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Morning class (Tom Zielinski):
Irimi and tenkan practice
Rondori practice
Jo practice
spiral block
kata #1
And what did we notice?
That ski rondori is much harder for us than shomen rondori. I think that's because it is much easier for me to irimi straight in on a shomen than on a ski. I think that's because when you irimi straight in on a ski, you really need to have your angles right or you are just walking into the punch. Shomen is more forgiving.
That I can do a spiral block, but only very slowly. The key is to make sure that the block is coming out of my rear hip and not out of the hand. This is hard to explain, but it basically means that I am trying to connect my rear hip through to uke's center through the two joes (heehee), and then to drive forward through that. Hard hard.
My Nidan test in on Sept. 18, and I was looking for ways to help me focus and organize my practice. This journal thing came to mind. There's a lot of advice that I'm getting write now, and a lot of things that I'm trying to think about and integrate into my Aikido. Just keeping track of it here might help keep me from feeling overwhelmed.
The test is going to be a stretch for me. Even though I've been practicing in my current style for 5 years, since my shodan exam, I still haven't internalized a lot of the things that are important here. My teachers put a lot of emphasis on a 'martial sense,' which involves a careful maintenance of a martial posture and an awareness of where my feet and arms are at all times. Those are all good things, but they are different than the things I was really brought up focusing on.
Anyway, here are the things that need focus:
1) moving from hamni to hamni. Almost every time I find myself struggling, I have also moved out of hamni.
2) keeping my shoulders drawn back in order to open up my posture
3) taking and controlling the first move. This is just like back in Seidokan, but I guess it's time to take that to another level.
It's also worth noticing what, specifically, I want to be working on:
1) Rondori. Worked on this recently and I am starting to feel comfortable with it.
2) Bokken and Jo kata. I am at a place where I 'know' all of these, but they still need a lot of work. The key here is finding senior stud
...More
07-30-2004 04:18 PM 
