Training at Home

Sorry if this was posted before, but I was wondering what are the things you do when training on your own time, by yourself.
Osu!

Fix the pipes in the basement I break from jo kata.

swim

run

tai-chi

catching bricks in fingers

bokken and jo practice

press-ups (on fingers, on fists, on heel of hand)

crunches (several variations)

8 direction extension

strikes (yokomen, jaw, sternum, knee/groin kicks, atemis for techniques)

chi gung (standing practise)

tae-sebaki

gym (dips, pull-ups, rowing - only weight exercises that lift my own body)

This is usually too much to do regularly. So I often do some more sporadically.

aikitaiso

stretch

focus

awareness

Ditto with Joe.

Add in Jogi 1-3 and kengi 1-3

Chop wood, throw bales of hay.

Since I'm guessing your yoshinkan, I'd highly recommend working on the basic movements. Really focus on form. A lot.

Ron Tisdale

Eat pizza, drink beer

Eat beer, drink pizza.

(like my beer strong and my pizza moist)

Erik Jurrien Knoops (erikknoops) wrote: Eat pizza, drink beer

...while smoking 3-4 packs of cigarettes a day. Oh wait...don't forget the donuts and coffee.

(Just kidding)

If you can work it in, wind sprints are always fun.

I practice all the moves without an uke. It looks a bit like tai chi. I believe, the benefit from this is that you have all the time in the world to concentrate on your posture and balance.

Also, boken and jo practice (if you are doing it at home make sure you unscrew all the light bulbs first).

Take up the violin. It helps you to practice good posture and staying relaxed. I don't play, but from what I read you can't play well without relaxing the arms/body. Besides becoming even more enlightened !

Ryan

Good one, Taras...

I do rolls in the living room, and work on footwork a bit. Though it's hard to work on balance without someone holding my wrist.

Wish I had more room...have to do all my rolls from kneeling position, because if I try flipping myself I'll hit the furniture.

Don't think that trying to do rolls in a very slow manner is easy, uneducational, nor useless. I personally find it's a great tool to learn a lot about my own body mechanics to try to perform rolls, both forward and back, as slowly and as momentum-less as I can (eg doing a backwards roll from lying on my back without using momentum to "kick" me over)...

-- Jun

I also do the same with you Jun, only that I don't do as slow as you. Rather than jog for one hour I prefer do fifteen minutes rolling, same level of tiredness anyway...

Although slow rolling practice can make you tired and sweating, I don't do it in order to become tired. I do enough of that during regular training. Rather, I treat it as a type of adjunct training to complement regular training and/or aerobic exercise. For me, slow rolling practice is a way to learn about my own body and its abilities rather than to gain aerobic endurance...

-- Jun

My main home practice is playing the cello. The deeper I get into Aikido (4&1/2 years), the more connections I see between it and music (which I've been doing for most of my life), both spiritually and as a physical form of "cross-training. As Ryan mentioned, above, it does help with posture and relaxation, as well as linking breath and movement. (Interestingly, I came accross a discussion thread awhile back on a cello website that recommended martial arts training to develop upper body strength, dexterity and flexibility for music).

Otherwise, I work on jo kata and bokken kata, though not as often as I should (and ki excercises & meditation even more sporadically).

I recommend the following to my students that can't make it to class as often as they would like:

Ki exercises (fundamental movemment practice)

Jo and Bokken practice

Running throught techniques without uke (mentioned above), can also be done for uke's 'side (but without the rolls, if no mats available).

Watch aikido video's - of our style, past seminars etc.

1. Aiki-Taiso

2. Ukemi

3. Balance/center

4. Getting off-line with speed, skill, and proficiency(And avoid getting puked on by drunk patients...again...)

Joseph Huebner

And avoid getting puked on by drunk patients...again...

Eeeeeewwwwwwww!

Bronson

Bronson Diffin (Bronson) wrote: Eeeeeewwwwwwww! Bronson

Just be thankful aiki-web does not have "smellavision" ...

Joseph

Joseph Huebner wrote: Just be thankful aiki-web does not have "smellavision" ...

... yet...

-- Jun

actually, reading through some parts of this post, it seems it should have been put in Humor!



Anat

Mike Lee (mike lee) wrote: Chop wood, throw bales of hay.

I don't throw bales around any more but I chop a lot of wood. Mike do you try and hit the center ring by focusing your Ki?

The ax knows the target — "I" am not there.