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Old 08-21-2006, 11:30 AM   #51
Gerry Magee
Dojo: Makotokai Aikido Riai
Location: Glasgow
Join Date: Jun 2004
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Scotland
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Re: Rhythm/Speed/Musubi - How they work

Sensei Coyle wrote this on MAP hop it helps..

ATEMI AND WEAPONS TRAINING

Often I shall take up a bokken adopt seigan or yodan kamae and ask that someone attack me empty handed. However spirited he may be there is always a pause, an uncertainty in facing the sword unarmed.And indeed should he attempt to close with me he is cut.
Placing the sword aside the explanation is given that little has changed since all of the principles and attitude of the sword remain. All that has gone is the sword and the tegatana shall act as a sword.Our training we choose to call aikido riai (aikido complete) in that we believe that the integration of the weapons and empty hand techniques give a more holistic and effective approach to aikido.
I have been told many times " do not fight the opponent FENCE him"
Example sen sen no sen irrimi nage
sen sen no sen is the pre-emptive principle of swordsmanship as the opponent approaches or hesitates a shomen strike is made to his head as we enter triangularly to his right side if he manages to block his right ribs are exposed these may be struck with a short punch (choku tsuke from jo waza) passing on a kessa giri cuts the left side of his neck cutting him off balnce backwards to the side. Irrimi nage is executed with a shomen cut driving deeply through to throw the opponent. The complete technique may be executed using only tegatana with no need to grasp the attacker in any way.It has been applied using sword principles and sword cuts.
This manner of dynamic technique demands not only an understanding of sword principles but also sword technique.
In almost every dojo I have ever visited I have heard the command "raise your arms like a sword" or "at this point cut down like a sword." Saddly these commands are often given by "teachers" who have little or no training in sword to students who have no knowledge of sword. To this end I would like to give my thoughts on atemi and the sword relations for your comments.If you think this may. be of value.
I await your replies

Regards

Koyo
Edit
SEIGAN KAMAE sword held at the middle level kisaki (point) threatening the face.A very versatile posture since attack and defence to any area is possible.
YODAN KAMAE sword held above the head in a very aggresive manner an intimidating posture purely attack oriented.
CHOKU TSUKE a short direct thrust with either sword jo or fist.
TEGATANA aikido handblade
SHOMEN front of the head any blow directed here is called shomen.
SEN SEN NO SEN the act of initiating the attack giving the opponent no time or space in which to act.
BOKKEN wooden sword. This is not an alternative to the sword it is a weapon in it's own right. Many samurai used it rather than the sword perhaps the most famous (infamous) being Musashi Minamoto.Hence when speaking of the bokken sword is often used after it's introduction.
KESSA GIRI diagonal cut from neck to hip (in this instance)
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Old 08-21-2006, 11:39 AM   #52
Gerry Magee
Dojo: Makotokai Aikido Riai
Location: Glasgow
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Re: Rhythm/Speed/Musubi - How they work

sorry, I should clarify..
We train in three distinct timings..
Sen: This is the worst case senario, Uke is able to mount a powerful attack and Nage has time only to protect his centreline and move out of line of the attack.
Sen no Sen: This is the most common timing in martial arts training, we enter in on uke's attack before he is able to kimi, unbalancing him to a kusushi and applying a technique.
Sen Sen no Sen: This is a pre-emptive strike, perhaps when uke is hesitant allowing nage to initiate an attack and make a technique.

In all these situations we try to avoid Aiki, we must seek to break the attackers rhythm at all times. This is done by moving quicker than him and having a stronger spirit.
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Old 08-21-2006, 03:13 PM   #53
Erick Mead
 
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Re: Rhythm/Speed/Musubi - How they work

Quote:
Gerry Magee wrote:
sorry, I should clarify..
We train in three distinct timings..
Sen: This is the worst case senario, Uke is able to mount a powerful attack and Nage has time only to protect his centreline and move out of line of the attack.
Sen no Sen: This is the most common timing in martial arts training, we enter in on uke's attack before he is able to kimi, unbalancing him to a kusushi and applying a technique.
Sen Sen no Sen: This is a pre-emptive strike, perhaps when uke is hesitant allowing nage to initiate an attack and make a technique.

In all these situations we try to avoid Aiki, we must seek to break the attackers rhythm at all times. This is done by moving quicker than him and having a stronger spirit.
Sente training is, of course, familiar and worthwhile in approaching these questions initially. But the point of takemusubi aiki appears to depart from questions of timing and initiative, as was noted here, earlier in the thread, in O-Sensei's own words:
http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showpo...40&postcount=4.

The same is noted in Ledyard Sensei's practical examination of the issue, and in my tentative attempts to put some analytical flesh on what too many see as dismissable, esoteric bones. I do not feel that way at all, but I recognize the trivialization of ancient, esoteric but very practical concepts that often biases the analytical worldview. One way to cure this bias is to chasten the analytical mind with some data, physiological studies and suggestive physical theories derived from them, and then explore their practical consequences for training.

Considerations of sente for instance, considered merely in terms of time, are, past a certain point of training, easily addressed in terms of either space or interval adjustment in maai (irimi), or rotation (tenkan), so that the question of who starts or finishes first becomes somewhat academic. A simple turn of the hips often changes sensen no sen into sen no sen or sen no sen into go no sen. That, too, is the point of takemusubi from my perspective. I personally like many techniques in go no sen timing, and feel no particualr burden or rush in that timing mode, nor does it affect or diminish the effectiveness of my technique.

My approach in exploring these issues is equally practical, as well as scholastic and scientific. Most ancient knowledge is exceedingly empirical -- what it lacks is a quantifiable, and testable theoretic basis to persuade the overly analytical mind. Analytical knowledge is not better, nor is it even remotely as useful to most practitioners as what Ledyard Sensei teaches in this regard, and indeed it was his observations in actual training that set me on this road.

Given Sensei Coyle's long experience, I would be very grateful if you could solicit and report his views on ki musubi, rhythm, speed and sente -- especially in light of ki ken tai ichi.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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Old 08-21-2006, 07:22 PM   #54
George S. Ledyard
 
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Re: Rhythm/Speed/Musubi - How they work

Quote:
Gerry Magee wrote:
In all these situations we try to avoid Aiki, we must seek to break the attackers rhythm at all times. This is done by moving quicker than him and having a stronger spirit.
I am sorry but this comment doesn't show a good understanding of what "aiki" means. This is written as if "aiki" simply means some sort of matching of movement.

I would point out that "avoiding aiki" is avoiding Aikido. It's just plain not Aikido if there is no aiki. I suspect I know what you are trying to say but this is an incorrect way of expressing it. If you are doing Aikido, you never try to avoid "aiki".

The whole point of "aiki" is to operate on another level than trying to be quiker than your opponent. If what you have stated is correct, an older practitioner would never be able to defeat a younger, stronger attacker because the younger attacker will always be quicker in an absolute sense. This what O-sensei meant when he stated that it wasn't about timing.

It also isn't about having a "stronger spirit". That is essentially a competitive, oppostitional concept. It is also not "aiki". Aikido is about having a non-reactive, calm spirit that is imperturbable, no matter how strong the opponent's spirit is.

The principles you have described are basically from a kendo outlook. This is the level on which a good solid practitioner operates until he starts to get to the higher level principles which go beyond these. There's nothing essentially incorrect about these principles as outlined but they are not what O-Sensei described when he talked about Aikido, in fact he was at pains to make sure that people understood that these were NOT what he was talking about or teaching.

George S. Ledyard
Aikido Eastside
Bellevue, WA
Aikido Eastside
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Old 08-21-2006, 08:35 PM   #55
DonMagee
Location: Indiana
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Re: Rhythm/Speed/Musubi - How they work

I was talking to a few guys tonight about an 80 year old judo instructor I've trained with on a few occasions. He would randori with me and throw me around like a rag doll. I would ask him, how at 80, with 2 replaced knees and a replaced hip, lighter then I by some amount of weight, physically weaker than I, and with much less endurace, how he could always defeat me. He told me that he had been there before, he knew what I was trying to do, and he knew what I was planing to do, so he was ahead of me and already defending before I began. I guess that is what I get for thinking my strategies unique or clever. He had been down that road, attacked the way I might attack a million times. So he was faster in the mind at recognizing what to do before I could realize what was happening.

So remember, there are many aspects of bigger, faster, stronger. A stronger, faster mind can keep you ahead of the fastest attacker. We talk about overcomming someone physically bigger, faster, or stronger a lot. But I have never seen anyone but that judo instructor talk about dealing with someone with a more cunning mind.

- Don
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough" - Albert Einstein
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Old 08-22-2006, 12:59 AM   #56
George S. Ledyard
 
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Re: Rhythm/Speed/Musubi - How they work

Quote:
Don Magee wrote:

So remember, there are many aspects of bigger, faster, stronger. A stronger, faster mind can keep you ahead of the fastest attacker. We talk about overcomming someone physically bigger, faster, or stronger a lot. But I have never seen anyone but that judo instructor talk about dealing with someone with a more cunning mind.
Once again, I understand what you are trying to say but it isn't about being stronger or faster. It's about being connected to the point that the attacker cannot act separately from you. This connection exists in the mind (this is what was meant when O-Sensei talked about joining one's ki with that of the opponent) and it exists on the physical level (this is what is meant by ittai ka or "single body").

Anyone who has taken ukemi for someone at the level of Saotome Sensei can recount what it is like to attack as fast as one can and have their teacher move almost casually to enter in without being struck. It is not about being faster, it is about moving when it is necessary to move. The mind isn't faster, it is slower, in the sense that when one is very calm, one's sense of time changes and one sees things more slowly. Attempts to go "faster" simply result in feeling like there is less and less time available. What I am talking about results in a feeling that one has all the time in the world.

Karl Friday in his book, Legacies of the Sword: The Kashima-Shinryu and Samurai Martial Culture has a whole section on why someone who is older and slower but more experienced can actually be perceived as faster by an opponent. It is very interesting.

At summer camp I was asked by a young man less than half my age how I got so fast. I explained that I am just over three hundred pounds and 54 years old. I am not fast in any absolute sense. This fellow was much "faster" than I. I am simply relaxed and I move at the right time, therfore I do not need to rush. I am efficient. This is possible because I am connected in a way to my opponent that I never was when I was less experienced. Then I had to hurry.

George S. Ledyard
Aikido Eastside
Bellevue, WA
Aikido Eastside
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Old 08-22-2006, 03:22 AM   #57
Abasan
Dojo: Aiki Shoshinkan, Aiki Kenkyukai
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Re: Rhythm/Speed/Musubi - How they work

I don't understand. When you go into uke's center are you saying move forward, but not directly into his attack... eg move forward with your center focused on his center but at an angle that will allow his strike to miss your body?

Isn't this still moving offline?

Now. What about attacks that do not originate from the accepted center? Instead of tanden, it comes from the shoulders or the hands or the chest? Do you move towards that center as well?

Doesn't this require your movement speed to be faster than the strike speed? Or do you move before the strike is initiated? As in guessing or intuiting the timing of the attack?

I'm very confused right now.

Draw strength from stillness. Learn to act without acting. And never underestimate a samurai cat.
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Old 08-22-2006, 03:47 AM   #58
Pauliina Lievonen
 
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Re: Rhythm/Speed/Musubi - How they work

As I'm very new to this kind of training myself, maybe I can try to explain it from my point of view: If you look around you where you're sitting now, in front of a computer I'm guessing , you can pick an object in the room. For example I can look at a chair over there. I can keep my mind sort of inside myself, inside my head, and look at a chair over there from inside my head. There's a distance between me and the chair.

OR, I can send my mind to the chair, and so I'm (of course I'm still just sitting here where I'm sitting, but this is how it feels like) there where the chair is, and there's no distance between me and the chair (again, of course there really is a distance, but this is how it feels like).

The difficulty I had at first was that I would try to strain to send my attention over to what I wanted to observe, sort of trying to stretch my mind all the way from here to there - but instead the trick is to let go of your sense of yourself and let your thought move freely to over there. So instead of trying to stretch a long elastic mind over the gap, taking your attention and placing it on the other side of the gap.

I've been practicing this with all kinds of things, inanimate objects in the room, people on the street, moving balls in a computer game. It always improves my ability to see what is going to happen, way earlier than I'd expect. I already wrote about my experience in light "sparring" the other night.

I hope this makes sense to someone! I also hope that the more experienced people in this thread will correct me if I'm way off of what they are talking about...

kvaak
Pauliina
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