View Single Post
Old 01-19-2007, 12:27 PM   #141
Erick Mead
 
Erick Mead's Avatar
Dojo: Big Green Drum (W. Florida Aikikai)
Location: West Florida
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 2,619
United_States
Offline
Re: Baseline skillset

Quote:
George S. Ledyard wrote:
Saotome Sensei does these kinds of tecniques frequently. He can shoot me back about five feet when I grab him with a pulse like this.
Thank you for weighing in. I know this, I have seen it -- although, more's the pity, I have not felt Saotome.

I may have been unclear or have been misunderstood -- more likely the former. I have never questioned that these things are done. I question whether they are done as Mike describes them, and should be practiced in the manner that Mike suggests -- in relation to aikido.
Quote:
George S. Ledyard wrote:
This very much sounds to me as if you have defined Aikido only by its aspect of redirection of the force applied by the attacker.
I am hardly the peace and flowers kind of guy. To give my approach a flavor more in keeping with my native tradition, think of Nathan Bedford Forrest: "Get there first with the most." "Hit 'em from the side." "Never stand and take a charge... charge them too."

Generally speaking, I'll get there sooner if I am not letting him impede me by engaging his force directly. Also, and to be perfectly clear about my interpretation, and while it is distinctly unpeaceful, a roundhouse to the jaw is not resisting any opposing force, unless he started first with a headbutt.

I don't even try to define aikido, I just try to do it -- occasionally, with success. I know my place. I explore O Sensei's definition of aikido, and that of the lineages of his students who have taught me. I try to obtain a consistent understanding of its physical reality and of the methods of practice I have been given to learn and to teach with. I try not to fiddle with them much or give explanations that were not given to me, that are not just plainly physical observations.

The only thing I bring to the table is a critical faculty with which to make judgments based on competent authorities about propositions such as Mike's in regard to training in "basic" skillsets. And what he proposes troubles me in terms of aikido training.

I challenge two things in Mike's approach to describing and training for these things. One is physical, the other, methodological.

1) That they are not necessarily done by means of resistance -- a component of collinear force opposite in sign to the input.

2) That training which expressly develops resistance, even "ground" resistance, is not helpful to aikido training.

As to my first objection, the physical interpretation of what Mike calls "bounce" jin as "store and release" -- is resistance, but it is also not a necessary physical interpretation of the interaction. Irimi/tenkan principles viewed as manipulation of moments and radial accelerations does not require any in-line opposing forces to describe the operation of movements we all know work. It is also a mechanical model of "absolute non-resistance" that physically explains a great deal of the power the best practioners can generate and/or dissipate.

Despite Mike's protests, "bouncing" or deformation spring energy is resistant. In order to receive the strain energy by bending, torsion, or comperssion, the spring (of whatever form) necessarily decelerates the object applying the input force, which is a collinear force in opposition, i.e.-- resistant. Resistance occurs even if there is not (yet) reverse displacement. Since it is resistant, if the force is too large or the impulse too quick, the deforming structure may break before it can release that energy. Springs bounce, but they also snap; balloons bounce, but they also pop.

You demonstrated in seminar in Tallahassee (Mar. 05?) one of Ushiro Sensei's demonstrative tai sabaki movements to the wrist grab. (Ushiro is one of Mike's primary examplars of "lost" principles we should adopt.) First, weighting on the front foot without pushing or altering the grab, then stepping forward with the other foot, weighting it and then letting go the weight on the other side, causing incipient collapse, without doing a single thing to change uke's structure or his force, a simple touch (better than a roundhouse) to his shoulder dropped him . It was simple, and illustrated the problem of resistance to -- on both sides of the interaction.

There was no resistance when you performed it, and in fact you properly chided me and others for our own residual resistance in barely perceptible pushing in trying to performing it on you. Another reason to object to Mike's approach because, as you pointedly demonstrated to me, the impulse to resist force is pernicious, even when, as with me, one knows about and is consciously trying to avoid it.

Why, therefore, consciously train to do it?

It seems to me that what Mike is getting at that is useful is not new, and what is new is not terribly useful.

(And thanks again for the pointers on the No. 10 kumitachi.)

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
  Reply With Quote