View Single Post
Old 07-04-2013, 03:44 PM   #15
Krystal Locke
Location: Phoenix, Oregon
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 407
United_States
Offline
Re: There Are No Shortcuts

How dare you call me subtle. I am so offended.

When I would visit home (Galveston), I'd sometimes train at the dojo in Dickenson, just off of 3. Also full of rocket scientists. Nice place, and they said good things about my sensei (the sensei there said I obviously had good instruction at my home dojo) even though their school is in a different association/style. No offense, but I was glad to find a non-Tomiki dojo to sweat in, I was such a noob that the Tomiki stuff and class structure was too different for me at the time.

Yup, having a few physicists and engineers in the room certainly changes the structure of the teaching. And aikido has informed my engineeringness, as well. Here's a pic of the most awesome ukemi I have ever taken, courtesy of NASA and Smith College. The box of tech wipes is taped to the floor of the airplane, for a bit of oreintation.
https://zerog.jsc.nasa.gov/photos/22...2006e09860.jpg

Another, to provide a wider perspective. Yes, I know I have a giant ass. I am hard to throw. I hear that can be a good thing.
https://zerog.jsc.nasa.gov/photos/22...2006e09861.jpg

Quote:
John Powell wrote: View Post
That's subtle and funny....

I had the luck to join a Tomiki Aikido dojo where the 2 2nd highest dan grades were rocket scientists, literally. A couple of Ph. D. physicists at NASA here in Houston. Our head instructor, Raymond Williams, was told by one of them that he had the most instinctive grasp of physical mechanics he'd ever known. So, I've been talking about the physics of everything we do for quite a long time now, and it's natural. And, we also got great gems from the engineering world as well, such as "It's hard to push a rope," "Rocks roll downhill, nd they are hard to push back up that hill," things like that,.

They make you scratch your head when stated out of context like I just did above, but we use them all the time in discussions of how kuzushi is affected, posture gets broken, or not, by tori's movement/pressure, whatever.

Then, in the past 5 years or so I started working with Nick, who has brought great people like Howard Popkin and George Ledyard to OKC, and the biomechanics side of things (sometimes clothed in the Asian medical terminology) has showed up. Neat stuff. I just wish I understood it! Ha!

Good stuff for study for the next 10 to 20 years, eh?
  Reply With Quote