Aiki Doh's

Couple of weeks ago I was late for class and as they were just about to start Sensei waited till I had tied my Hakama... Everyone else was sitting and I was off the mat tying as fast as I could. Sensei starts to smile, then starts laughing... I mouthed what? but he just whisperer to another sensei then sat down. I did notice that the Hakama was not quite right but didn't think too much of it as I had no time to fix it anyway.

I had a great practice felt like I was on fire with the techniques and was felling pretty good about life. Once we were trying our hakama Sensei asked me how do you tie a Hakama adding "there is no right or wrong answer". I had to then try and explain that his wife had taught me and I do it like she does but I tied it wrong today coz I was late. He haw and laughs form everyone... My excuse was even funnier than the tying of it apparently.

It always seems to happen when you start thinking you are getting the hang of this aikido thing

A couple of months ago at yudansha testing, my friend was taking his nidan exam, and the testing panel called for randori with 3 shinai (we use the leather covered ones for safety and mayhem). Two attackers jumped up with their weapons ready, I grabbed my weapons bag grabbed the handle of my shinai, and whipped out ....an uncovered split bamboo stick. I looked at the stick, looked in the bag, looked back at the stick, and by this point the entire dojo is trying not to laugh in an uproar but did start giggling uncontrollably. Needless to say the testing panel asked for someone with a fit weapon to take the ukemi, but I was happy to provide some comic relief and tension release for the test candidates that day. And I got to see my friend do some very nice randori.

my doh doesnt have any thing to to with a technique at all but last week we were doing some technique and its quiet thirsty work so i quickly ran to get a drink (cherry coke) and rejoined everyone on the mat our sensei asked if everyone was ready for the next technique when i let out a resounding belch oh the shame i was absolutly mortified, the look of horror on his face ill never live the shame down

Practicing ushiro ryote tori. Instructor was demonstrating a static technique with me as uke. I grabbed his hands and he requested a kiai. (An infrequent phenomenon in our organisation)

Instead of the polite basso hara grunt...

....what came forth was a long, primal, ear-shattering scream that blew half of the students off the mat, deafened both myself and the instructor and measured a healthy 2.1 on the Richter-scale at a nearby geological institute....

Most embarassing.

picture the scene, it's my third-kyu grading, im taking it with a girl from the same class as me and a student from another dojo in our organisation, it was the first time we had graded in front of a senior panel (our organisation preferring to keep the stress levels down by grading up to 4th kyu in class). everything had been going really well and i thought i had got the better of my nerves until sensei (who in this case was the head of our whole organisation) asked if any of us had been practicing happu-giri (which is on the 2nd kyu sylabus). quick as a flash came three replies of "yes sensei" (all pretty much total lies as we had only briefly looked at it after class with a senior student). "Okay Steve you're up first" (glup, bigger glup, huge gulp) "yes sensei" i had secretly been hoping i would get to see at least one person do it first to refresh my memory. so up i step and give it my all "well done lad" comes the reply from my clearly impressed sensei "only....... we usually do it with a bokken, not a jo" one T.V. style double-take from me and the aiki-doh is complete

P.S. I still passed tho, and it is now the stuff of legend and a warning given to new students to the dojo. also, the next class after the grading my sensei asked for me to be uki with a bokken and then felt that he should spend a few moments with me clarifying the difference e.g. the bokken is the one that is curved, the jo is long and straight etc.

'(our organisation preferring to keep the stress levels down by grading up to 4th kyu in class). '

Speak for yourself, LOSER.

mean, just mean

Came for my 6:45AM practice... half asleep... bowed to Sensei and almost said 'good morning sunshine' (vs. good morning Sensei)

-Onegaishimasu-

I had a big AikiDOH on wednsday.

You know how they always see keep your hands up? I knew I forgot something...

Anways I got to see the new hospital and they let me see the hockey scores.
And the nurse!! Wow!

I scared alot of people too, when you make a hole through your mouth with your teeth it tends to not only look scarey, but leave lot of blood.

The funny part is there was someone wanting to join aikido and was watching on the edge of the mats with her mom and dad. Anyways after veiwing taekwondo they surmized that taekwondo was too violent and decided the ART OF PEACE was a better choice.

For some reason she decided she would rather take taekwondo after seeing my red gi.

LOL

This isn't Aikido related, but a "doh" nonetheless.

It was the day before my test for next rank in one of the arts I study and I was at a regional martial arts festival/seminar with sensei. He is only in town for testing and the occasional seminar. We wear these Chinese/Kung Fu style gi tops with long sleaves. I had cut the sleaves off at the elbow to allow better movement and it was just more comfortable that way. However, I never hemmed the frayed ends so it looked all tattered and torn.

Sensei looked over at me about an hour into the seminar and gave me a stern look, "what happened to your sleaves?" I cut them... "No. You don't do that! You WILL have them fixed by the next time I see you."

Well, it turns out that the next time I would see him would be the next day at my test. We were a good 5 hours away from home and I had to get a friend of mine to hemm my gi top at 3 in the morning before my test at 7:00 am.

Seminar doh, committed at least three times this past weekend...

I'm surprised the visiting sempai didn't run away from me... after all, uke thinking nage's elbow IS the floor and tapping on it -- hard... HAD to have hurt...them, not me. Ooops.
MJ

Maya Mattison wrote: Seminar doh, committed at least three times this past weekend... I'm surprised the visiting sempai didn't run away from me... after all, uke thinking nage's elbow IS the floor and tapping on it -- hard... HAD to have hurt...them, not me. Ooops. MJ

Maya Maya Maya
will you never learn???
STOP TRYING TO HURT NAGE!!!!! (its not big and its not clever!!!) lol

Im not going in to any more of my aiki - D'ohs ..... especially as it would take forever where I teach the mini-mes
Although I do have 1 little story .... about one of my rangers
5yr old lad ... my daughters best friend, son of my close friend.
right ... nipper comes to my house to have tea, and then I was going to take both the darling to aikido .... he took one look at me ... pursed his lips like he was thinking about something .... then bowed as he entered my house !!!
he continued to bow for everything after that .... drink of water .... going to the toilet .... asking to get the colouring books out .... IT ROCKED!
(talk about a power trip) .... i did try to tell him ...... HONEST!!!!

George Chorny wrote: Came for my 6:45AM practice... half asleep... bowed to Sensei and almost said 'good morning sunshine' (vs. good morning Sensei) -Onegaishimasu-

I luaghed so hard when i read this that i had to explain why i was crying to everyone in the office.

Got my first one!

So yesterday was my fifth (maybe sixth, I get confused because I got to get on the mat when I went to observe) class.... and I've only been doing rolls from the floor. Well, yesterday there were several more people than usual, and all of them way more advanced than I (I think the least experienced was ikkyu (First Kyu - sp?))

So sensei wants to work on some crazy reversal thing that I don't know the name of... basically it starts with a overhand strike to the head, nage steps outside of uke, takes the arm and turns it to bring uke to the ground.... no problem, i've done this before.

However, the reversal is where uke (the original uke) starts to go down, and if nage is applying too much pressure on the arm, he brings his arm down underneath nage and rolls him forward... sometimes with quite a bit of force... all depends on how much force there was to start with.

Well I see sensei demonstrate this on someone else and I'm thinking "Today is the day aikido kills me..."

Sensei must have seen the look on my face because she looked at me and said "You don't have to do this if you aren't comfortable with it.." So basically that means I can't refuse

So my partner is being really cool about me almost pissing my pants... we're going real slow, getting right to the point where I would normally roll and stopping so I can make sure my feet and shoulders are all lined up... stuff like that.

So finally I'm just like "screw it" and basically just hurl myself over his shoulder into my first standing-front-roll ever.

...

Next thing I know I'm standing up on the other side of the mat in between sensei and one of the other students, who themselves had just finished a technique.

I was completely stunned... I didn't feel anything, hear anything, nothing... I was just on the other side of the mat.

So sensei and the other student are looking at me like "Uhhh... get out of our way..." but I'm just standing there in awe... completely spacing out until finally sensei says "Nice roll, now you have to learn to stay on your side of the mat" (joking)

It was only then that I realized how long I had been standing there, and it was super embarrassing because I was trying not to look like a complete newbie in front of the more advanced students, several of whom I was meeting for the first time.

D'OH!

-Doug

P.S. My rolls after that were NOT as good, and I felt them, and heard them (as in, hearing each part of your body that hits individually "WAP WAP WAP"), and so did everyone else, but at least I'm over the fear of it

George Chorny wrote: Came for my 6:45AM practice... half asleep... bowed to Sensei and almost said 'good morning sunshine' (vs. good morning Sensei) -Onegaishimasu-

Thinking about this I help but thinking that there are amny sensei out there who would prefer to be greated with good morning sunshine, i know mine would

My Aiki-Doh that had the whole dojo laughing...

It was my 3rd time on the mat since I started lessons, my first time practicing with "wooden sticks" and Sensei was teaching us a 13 move hit pattern. Well I am not that coordinated and my short term memory is not that great. Sensei started calling out numbers in Japanese ( I was still learning how to count at that point) and I thought he was calling out the specific number that coordinated with the specific move. I couldn't remember which move synched up with reach number and I was going allover crazy with my "wooden stick" trying to imitate the others. Sensei finally stopped class, looked at me and said "What are you doing?" When I finally explained to him what I was trying to do, he just burst out laughing and fell to the mat. We were just suppose to do one move, 10 times.. not ten moves one time.....

(silly silly me!)

In my second year of training I was a rather regular guest at the beginner-class where there are a lot of ki tests and aikido basics being explained etc. As I was, so to say, the beginner with the most experience, naturally I was selected as uke whenever needed. This one time our sensei tried to explain the point of the "rowing excercise", how to do it correctly and what it's benefits are.

After showing the posture and movement on his own, he calls me up and says: "Grab my wrists and try to remain in one-point." I do what I'm told and he goes on explaining how you have to move with your centre instead of just using the strenght of your arms in order to move someone holding your wrists like that.

So, we're standing there, me holding his wrists, him explaining the theory, looking at the class, moving his hips back and forth. I'm thinking, OK, now he's gonna pull me towards him just enough for me to jerk forward and lose my centre and balance hence underlining the theory with practical evidence.

Yeah, right! Next thing I know I was holding my sore nose, seeing stars, hearing the class laugh at the close encouter of my face and sensei's mighty hara. I should have seen that one coming!

1. Just got thrown, slid across the mat.
2. Uke for a rather rough omote irimi nage, rolled over backwards several times and hit the wall.
3. Tripped on my partner's pantleg.
4. Tripped on my own pantleg, hopped uncontrollably, then fell.
5. Tripped on my partner's hakama.
6. Accidently kicked someone in the face while practicing forward roles too close together. They were okay.
7. Dropped my partner while doing a back stretch.
8. Dropped my partner while doing kokyu ho (without ukemi).

Virginia Lewis wrote: 7. Dropped my partner while doing a back stretch. .

Think that's bad? I dropped SENSEI while doing the back stretch.

how about bowing to change partners and accidently knocking heads?

Karen Wolek wrote: Think that's bad? I dropped SENSEI while doing the back stretch.

Oh yeah. I've done that before too.

It's been a couple months so I can say this without wanting to dissolve through the floor: I smacked my partner in the face while demonstrating the kumijo six at my nidan test. This is after about three or four attempts to even remember what kumijo six was...I could rattle off a bunch of excuses but the truth of the matter is I just don't put as much time into my weapons training as I should. I also almost koshinaged my partner into the shomen.

Both my partner for the kumijos and I were testing. We both passed. Sensei was feeling merciful to me I guess (my partner was doing just fine).

And let's not forget the numerous times I've arrived for class missing a piece of my gi. Usually the pants, though sometimes the belt. D'oh!

Karen Wolek wrote: Think that's bad? I dropped SENSEI while doing the back stretch.

I'm no the other end -- my weight is floating somewhere between 215 and 220 pounds (I don't know what that is in kgs off the top of my head), so people have trouble doing a back stretch on ME. Doesn't work.