Viva la resistance!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B328a...eature=related
In this clip of Seigo Yamaguchi Shihan, at about the 1 minute mark, the uke starts to resist. To my eyes Yamaguchi Shihan struggles a bit and his movement becomes smaller and less smooth. I also think that the uke becomes very open (suki), especially his head. I wonder what the purpose/intention is to continue to do Aikido "technique" in a situation like this. Any thoughts/impressions? Charles |
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Since this is aikido training, what alternatives to continuing to do aikido technique do you suggest?
I would consider that learning to handle resisting ukes is an important part of aikido training. Of couse, so is learning how to resist/attack without leaving yourself completely open. Hell, if all we ever did was nice flowing prearranged forms I would get bored out of my mind. Not that that doesn't also have its purpose. But I hate the thought of aikido training always being done the same way, leaving important dimensions of the art unexplored. |
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Hello Charles,
Do you know where the clip was taken, or who the uke is? The location is clearly a sports hall and not a dojo, so I wonder whether the occasion was one of Yamaguchi Sensei's trips abroad. To me, the uke looks somewhat like Minoru Kanetsuka (of course in 1976 this would have been well before the onset of his cancer). This is speculation, but if it was Kanetsuka Sensei, I know from experience (having often taken ukemi from both) that he would have given Yamaguchi Sensei a run for his money. Best wishes, PAG Quote:
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At one point he seemed to be walking around with his partner attached to his arm. Once again, my take was that he was letting the crowd see how hard the attacker was working... I've done that myself. There wre a couple of instances in which the uke's balance was broken but he chose not take the fall. He was quite open in that situation. Out context it is impossible to know what was happening... was this what Yamaguchi Sensei wanted? Was it the uke screwing with Yamaguchi? Yamaguchi kept using him for ukemi the whole time so I think it was all fine with him and there were certain points being made to the students. Sensei's usually stop using ukes they think are screwing with them. Either that or they dismantle them... I think the salient point is that the uke was never properly aligned when a fall didn't take place and Yamaguchi was in position to make whatever adjustment was needed. He certainly didn't look upset with the fellow... the talking seemed to be to the crowd |
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The information on the Youtube clip reads: Quote:
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Mr. Hill,
Thank you for posting this, Yamaguchui Shihan rocks! This is an excellent demonstration ! While I think it falls short of practical application to a combat scenario, it still provides the experience of the "pucker factor". Far from the " oh shit pucker factor" yet, " it ain't working ", so, adapt and redirect. Again, thank you. Mr. Lawrence, Quote:
Train well, Mickey |
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My impression is that the uke's resistance was part of the demonstration.
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That's fascinating! I watched the clip first, then noticed Peter's comment about the venue and the uke, and watched it again. Yes, Yamaguchi Sensei came to the UK in the mid-70s to teach a Summer School (although I didn't start practising for another couple of years so wasn't there on that occasion). The first uke definitely seems to be Kanetsuka Sensei, but I don't get the impression he was being obstructive - to me it seems to be more a case of "if your partner does this, then...". Kanetsuka Sensei was physically very strong in those days. I have heard him say in private that he was able to immobilise Yamaguchi Sensei on one occasion, to the surprise of both parties, but I don't think that is happening on this clip.
Kanetsuka was greatly influenced by Yamaguchi in the years after the latter's first UK visit - I believe that Chiba Sensei, as well as Chiba's father-in-law, Sekiya Sensei, both strongly suggested he studied with Yamaguchi, and this started a kind of revolution in Kanetsuka's aikido, as he became much softer and more sensitive. This process was deepened when Kanetsuka Sensei was seriously ill in the mid-1980s and no longer had physical strength to fall back on. Kanetsuka Sensei, as Peter notes, puts great stress on aikido having to work against a strong grip - I think this is partly a remnant of his initial training with Gozo Shioda, and partly the influence of Saito Sensei in the 1970s. These days one uke is often not enough for him, and he likes to get three or four big guys to try to stop him moving. All the same, when I take ukemi for him I am very aware of my own openings when they appear, and I can feel that he is too - he just doesn't take advantage of them when it isn't relevant to the point he is trying to get across. Yamaguchi Sensei certainly didn't refrain from atemi, but it was usually quite a gentle reminder that you were in the wrong place. I think that trying to infer what is actually happening in a teaching situation can often be very difficult, as while there are in general very different levels of response for the uke, it's not obvious which are available at a given instant (and many are not appropriate anyway in any given situation). Alex |
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One thing I forgot to say in my last post was that Kanetsuka Sensei's ukemi is actually very different these days from what he was doing in the YouTube clip. Sometimes (though not nearly as often as, say, ten years ago) he will hold your wrist and ask you to demonstrate the movement being taught. His grip is very soft, and rather than applying resistance he brings your attention to any unconscious attempt to use force, or to any lapse in balance, by redirecting you in such a way that you fall over.
Although it is usually obvious to me what the subject of this lesson is doing wrong, it feels very peculiar when it happens to me. I have little idea where I am at fault, but I just can't grasp his centre, and the more I try, the more I seem to miss and the worse my own balance becomes. I certainly have no sense that he is resisting at all. I'm sure the rest of the class are able to see my mistakes very clearly, though... Alex |
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a) it's bad martial arts - anyone ever win anything, UFC included, by grabbing someone, making his hand turn purple, and being immovable? The grabs we do come from attempts to keep an opponent from accessing a weapon. There would always have been either a strike with the other hand or a kick or both. Or the attack would have been designed to break the balance and the deliver atemi. You simply can't do that while you are tight. You lose speed. You create a direct channel for the other guy's power to hit your structure, etc It's actually easier to move someone who attacks like that than someone who grabs lightly and is has freedom to move because nothing is tight. b) 50% of ones practice is in the role of uke. If we are striving for relaxed technique and complete freedom to move as needed, you do not want to be doing just the opposite half the time. Your body just gets confused. This is one of the things I appreciate about Endo Sensei is that he insists that the two roles be the same. He stresses connection and each partner is expected to connect to the others center and maintain that connection throughout the technique. c) Sensitivity is far more important than strength in what we do. If you are tight, you are feeling you not the other fellow. I think part of having our teachers have us be "strong" in our ukemi was so we would eventually realize that it was a dumb way to attack. It certainly never worked with them... What I now do with my students, starting right from the beginner level, is to teach them to grab and find the partner's center through the grab. We have the partner being grabbed throw an atemi with his other hand. The partner executing the grab should be able to prevent that strike from hitting just using the connection from his grab. He should also be able to prevent a kick from other foot, just through the grab. You can't actually do this if you are being "strong" unless you have a hundred pounds or so on your partner. Next, we teach the attacker how to grab and achieve kuzushi via the grab and strike with the other hand. It is fluid, it is VERY fast, it is a light enough touch that the defender doesn't feel much until he is off balance and struck. To my mind, that is good martial arts. This whole thing about being strong and immovable is bad martial arts. It exists because the weapons basis of the art has been forgotten. Put edged weapons back into the equation and things change drastically. Kevin Choate Sensei was having his students wear tanto in their belts when training. If you hunkered down and planted he'd either pull his own or your own tanto and stick you. You discovered that movement was necessary to protect your weapon and avoid the other fellow's. An attack needs to effect the other guy's center while you remain free to move and respond. That's a real attack and it's good martial arts. Anything that creates tension reduces your freedom to move and slows you down. That's bad martial arts. |
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My sloppiness may have encouraged misunderstanding of what I wrote. I looked back at my post and certainly couldn't find the words "tightness" or "rigidity", but I may have unintentionally suggested that uke's initial strong grip is supposed to persist all the way through the technique, if tori manages to get one going at all. This isn't really how I personally practice: the initial grip is there as a test of tori's (and uke's) centre, but is certainly not supposed to be physically tense or rigid, and I am particularly irritated by ukes, who ought to know better, but don't react to atemi. The grip is only meaningful from a safe position, so if tori manages to move uke's centre, the attack changes fluidly in response. There is a continuous scale between this kind of attack and the kind of "nigiri-ho" kokyu technique demonstrated by Shioda and Saito Senseis, among others, where the grip specifically enables you to control your partner's centre directly. It can be an immobilisation - just as the ikkyo pin is - but it can also feel like an electric shock to you as uke as your strength is mysteriously taken away. So, George, I agree with you (I think). Alex |
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My first TKD lesson was me learning a few basic techniques then some drills to practice them. I was told to throw a punch to the face, I threw it and retracted my arms and was told this was wrong. It didn't make sense then to stand there with an arm outstretched waiting to be 'blocked' and it doesn't make sense now. Beyond of course building the very very basic understanding of a technique or movement. I mean no one is just going to grab your hand, so why practice just grabbing your hand. Grab your hand to pull you in, or grab your hand to attack you with a strike, or grab your hand to enter in for some kind of body grip. Just like people never throw one punch and wait, they never grab and wait. |
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I always thought you didn't retract your hand because the other person needed to work on their blocks, it's about perfecting the block, not the punch. Later when they have the block nailed they can practice against propper punches. That's the way I've always seen things done anyway. "Nobody attacks like this" isn't always a valid response. In fact it's often the biggest bunch of BS floating around the martial arts at the moment. People that have never boxed honestly think that if they attacked someone it would be as a boxer does, for instance and they expect everyone else to as well, even if they're untrained. But that's another argument. The point of training is to develop skills and often the best way to learn those skills is often with attacks that may not be the most realistic, but are the most useful for developing confidence, timing, form, mai-ai ect. I really don't care if no-one will ever attack me with shomen uchi, the practice of dealing with shomen uchi has taught me lots of stuff that is applicable across the board. . The point about grabs is that there shouldn't be time for something else. Where I train gakyu hamni katadori is a wrist grab followed quickly by a punch. We rarely do the punch because if uke can make the punch tori has already failed. Why would you allow someone to walk up to you and plant themselves ready to strike? That's madness, you don't win fights by giving someone a free hit or letting them take your balance. The defence against a grab assumes a follow up if not simultaneous strike and it begins before uke gets anywhere near making contact. Sure, it sometimes looks like "grab and wait" but only if you misunderstand what's going on. |
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I certainly agree that tactically, static grab-based attacks that start and end at the grab itself don't make much sense. However, I'm at a point in my training now where I'm trying to work on certain body skills that I simply cannot do without a rigid uke who is doing nothing more than trying to not let me move our collective contact point(s). Will I one day be able to apply these principles in a fluid engagement with a careful and constantly changing uke? I certainly hope so, but for now I need an uke who is cooperating with what I need by being rigid. I don't think I'm disagreeing with anyone on the thread, but I think for some of us in the early stages, there is some merit to static, rigid, and quite unrealistic uke/tori relationships.
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I don't want to get into one of those "style" discussions... but some approaches are only suitable for very strong people. Most students are, well, average. And if you are average you are not immobilizing anyone with a grab. Not happening, silly to try. |
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Mickey |
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George, your last long post really resonated for me.
As one of those small folks (and now with bad arthritis affecting grip in both hands it is even more apt for me) I always appreciated early advice from an instructor to attack with "sticky palms" in order to find/feel the connection, rather than worrying about the strength of my grip. |
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I am not saying that strength is bad or that one shouldn't do conditioning. I am saying that what most people do in their technique is inefficient. It uses way too much energy for the task at hand, attempts to accomplish things that it shouldn't be attempting, (i.e. trying to keep someone from moving as opposed to keepoing a direct connection to their center) and doesn't work against people who really know how to relax. Janet's description of sticking so that you can feel the partner's center is a good one. Then you can start to create movement that doesn't require much in the way of physical effort. |
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Now with grappling it does take longer to develop the proper motion and static training should be employed longer, but at some point it needs to be cut and you need to focus on what you can do, not what you wish you could do. I wish I could break someone's balance the moment they grab me. I of course practice this, but I spend a lot of my time practicing what I can actually do now. That means learning to deal with being imperfect and how to adjust and move with my partner. I don't always see this in higher level practice. I still see the same static arm dangling punch thrown at black belts by black belts. The same grab and delay done again and again. I've seen this in TKD, I've seen it in aikido, hell I've seen it in bjj practice. Take the bjj example of a triangle drill. Yes it helps a lot in the beginning for your partner to stick one arm in and wait to be triangled over and over again. But eventually, without drills that practice leading my opponent into a triangle, without drills that practice the real timing of using that triangle, this basic arm in static drill is worthless. I saw this as a pre-teen. I'm almost 30 and I still can't see why it seems so obvious to me and so revolutionary for so many martial artists. |
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I agree entirely that we are training, not fighting. Having an uke squeeze the cheese out your wrist and constantly resisting is no fun and counter-productive to learning. However, when dealing with someone with no martial arts experience, their usual reflex when unbalanced is to grab hold for grim death. So there is some validity in training to handle the grip of death.
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Hi
in Aikido-based seminars I give, a lot of people ask me whether I can show how to handle a strong grip. Be it of the wrist or the hair or a clinch(?) from the front or from behind. Greetings Carsten |
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Hello
sure resisting like a donkey all the time is as counter productive as not resisting at all the time. There is a place for both. As don said when you are learning what to do resisting is counter productive. After a while you need it shows us where we are loosing the technique. phil |
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Interesting thread.
i remember that Summer school well for several reasons. Kanetsuka Sensei was very strong and "bullish" at that time with very direct physical Aikido and it was a complete revelation to see him change over the next several years. Yamaguchi Senseis Aikido was generally flowing and seemed gentle but was also incredibly martial. I made the error of trying to stop him when he wasn't demonstrating (well I was young and foolish) and can still feel the power of his technique as he completley winded me, rendering me unable to stand. He said later on that week that teaching and practise were two different entities and it was difficult to always combine the two. I took that to mean that sometimes your technique is ineffective when teaching because of the situation i.e. you are trying to show a standard technique. |
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The fact that you are gripping a wrist at all as an attack is not particularly realistic, the same way as having uke attack with a stepping punch isn't. But both attacks can help when learning either a technique or a principle. Quote:
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As far as the clip is concerned I was impressed with Yamaguchi Sensei (as usual). I'm of the opinion that even IF he did get stuck, so what? I thinks its unreasonable to think that someone who's been on the mat as much as him over the years would never have any issues. I'm sure there are those who believe O'Sensei was always perfect and never had any issues on the mat. I just don't think that's realistic. I don't care how good you are there are gonna be times when things are off, even if just a bit.
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A learner needs to succeed most of the time and challenges should be at each learner's current level, shaping and modeling him. If you keep failing because the challenge is inappropriately high, you are learning SOMEthing but it isn't how to succeed at the task. I realize as I write that I may be reading more into your brief comment than you intended.... |
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With a beginner you may want a bad MA grip (weak), whereas a 4th dan might want a bad MA (awkward, rigid, normal person) grip. While I can see the points he was trying to make, IMO, George was being a bit too general is his remarks on grips. |
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Regarding the clip, he's clearly teaching as in "if you get stuck, do this" or "his strength is here so go there".
Imaizumi Sensei likes to do that....ask for problems and then present solutions to try. |
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Hmmmm... since we have no idea what he said prior to this clip...It could be an example of how not to throw.
Videos taken out of context can mean anything. Mary |
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Most Aikido people substitute muscle power for proper structure. The whole internal power thing has been beaten to death on the forum here but suffice it to say, if you develop proper structure, your strength is in that structure and there is the ability to be completely relaxed. If you are using muscle power, you are not relaxed and you are not using aiki. Quote:
I am particularly aware of this issue. I am a very large man. Attempts to use physical strength against me are ridiculous. Yet i constantly have people come up and try to turn my hand purple, hunkering down as if they could actually keep me from moving with a grab. That's bad practice any way you cut it. It doesn't do anything, isn't actually possible, and only serves to give me what I need to destroy them. I think we should be striving for the ability to apply aiki whether in the uke or nage roles. Very few people I see do that. You either see ukes floating around and tanking for their partners or you see ukes trying to be strong in ways that make no sense whatever in a martial sense, all the while thinking that their "strong" attacks are the real martial deal. Once again... if I grab you I want you off balance and either struck or on your way to the floor before you feel what is happening. Muscle type strength is the enemy of that sort of ability. |
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But, I had questions about practicing while learning aiki. For instance, does my partner, uke, always use aiki (to their ability) when practicing? The answer given was not always. Split the time between uke using muscle (with good attacks) and aiki. Why? Because people react very differently when using muscle as compared to aiki. Be prepared for both. Quote:
Working on building aiki -- different kind of training, I guess you could say. Working on techniques (once you have some level of aiki), yeah, I agree with what you posted. Sometimes as uke, we work on capturing center on contact -- when uke uses aiki. Trying to capture center on contact as a non-aiki-using uke when nage is using aiki is ... very problematic. :) Mark |
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The strength of your grip has little to do with your hand. Ueshiba knew this and it is also why Mochizuki noted that contrary to all of his efforts (now there's a comparative worth statement if ever there was one! Anyone care to consider just how capable HE was)...but he says "he never got it either." Nor will anyone else who continues to pursue strength like every other guy out there.
It doesn't work- it will never work. It is also pointless to separate stickiness from power in the grip. They exist at the same time. Just switching directions in your center can be "very" potent in your hand, to the point of breaking bones, or taking center, and this while the person is..."stuck" to you. No one can say they truly understand either if they cannot manifest both at the same time. You can't "fake" having a hand that is connected to your center, nor can you "fake" a center that has power to drive the body. Although many are convinced they are connected, once you meet someone who actually is, it just sort of ends the discussion then and there. So the real dilema is finding those who can do it...but more importantly, the smart ones will find those who can also can teach it to them. Cheers Dan |
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Making a good martial artist IMO, is two fold: 1. Internal power and the ability to manifest aiki 2. Fighting with it Quote:
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There are a whole bunch of popular teachers on the circuit explaining their "principle based" art who don't have much of a clue about real power or even aiki, but they are good martial artists and mimic some of the effects very well through certain principles they share. I have a couple of high ranking acquaintances who were previously enamored with so and so teachers until they felt guys with the real deal. Suddenly it dawned on them that those other guys were masking connection failures and structural flaws, with "sophisticated" technique. It helped understand why there were years of discussion about subtle and sophisticated waza failing and why some of us who could actually DO aiki were reading that and thinking "What the hell are they talking about? What is dependant on waza in the first place? And what's subtle about it" In the end the real training is to change the body not focus on principles. So that the body does NOT move, act or re-act the way a normal person does in the first place. For me, that is thee singular goal I start people off with. And that training has to be gradual to full resistance; statically then in motion. Not without merit is the fact that it is making some very experienced men want to change everything- their entire approach to everything they knew! Cheers Dan |
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