi I attack him jodan morote dori?
Or rather what after I've got hold of him can I do from an Aikido point of view? The entire point of Aikido is to achieve kuzushi from the moment you make contact. If I can achieve kuzushi on contact surely I can take down my opponent before he can react just like the BJJ guys did back in the day except I avoid going to the floor with my opponent?

Lots to think about and experiment with.]]></body>
	<date>08-10-2008</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3212">
	<title><![CDATA[Sticky hand or elbow and other weirdness]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[Something weird happened yesterday. I was training with a guy that's been training for only a couple of months. The technique was shomen uchi chudan irime nage and I was showing him how to break balance by pushing the elbow while pulling the shoulder.

The weird thing is that my right hand was just lightly touching the side of his elbow and it quickly became apparent that his elbow was stuck to my hand. Now I didn't feel anything, but he did he was like "Wow! That's weird, how do you do that?" and seemed to be quite shocked and suprised. I'm like "No idea." 
In fact I only became aware that something weird was happening when he mentioned it at which point it did seem to be a bit odd that I could move him with a perfectly flat hand.

This is the second weird thing in the space of a week. Last week we were doing shomen uchi ikkyo and while doing ura I felt incredibly grounded I could feel something, running from my belly down through my legs and into the ground and to be honest I felt like I was stuck to the mat as I was making tenkan.]]></body>
	<date>05-22-2008</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3147">
	<title><![CDATA[Earth quake]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[I did have a nice post lined up for y'all but we've just had an earth quake here which ruined my train of thought.]]></body>
	<date>02-26-2008</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3134">
	<title><![CDATA[Scary scary weapons bag]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[So my old weapons bag died, so I bought a shiney new one from nine circles, a purple one with "In a state of perfect meditation, free your mind from worldly thought, like a clear perfect mirror or motionless water" written on it in kanji.

All very nice.

But I've noticed something. Before when I had a plain black weapons bag everyone assumed I was an angler. Now they assume I'm a mass muderer!

I'm sitting on the train on my way to training. There's me and two other people in my section of the carridge, do I get my ticket checked? No, I get a slightly worried look off the dude, who's doing the whole "I'm not scared, honest" thing. I get off the train and people are all but running away from me. I answered the phone and the guy infront of me nearly jumped out of his skin.

The other day I'm walking back from training through town and I can feel eyes on me so I look around, and there's like 15 people eyeballing my weapons bag like meercats.

Everywhere I go people watch me like I'm about to do a zatoichi impression. :grr: 

Walked into a pub, again on the way home, cuz I was about to wee wee myself and there's three guys at the bar and the first one says. "Are those samurai swords?" So I just nodded.

Thinking I might buy a plain black bag again. 
:D]]></body>
	<date>01-26-2008</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3112">
	<title><![CDATA[Grumpy Aiki]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[I feel a change in my Aikido in the past couple of weeks. It's always been described as short sharp and nasty, but I never felt it.
Reccently though it seems to have stepped up a level or two in terms of sheer nastiness and power. My irimi nage is now basically about taking ukes head and bouncing it off the mat. It's no less Aiki, I'm not stiff or muscling the technique but from somewhere I've found power and my technique has changed to be inherently more brutal.

I know why it's changed, I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed that "You were all borderline on the day, but I like him so I passed him" has become respectable post grading feedback. I'm annoyed that kyu gradings are treated as an inconvenience.

I can't express how much of an impact that day has had on me. I feel like I've spent five years dreaming and then woken up after falling out of bed. Hierarchy no longer exists to me. If you have something useful to teach I'll listen to you, if not I treat you no different than I would out in the real world. 
Commonly this is refered to as an attitude problem, this post actually demonstrates all of this. Seems strange to me how I have "issues with authority" and yet for so long I've basically been a zombie. 
If my instructor had said to me five years ago "I and only I will grade you up until 4th kyu" I'd have concluded he was part of a mickey mouse organisation and gone back to TKD or Ju-jitsu.

They worry about student retention and slipping standards but they don't actually care about kyu grades. Do they put on proper kyu gradings with a qualified grading panel? No. Nobody in authority can be bothered with them, so instead they all grade their own students in class time at a time where we're supposed to be standardising Aikido within the organisation. 
Formal Kyu gradings actually fell into disuse because nobody could be bothered (or nobody was competant enough) to organise them. Nobody knew when the next grading was and when they did organise one, no-one i.e. the instructors turned up to it.

Even the 1st kyu gradings are ad hoc, squeezed into the timetable of a teachers course if and when someone turns up to grade and they're treated more like a teacher training exercise than a grading. 

Do they make sure there are enough able bodied people to take ukemi for the grading? No. They're all instructors, most carry perminent injuries, most of the rest only take ukemi once in blue moon. Interestingly though I've been asked to go to two 1st kyu gradings purely to take ukemi for people with the threat of not being allowed to grade used for good measure. "It is expected you will go". 
Therein lies the problem. A lot is expected, in our organisation as I do not presume that the above is universal to Aikido, of kyu grades.
Nothing is given back, especially if you are male. If you are female you can be awarded hakama at 5th kyu after 4 months training for dedication. For a male though turning up to every class, every course, maintaining the dojo website, taking ukemi on every grading, keeping the place clean and helping out with the juniors just about marks you out as being average.
You wont even have your gradings taken seriously.

I get the feeling that this'll get me into "trouble" but hey. As long as they don't expect me to wipe the smile off my face. :D]]></body>
	<date>12-04-2007</date>
</blogEntry>

<blogEntry id="3098">
	<title><![CDATA[The joy of failing]]></title>
	<body><![CDATA[I'm not sure about yesterday's grading. I feel hard done by. Getting an uke who is twice your body weight (300lbs maybe) who resists every movement you make isn't fair, not in a grading. 
  Sensei says that's the luck of the draw and no doubt on wednesday he'll have a list of things that need to be "improved" but the long and the short of it is that I have lost faith.

 I don't believe that if I carry on training as I do now that I'll be able to overcome that much resistance no matter how long or hard I train, not within a grading setting, there's too much restriction.
If uke resists me in an open setting then I can switch technique and use atemi. You can't do that in a grading, so you fail.

 So, what to do? If I retake it in march and get a smaller or more co-operative uke and pass I'll feel like I cheated. It's like saying "I can only pass if I'm allowed to". For my own peace of mind I need to pass the grading with a big resisting uke. 
 I'm going to go and see some other instructors, who have big students and work on my striking skills and basically work my ass off until march, get some running done too while I'm at it.]]></body>
	<date>11-12-2007</date>
</blogEntry>


</blogEntries>