Old O'Sensei video.
 

Neat throw at 19:55.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXkEB9gtd-8

Sorry if I am showing up late to the party.

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

Tremendous stuff - I marvel at his energy! He was in his early fifties then, more or less my own age, which impresses me no end.

Kanetsuka Sensei went through a phase of teaching that throw you point out, though where O-Sensei seemed to use his knees to throw the partner we did it with the ball of each foot tucked under the jaw - quite alarming when I felt it the first time...

Alex

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

Contrast how OSensei is moving to what you see Tohei doing in this footage. Looks like a different art.

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

I don't watch that enough. Thank you, Krystal!

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

Tohei moves as he thinks.
So does Ueshiba
One is a sphere, one is a spiral.

Dan

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

Interesting point; although I knew they were doing something different, I never looked at it that way, but you are right. Another interesting note is that what Tohei is showing is approved and endorsed by Kisshomaru - however, a few years later after the split, Tohei is still doing the same stuff and Kisshomaru will have none of it and takes 'ki' out of all main stream Aikido :)

Greg

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

Yay! Shirata sensei is part of that footage!

I read somewhere once where he thought that his ukemi was "clunky" compared to others. I remember being surprised (and a little pleased) to read that since I always felt that way about my ukemi.

One day Sensei threw me with a shiho nage and I remember thinking, "Oh sh**! I can't catch up to my arm, its going to blow . . ." and them him saying, "Dozo" and I caught up just in time to take a fall. (rather that rip asunder) I never forgot that moment. Over a decade later I found out that my brother-in-law caught the moment on tape. I was surprised, because the whole thing lasted about a second. There was no discernible pause between us and nothing could be heard. But for sensei and I there was a moment of panic on my part and compassion on his. He terrified me several times, but I was NEVER injured by him. I think he was too busy trying hard NOT to hurt his ukes (from a super abundance of power coupled with a broad technical/practical knowledge) to pause to consider impressing others with his "formidability." He always said he paled in the light of the ability of his teacher. Leaving with the unspoken implication, "If I think I suck . . . where does that leave you? Let's just leave our egos out of this and train!"

Anyway, something to keep in mind, all that CANNOT be captured on video!

Best,
Allen

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

Thanks for answering my question before I got the chance to pose it!

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

It is interesting to compare the 2 videos. I have only skimmed through them so far, but it is particularly interesting to see the early Tohei vid because you can see the habits that pervade Ki aikido now, but you can also see some stuff that Ki aikido dojos seem to teach less often now. For example, have a look at the slow ikkyo movements from 15:00 and compare them to Saito sensei, for example. I would say there is not a huge difference there, apart from the initial direction that he moves in. Then watch him speed them up, and you get something completely different.

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

No thought is required to move like that. Tohei's Aikido is his. Ueshiba's aikido is Ueshiba's akido. No 2 people are alike.

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

You miss the entire model and idea behind Mushin.
Some day you might want to ask yourself why virtualy all of the higher level arts have extensive solo training. Including both of the gentlemen you just mentioned. That training, if it is worth anything at all, changes the way your body moves and responds. Educated and sharp martial artists can spot connection, and the differences, a mile away.

Ueshiba moved a certain way and Tohei another. There is a reason why that is deeper than..."each man's aikido is his." I can and have explained the difference and why. The root is their model. They did NOT train the same way.
Mind/body is an axium, a very detailed and exhaustive training regimen thousands of years old. It produced giants who followed it's rewarding disciplines. And those disciplines produced individual expressions. Our movement echos our understanding.....it cannot be avoided. All that we know, is in our hands.

Ueshiba not only had an extensive solo regimen he talked about it and its shared pedagogy in the Asian arts. With the higher level artists it changed the way they thought and thus the way they moved.


Dan

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

Reminder to self - stop thinking like a parallelogram.... :)

Best,

Chris

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

:D

Can't get over my traumatic childhood . . . . I'll always be a Moebius strip.

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

Don't wanna try for a TARDIS........??

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

Yes, I agree, they did move differenlty...yet I bet you they never thought about moving they just moved. I miss nothing.

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

No trained athlete, dancer, martial artist "just moves" without having given a lot of thought to how they develop patterns of movement and why - each of us, once we have absorbed certain basics by imitation and rote, if we take our training at all seriously begin to consciously model certain patterns based on internal and external priorities, interests, capabilities, etc that we each foster by our own trial and error, experimenting, exercise, visualisation, etc.
Even on the most basic things like rowing exercise or tai no henko, I never mindlessly "just move" - one day I may be playing with weighting, another day with being big, another day with breathing. Don't most of us?

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

How do you teach your people to make "correct feeling?" if not by trained thought?
If people "Just move" at day one....they will still be moving the same way on day 980.
I am quite sure, in fact I will bet on it, that there is a mind/body connection to developing your state of "Correct feeling."
You are missing something, at least in a classical Budo sense. You're missing the meaning of mushin...no thought.... It is meant to be a trained mind/body.

Now, that said.
At high speed and under stress, it is the person with the engaged mind who will be controlling and leading the other.
Dan

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

One of my favorite movie lines: "You move like a pregnant yak". Ya know, that's by definition a natural movement too...

That is all. :)

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

I don't know much about Tohei sensei.
But if I'm not mistaken Ueshiba even wrote and talked about how he moved?
How does this relate to your statement?

I myself have learned three different paradigms of how to move over the years. I had to learn to move in a different way after about 7 years of practice, when my then teacher changed his way of aikidô, following a new teacher. Some years later there was another change, when I found my current teacher and the shihan he follows.
Three different paradigms of aikidô movement, that could be taught and practiced on the level of kihon waza. What made the "personal movement" of every particular teacher or student happened within the frame of those paradigms.

Until know I can recognize students of those certain teachers just watching their way to move and their way to "create energy". And when I practice with old friends, we from time to time discuss not our personal movements but the differences of the paradigms we learned or learn from our teachers.

But all this comes before moving or afterwards
What is true: When we move, we move. Just so, sono mama. No thinking about.

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

I can't speak for others. I may play with such concepts and when I move just move, I really don't think then. Thinking is a distraction from center. This is where a lot of students can't get it because they have to think. At some point one can let go and trust.

I was watching Benson Henderson fight the other night...he wasn't thinking. He was fighting.

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

@ Carsten: I agree.

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

i usually cringed when i heard about moving without thinking in martial arts. beginners often spent too much time analyze things before/after moving. their mind and body weren't coordinate or in-sync enough. so they trained and trained. eventually they reached some advance level where their body and mind are more in tune, i.e. their mind wills it and their body moves it. the ki thing here (pun intended) is they control their body movement through thoughts. they just happened to do it very fast.

you can do an experiment if you want. take a beginner and attack that person with yokomen uchi and alter the angle of attack slightly with each attack. do the same with an advance person. ask yourself the question or questions why does the beginner moves different from the advance? what sort of decision process does the advance person went through to select the counter movement?

the old saying "mind leads ki, ki leads movement". mind goes first. body follows. otherwise, it would only be fight or flight respond which are also trained through pass experiences. martial arts trained to control that responses, and that control is through thoughts.

of course, if you claimed to be doing zombie aikido, then i withdraw my above statements. :)

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

Mary, do you think that Benson Henderson is just a gifted person who has never learned-trained-conditioned his body to fight the way he fights? Of course he had to learn and train these things, reforming his mind-body wiring - including not just how he moves, but how he strategizes and thinks tactics-wise. As Janet pointed out, the way one moves in any discipline is not innate, it is learned. Once learned and trained to the point of "second nature," we can then act without cognitively having to oversee each movement. However, we continue to maintain awareness at all times, which is a different thing.

"The bound foot is the free foot."

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

Exactly.
1. If we are not consciously thinking about the goal of the learning and mindfully training our movements, then we are giving up control of this process to either a teacher or to random chance, neither of which befits anyone other than a raw beginner.
2. If you really think that "in the moment" you are going 100% on instinct, you are wrong. If you simply go on autopilot, you will move in set patterns that will NOT match the actual changing reality in front of you and will never be able to respond to actual changing conditions. I've been in enough emergencies to understand the critical balance between trusting previously set patterns and maintaining not just awareness but executive function.

Re: Old O'Sensei video.
 

For decades now, the "must have" book on sportbike riding has been Keith Code's "A Twist of the Wrist".

One of the best take aways from that book is his discussion on how people approach improvement. Obviously the context is doing faster laps around a racetrack, but I would say it's equally at home in the martial arts (or just about any physical endeavor).

Code asserts that most racers try to go faster by *hoping* they go faster. They may think, "OK, I'm going to carry more speed through this turn..." but they don't know *what they actually did* to go around the turn before. They don't know exactly where they started braking, they don't know how fast they were going before they started braking, they don't know exactly where on the track they were when they got off the brakes, they don't know where they apexed or exactly how hard they got back on the gas. Since thy don't actually KNOW any of those things, the next lap around when they want to go through that corner faster, all they're left with is HOPE. They can't intentionally change any particular parameter to go faster, since they didn't know what they did before, and they don't really know what they're doing on this pass. So, really, it's just hope. They're trying to feel that they went faster. That simply isn't good enough.

Same thing holds true for budo. I think many of us do the exact same thing in our training (I did). We have a vague feeling of better or worse and we're just hoping to slowly drift towards better. But we don't really know what we did, and we're not actively engaged in changing anything. We're just hoping things get better...