Quote:
Lorel Latorilla wrote:
It is good that you have that awareness. Too many people are caught up with "frame". It makes standing grappling practise much more challenging because you essentially have to weaken your frame (or depend less on your frame) on guys with frame. You"ll get dumped on your ass if you try your premature, soft skills on strong, balanced, agile guys or you will force yourself to depend more on your frame so you can "not lose". Internal arts involves a lot of "investing in loss" I think. So for me, best way to train soft skills is agete, push out, push hands or any other paired exercises like that. That way you familiarize yourself with "soft" motions. Learning it exclusively under heavy pressure right away is simply stupid. You'll never learn soft skills that way. You'd have to do it through paired practise with mild resistance (as you see in agete, push out, etc.). Also learning soft skills without frame as I said before will get you destroyed in a fight I think. Your body has to learn how to be balanced under pressure. Your body needs to be properly aligned/balanced/stable before you can make aiki appear, so when a heavy, strong guy tries to take you down, you won't be able to affect aiki on him because your body integrity will be compromised.
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We do an exercise that's a lot like push-hands that's good for this. The rules are you have to go slow, no tempo changes and no strikes or grabs. You can hook, wrap, block the legs and take as many steps in any direction as you like. Very hard for newer folks to abide by the rules, but the rules make the exercise worth doing. It basically is the bastard child of judo randori, push-out and push hands. Anyhoo, I find that I get three very distinct sensations depending on how and how well I'm using the frame. When I first started doing this exercise (way before I met Ark) I felt all the pressure through my muscles and got exhausted very quickly. Around the time I first met Rob and Ark, the pressure moved more into my bones, the muscles themselves didn't feel like they were under load the same way, it was much more efficient, but also created openings because folks had this direct connection back into my skeletal system. Lately (last year or so) the sensation has shifted again and now feels more like it's running under my skin rather than through the muscles or through the bone. Not jumping on the fascia! bandwagon, just talking about proprioception. Regardless, I have a lot more live connection now that gives me good drive when I want it, but seems to absorb and redirect incoming force in a way that I was never able to before. Which is good, again because all the usual suspects have gotten so hard to get kuzushi on, I need all the help I can get.
(Credit where credit is due, it's my understanding this exercise is from Don. Any Ryusters out there want to comment?)