View Single Post
Old 03-04-2011, 09:35 PM   #291
Tenyu
Dojo: Aikibodo
Location: Arcata CA
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 150
United_States
Offline
Re: For those who came from a Striking Art ...

Quote:
Jonathan Wong wrote: View Post
Googling asymptote or activation could never help with this-- it is not conventional usage.
There are lots of ways to think about what a strike is and why it works I guess.
When I strike a bag, the target is most certainly reached. And according to the bag's motion, it looks like it has been activated. Pretty simple, but I'm a simplistic kind of guy I guess. I could talk about striking in more complex terms but I'm not sure if it means much to anyone.
Have you read all my previous posts? Including mine I've given five video examples and concretely identified what contracted asymptotic activation looks like.

When you hit a bag you're striking with your hand at uke. With the staff, I'm striking with uke at a grounded asymptote in space. In Aikido, I never strike at uke. Any atemi*(a physically unconnected throw) I throw are never aimed at uke in the particular but at upstream asymptotes surrounding uke that absolutely determine all of uke's options. For this to happen all of nage's atemi and power applications must be ahead of uke's power applications by 90 degrees, the location of total non-resistance, in time. You can see this mapped out in the graphs on this page: http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14719 The Y-axis represents the power applications of both nage and uke. 1 and -1 are exactly the same, they both represent peak applied power(contraction) and 0 represents a return to peak potential power(decontraction). I copied these graphs from memory after one of the first classes I attended of Tom's where he drew this on the chalkboard. It's also in his new book Aikido Aikibojitsu and The Structure of Natural Law.

This is why fighting and blocking are impossible in Aikido. Referring to the same graph linked above, fighting requires nage's and uke's lines to intersect at 0, and for their peak power applications to collide together at the same time, the definition of absolute resistance.

*Atemi can be used as a transitional resonator(non-activation) leading up to the throw/strike or it can be used as a complete throw/strike(activation) in itself. The asymptotic placement in space is different depending on the type of atemi.
  Reply With Quote