Are you interrupting attacks?

Phi Truong wrote: the yokomen strike that we practiced isn't the standard wideass swing that many aikido folks do. it's more like the karate reverse knife hand strike. the trajectory is straight in like a punch to the face with a hips rotation at the end to give it a slight curve. ya, our yokomen took the center line, then slight deviation at the end to go for the side of the throat. normal aikido entry as you described above won't work. just my 2 cents.

Hmmm. Yeah I dunno. Yokomenuchi and shomenuchi are really supposed to be sword cuts. But it is understandable to feel like you are wasting uke's training time by having her spend all of this energy making a pretend sword cut, so the tendency is going to be to change them both into hammerfists or something, with a flatter trajectory and less windup.

Theoretically, somebody could pull off the entry I am describing on a flat-trajectory strike that has minimal wind up, but in practice it will always be sort of a mess and you'd naturally find some other technique to do instead.

I'd still like to give a try....

Bill Danosky wrote: Oh, that was different. I was responding to this comment, which was clearly a criticism: I meant we do it that way because that is the technique. We intercept the Yokomen while it is still winding up.

i kinda see where you're going with this. in yoshinkan, the entrance when stopping yokomen uchi is visibly a 'strike.'

the entrance is' different' from an irimi movement from, say, tanto tori tsuki irimi nage... when you see ando sensei or inoue sensei do this, their movement is initiated as uke starts to chamber his arm to strike.

Phi Truong wrote: for me, it doesn't matter that much on when and where. i have worked with the strike from starting point all the way to almost hitting me and anywhere in between. it's a game i play actually just to see if i don't bang the arms, still disrupt uke's balance, and stay relax at the same time. my favorite spot lately has been waiting for the strike to almost hit my head, then bring my arm up to deflect and not moving my feet at all.

Nifty!

Phi Truong wrote: for me, it doesn't matter that much on when and where. i have worked with the strike from starting point all the way to almost hitting me and anywhere in between. it's a game i play actually just to see if i don't bang the arms, still disrupt uke's balance, and stay relax at the same time. my favorite spot lately has been waiting for the strike to almost hit my head, then bring my arm up to deflect and not moving my feet at all. sort of a wingchun version then follow with a shiho nage or whatever depends on uke's balance. of course, now folks would scream "That's not aikido". my answer would be "that's my aikido. go away!".

"let me show you that footwork again..."
......
With my bum knee I'm doing as little footwork as I can get away with. Means I sometimes come close to getting clipped by a yokomenuchi or a munetskuki but I'm willing to risk it to learn the margins.
I don't know if I'd call what I'm aiming to do an "interruption" as much as a momentary disruption - both George Ledyard Sensei and Chuck Clark Sensei talk about ways of creating disruption in a way that doesn't make uke either root or immediately change attacks, creating an opening. I find a lot to play with in there....

Phi Truong wrote: for me, it doesn't matter that much on when and where. i have worked with the strike from starting point all the way to almost hitting me and anywhere in between. it's a game i play actually just to see if i don't bang the arms, still disrupt uke's balance, and stay relax at the same time. my favorite spot lately has been waiting for the strike to almost hit my head, then bring my arm up to deflect and not moving my feet at all. sort of a wingchun version then follow with a shiho nage or whatever depends on uke's balance. of course, now folks would scream "That's not aikido". my answer would be "that's my aikido. go away!".

That is more like what I was getting at.

In my place (learned from our people) we nearly always attempt to interrupt the attack, if you mean make a lateral contact witht he attacking item (arm/leg, hand/foot, knife/stick/long blade/long stick... it's part of the kuzushi, and once the kuzushi happens, that's where the actually application of technique "is" so to speak, is in the uke's recovery to the kuzushi. He/she jumps at you, you get out of the way with the nifty footwork we all love, dink him/her balance by a touch/bump/poke, they start to go in a -- to them -- strange direction, and maybe even jerk themselves strongly. And that's where the knock down technique, or whatever, lives.

The link in the first post is a four-direction throw correct? At least thats what I know it as.

Bill Danosky wrote: We were working with Yokomen Uchi recently and the value of interrupting the attack was really revealing itself. ... This is the entry: http://orkoid.chez.com/yokomen_uchi_shiho_nage_ura.gif Probably similar to your's.

Problem is -- by interrupting an attack all you get usually is an immediate and different attack - which trading of attacks and counters is usually called "sparring" -- and sort of defeating the purpose of the art, IMO.

This form of inside entry is (IMO) best used by shifting on the tangent to the arc of the strike (juuji) and a tenkai turn, which places your body just beyond the strike, at 90 degrees off, and a drawing kuzushi is achieved and the same basic shihonage shown in the depiction is then accomplished.

Geometrically and mechanically speaking, your shift at right angles forms a trammel action, which takes the center of his circular arc of swing and shifts it to a ellipse (ellipses have two centers). But he then finds himself on the side in which the center he orbits is now you, and suddenly not him ( i.e. - kuzushi). The long and short lines in the image are fixed lengths -- which emphasizes the important function of maai in performing the art in this manner.

This image shows the effects of shifting weight (funetori) from one foot (square) to the other (dot at the end of the line), when using this trammel principle in typical action. Effectively, one foot travels in a straight line at right angles to the attacker's dominant direction of movement, the other foot follows a dependent arc (IOW - the irimi-tenkan principle) -- all of which is driven by the interaction of the motion of the two centers once joined in this way. Because of the 90 degree relationships -- there is never any direct force-on-force negation or interruption at all -- and all of the attacker's energy is converted into destabilization.

As things progress the movement of the center need not go outside of your own stabilization zone and rather than movement of the feet, the same thing is accomplished with a shift of center/weight and a turn of the body in place (ude furi). Which MIGHT seem something like the OP gif image, but that one doesn't seem (to me) to be that.

The shihonage waza is a quintessential example of trammel action, but which is found throughout the art. The mechanical geometry should better illustrate why this is truly a "four-direction " throw.

Consider, instead of a standard empty-hand yokomen attack, a yokomen cut with a live blade. Or, alternatively, the kind of jo strike that makes the air whistle. Would whatever you are doing still work? If not, you're doing it wrong.

You cannot "block" a live blade or a real jo strike with your bare arm. You *can* take control of the space in such a way as to render the attack harmless.

The difference is left as an exercise for the reader, because I'm terrible at verbal descriptions of technique.

Katherine

What a nightmare trying to get this technique. A very humbling experience. I like to think about it in terms of bio-mechanics if that helps. So, early to disrupt the attack before the windup, higher on the arm, closer to the shoulder or lower if the attack ha some momentum. If you think about where the energy is going and about how much center Uke has, you may be able to redirect that energy upward or downward. [This is hard to describe in words right?] So if you can make contact with their arm and that point of contact is close to your center and far from their centre, then the energy of their attack stops and their arm moves their body instead. I like to think of it in terms of a lever...

In the same way a shomenuchi ikkyo movement is performed by getting under the attackers arm, you have a significant advantage when your arm (blocking) is close to your body as opposed to uke whose arm is extended. In theory his extended arm energy causes him to rotate around your axis or point of contact. Sticky hands is a good demostration of this.

Perhaps a simple way to think about approaching the hand is not to attack directly linear with irimi but to move adjacent and in. Sort of like a 90 degree angle to the attack.

Does this help me, NO. Still blindly trying to get my body to cooperate. Also, very difficult with a proper karate yokomen strike...Thanks for the thoughts on this one. 10/10 difficulty

PS. I not even sure if reading what I wrote makes sense. PPS. Make sure you do it with weapons, if you end up with a karate block, it is a nightmare!

Responding to this yesterday and suddenly a great video of Tissier 2014 shows up demostrating his method for entry on Yokomen. I reposted on my blog here
http://aikidohombu.com/tissier-reveals-secrets/

Russell Bentley wrote: I reposted on my blog ... tissier-reveals-secrets

Yeah, well, uhm ... it's not a secret ... it's simply the kihon waza, he teaches ... it's our basic form ...

Carsten Möllering wrote: Yeah, well, uhm ... it's not a secret ... it's simply the kihon waza, he teaches ... it's our basic form ...

Same we practise Kihon Waza at our Iwama Club. This type of training was missing from my old club, so the body had to be reconditioned.