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Old 04-27-2008, 05:15 PM   #1
Chris Parkerson
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Minimal Circle Throwing

On another thread this last week, I promised to make a tape and post it.

Hope you folks enjoy it.

I will only leave it up a couple of days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK9JToqSZ5Q

Regards,

Chris parkerson
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Old 04-28-2008, 11:37 AM   #2
Michael Douglas
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Re: Minimal Circle Throwing

I don't know what to make of that.
For example, if the guy was being pushed down in the first example why then did he choose to roll forward?
He could've just sat down.
On the other hand, why did he choose to be pushed down at all when he could've just stayed standing.
Did you ask him to collapse or did he volunteer?
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Old 04-28-2008, 11:45 AM   #3
Chris Parkerson
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Re: Minimal Circle Throwing

Quote:
Michael Douglas wrote: View Post
I don't know what to make of that.
For example, if the guy was being pushed down in the first example why then did he choose to roll forward?
He could've just sat down.
On the other hand, why did he choose to be pushed down at all when he could've just stayed standing.
Did you ask him to collapse or did he volunteer?
Actually, I can make him do a front fall where his legs have to go shooting out as well or I can be nice as I did and place his center of gravity where I placed it to give him a front roll escape. It is a question of studying throwing points not arc sector throwing. IMO, throws must occur on specific points in space to be most efficient and to obtain the best success rate.
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Old 04-28-2008, 11:52 AM   #4
Chris Parkerson
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Re: Minimal Circle Throwing

Quote:
Michael Douglas wrote: View Post
I don't know what to make of that.

On the other hand, why did he choose to be pushed down at all when he could've just stayed standing.
Did you ask him to collapse or did he volunteer?
In the front fall technique, he had to fall. He had no choice in the matter. I gave him a front roll escape.

In the case where he did a back roll, that was his choice. He could have just done a back fall. But he had to fall.... no choice. Resistance may have injuredhis back.

In the thread discussing Daito, Yoshinkan and Tai Chi Secrets, I laid out a large part of my methodology. But it is hidden in plain sight unless you spend time with learning the principles and working it to death -making the movement smaller and smaller.
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Old 04-28-2008, 11:57 AM   #5
tuturuhan
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Re: Minimal Circle Throwing

Quote:
Chris Parkerson wrote: View Post
On another thread this last week, I promised to make a tape and post it.

Hope you folks enjoy it.

I will only leave it up a couple of days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK9JToqSZ5Q

Regards,

Chris parkerson
MTL, Chris,

You are going to get criticism. Yet, you must keep going in your direction.

Ok...to explain it. I often use a bottle filled with water to explain how the technique works. The outside to the bottle or the skin does not move. But, the water inside the bottle changes its "center of gravity" as it is poured to the top or bottom of the tube (bottle).

As such, the placement of the "lever and fulcrum" does not change in the throw. But, the technique is different because the center of gravity changes.

Once you have this control...the throw seems effortless. In watching O Sensei "the standard" for us is being able to repeat his "effortless throws".

Best
Joseph

Joseph T. Oliva Arriola
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Old 04-28-2008, 12:07 PM   #6
Chris Parkerson
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Re: Minimal Circle Throwing

Quote:
Joseph Arriola wrote: View Post
MTL, Chris,

You are going to get criticism. Yet, you must keep going in your direction.

Ok...to explain it. I often use a bottle filled with water to explain how the technique works. The outside to the bottle or the skin does not move. But, the water inside the bottle changes its "center of gravity" as it is poured to the top or bottom of the tube (bottle).

As such, the placement of the "lever and fulcrum" does not change in the throw. But, the technique is different because the center of gravity changes.

Once you have this control...the throw seems effortless. In watching O Sensei "the standard" for us is being able to repeat his "effortless throws".

Best
Joseph
I already explained in the daito, Yoshinkan, taichi thread that when I have done the "tip of the iceberg" videos before, that I was making my circles large enough to see them. Now I made it as small as I can. I would call this "stickiness/push hands done from inside the body. Where there is movement within his spine, I fill it with water.. or to paraphrase Bruce Lee, "It fills with water", remember, "the hand hits" rather than I hit with my hand. You see, the more I get out of the way, gravity and my four other big brothers do the work. I like your imagery and I know you do this as well. I have felt it in your chinna and in your "center striking".
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Old 04-28-2008, 07:30 PM   #7
Chris Parkerson
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Re: Minimal Circle Throwing

In hopes of building some discussion, I have stated in one location much of the process I use in this post.

Introduction


Most of my Aiki study has been exactly in the area of how every little thing I do specifically effects uke in the following ways:

(1) stability
(2) balance
(3) reduction of his or her base
(4) dropping my weight through one of the throwing points in uke's stance.

Relax, Attach to the Center of Gravity and Destabilize the Structure

The baseline Aiki-Daito strategy is that as soon as you touch me or I touch you, you pay a price.

I command your balance and stability.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsYgtrcu1E4

What is hara or center?

For me, center means "center of gravity". This is very different from many who consider that the center remains inside the pelvic girdle like a 5 gallon can of beans and noodles. A center of gravity has no weight or mass. It is like a quark. And it can move outside the body. Joining centers of gravity is likely an impossibility in Newtonian physics. One center will displace the other quite naturally when they come too close together. When you can feel this activity happening through the connection, techniques are quite light. You are not fighting uke's strength or mass. You are pushing his quark.

Once setting the center of gravity in motion, I can play with your base and decide how tightly I want to throw you (how small or at what point in space the pivot point will be) or whether I just want to keep you unstable and punish you with atemi or koppo.

You see, whether I complete a throw or I do not, it really does not matter to me. If I have made you "worry about falling" then I am in control and your mind has been "split" between protecting yourself from the fall and deciding to strike back. Few people can do both at the same time.

In fact, if you are unstable and losing your balance, (1) you will have little-no power in your punch and (2) you will have lost most or all of your "iron vest".

Throwing (Balance and base)

Good Daito can be performed slowly. many Daito/Yanagi throws are often accomplished not by lifting an uke as seen in Quito Ryu/modern Judo. Many techniques are accomplished by "weighting" uke's spine by relaxing your body sequentially. This is why yanagi is interpreted as "Drooping Willow".

Sequenced relaxation builds momentum within your body.

When uke's spine is compressed, you now have a connection to his center of gravity. Small shifts of your center can make uke's compressed spine become unstable. Once unstable, the load, (your relaxed mass) moves his center outside his base, he loses his balance and he falls.

It is just physics. Relaxation. And a smidgen of mental focus points.

Quote:
Dropping Weight
Weight dropping to me is simple physics. Bottom line, I must be relaxed enough to "read" your body. Every jig or jag must be read and responded to like water filling a gap.

Now, uke can catch a bowling ball pretty well if his posture is stable (structure) and if his hands are close to his center of gravity. He cannot do it if (1) he is unstable and/or (2) he tries to do it with his hands outstretched (far from my own center of gravity).

Dropping weight has nothing to do with applying force. It is about letting gravity take over.

In another strand I talked about using the visualization of cutting through butter. After making a specific study of how the body buckles, you just drop weight like you are dropping a men cut with a sword and trust that gravity will drop your weight through the vulnerable area.

In fact, Riai to us means doing your weight drop exactly like you are doing your sword cut. For thowse who know the Yanagi cut, they can probablyt see it in my weight drop process.

As I said before, once relaxed, you will feel the compression of the joints. Then move your lower body with a focus on uke's center moving to one of the known throwing points in his posture. Then drop more weight there with your body and your mind. Do not force it, let gravity do it.

Dropping weight must be done in a vertical plane. Angled planes tend not to work. Dropping weight in an agnled plane causes "contention" within your muscles and structure that impede the work of gravity. Put simply, balls fall down to the ground in a vertical fashion.

As I said, good Daito/Yanagi can be performed slowly, even the aiki-no-jitsu techniques. In fact, I have done two things in my demonstration videos:

1) I make the circles I use larger than I normally do so that people with a good eye can see how my movement effects uke frame-by-frame

2) I demonstrate the technique slowly first and then at a normal speed. I go slow so that the trained eye can see that, just like basic push hands, I do not break my "sticky connection" until it is time to complete the throw.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzpw13tuFkM

In time, you can make throws so small that you simply drop your hand on a shoulder or lightly place your hand on the shoulder and the whole process occurs. You touch the uke and he falls down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK9JToqSZ5Q

Relax and Relax Some More

Again, I must be relaxed enough to "read" your body from the get go and continue to read your body like a good masseur or chiropractor would. Every jig or jag must be read and responded to like water filling a gap. Smooth and immediate. Not going faster or too slowly, but at the same speed as your body responds to my movement.

You ever heard the joke about the midget who went into the bar, picked out a fellow and said, "do you want to fight me buddy?"
When the guy responded willingly, the midget pointed to a really giant fellow and said, "well, there's me buddy."

I have five buddies. They are my big brothers. Gravity, momentum, centripital force, centrifugal force and friction. The more you get out of the way and let these big brothers do the job, the lighter the technique becomes.

Does it work in a fight?

There is an old Kung Fu adage that says, "Who can be calm until the first blow is struck?"

The path of calmness and relaxation is a road less travelled. It often takes someone skilled in wae-gong to really make use of nei-gong. Older guys go there out of necessity. we also have less testosterone and do not get so excited so easily.

In my kenpo, escrima and jujitsu days, I got rid of the "butterflies" that people tend to get when they wonder what getting hit is like. That helps you to relax.

But to truly remain relaxed in a fight, you also need to forget about "contention" and "fear" in all their aspects. Contention begins in the mind and is the source for tightness in the muscles and losing the ability to truly read the subtle changes in yur opponent. I really cannot understand how contentious and argumentative people understand how to truly flow and blend.

What is inside the mind shows in the actions of the body. I really look at a fight as a dance between two forms…. A dance and interplay between two objects like Process Philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer states in his seminal work on hermeneutics Truth and Method. I do not think of winning or losing. Didn't the poem "IF" say "you should treat those two imposters just the same?"

Strategy

I also have determined that suppression trumps attrition in most cases....especially in the initial part of the fight.

That means I also believe that intent and a bit of soft relaxed motion trumps fa-jing percussion. I would rather smother an attack and then decide if I want to throw the opponent, break him up or strike vital points. If Fa-jing is what someone has trained, isn't it a smart thing to take away his best weapons at the onset?

Power and Attrition

Now I have studied a variety of ways to attain power in a punch. I have decided that a relaxed weight-drop punch is just as powerful as a whipping-style punch generated by fa-jing. But this is simply my opinion and not worth any argument. My punch still begins at the bottom of my feet, goes through the legs, is directed by the hips and culminates in the hands. Instead of it being like "throwing a ball bearing "whipped" at 60 miles per hour as suggested in the wonderful article Dan hardin provided last week on this site, I move like a freight train going 15 miles per hour. My mass does the damage rather than the speed. And by going slower, I remain blended and sensing my opponent without too many breaks in the push hands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVEFbwimXRE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-gG_loRZGI

Comments and insights (non contentious arguments) are most welcome.

Regards.

Chris Parkerson
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Old 04-29-2008, 05:01 AM   #8
Paul Sanderson-Cimino
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Re: Minimal Circle Throwing

This is certainly very interesting. I'm not really qualified to say much more than that!
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Old 04-29-2008, 06:17 AM   #9
Chris Parkerson
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Re: Minimal Circle Throwing

Quote:
Paul Sanderson-Cimino wrote: View Post
This is certainly very interesting. I'm not really qualified to say much more than that!
Thanks for your support anyway. It is a bit unnerving "coming out" so openly and divulding one's style, technical explanations and strategy.

Regards,

Chris
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Old 04-29-2008, 07:19 AM   #10
Chris Parkerson
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Re: Minimal Circle Throwing

I thank everyone for their responses. I have had a couple that asked why I have not shown traditional technique. You can look on my You-Tube for examples of traditional stuff. But I am primarily a modern fighter and have adopted the principles into my 35 years of adult training in the martial arts.

Yanagi Aiki Principles and Modern Combat

We use several templates in our study of Aiki Jujitsu at our training at Yanagi Hara Ryu. This is probably why we attract so many veteran martial artists. We are not asking people to change their styles, only to improve them with a few new ideas in movement.

In a post a few months ago, I mentioned that the crew I brought to renshi Clodig included folks that has a variety of impressive titles and at least 30 years of martial training under their belt.

Most recently we have gained a man who is a 7th degree in Okinawan style karate and whose George Dillman/Ed Lake style of Dim Mak is quite proficient. Another person is a Chinese-born traditional medical practicioner who trained much of her life in Wah Lu. Both have extensive knowledge of bio-mechanics, neurology, bio-magnetics, etc. The Chinese person has a PhD. in the stuff.

But we do not want to simply practice traditional kata and technique. The principles can be used for all forms of modern combat.

Yanagi and Kenpo

This combination probably scares me the most as far as safe practice is concerned. When I use the principles described in my last post, and I combine them with the "machine gun style" that Edmund Parker used, you really need to have a trained uke or he will get damaged quite easily. And if you use it in a fight, expect to go to jail if you get caught. It is totally beyond the concept of excessive force.

Every time you parry, you are taking stability and balance. Double factor blocking with "frictional guidance" keeps the person off-balance by the use of structure and positioning.

Parries and strikes literally follow the old formula of "suck-in- spit out" like the Chinese talk about. Uke literally is falling into many of your "flow patterns" and really needs to watch himself or he will get banged up pretty badly. Kenpo students learn to react to the body manipulations of a technique.

But when you are dropping heavy hands into the techniques, it is for real. They just better relax, go with it and use their anticipatory protections. It is not theoretical anymore and you simply cannot "punk" tori by resisting it. This is especially true because most of the Kenpo techniques are designed to manipulate the body neurologically much like the Dillman stuff anyway. Addint the internal principles takes you from what Edmund parker called (1) the mechanical state to (2) the fluid state" to (3) the gaseous state".

Yanagi and Escrima

The majority of my Filipino arts experience has been in Largo Mano and initially was enfluenced by leo Heron methods. Later Gilbert Martinez influenced us. Understanding range and "crashing the line" into the medio and corto range is pretty much the same for me.

But once I do crash the line, I create my "angles of cancellation" with my initial attachment through the use of destabilization and balance breaking (kuzushi). Jujitsu-style "containments" of the weapon hand, throws, traps, breaks, strikes are not done in this zone without first making the guy unstable with your stickiness.

Why fight in this range and leave someone's balance and stability in place? Why just use percussion when knives are involved? That is too even of a fight and requires immense study of the myriad of trapping techniques and their counters. I would rather split my opponent's mind by taking his balance and stability. It is just a safer way to fight against a knife.

Once you have taken control of balance and stability, feed him his own knife or your knife. Make sure he does not produce his second or third knife in the process that can trump your angles of cancellation. I have rarely known a knife fighter who only has one knife on them. As Felix Valencia teaches, "one to throw and two to go."

Yanagi and MMA

Well, sorry, I am keeping this one close to the vest. I am an older guy, a lot slower and less strong as I used to be. And the MMA style is very prominent right now. It is powerful and a lot of young samurai are using it. I do need to keep something secret so I can maintain my advantage. Sorry…
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Old 08-29-2008, 04:11 AM   #11
Martin Goodyear
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Re: Minimal Circle Throwing

Thanks for having the confidence to share all that Chris, you're clearly something of an explorer - I'm enjoying the Youtubes.

A couple of questions: On the issue of fa-jin vs heavy hands, is this just a personal preference, or do you think heavy hands approach is more compatible with aikido? Would you go as far as saying the fa-jin approach is incompatible?

And on the matter of rooting, do you think that there's any fundamental differerence between aidido and the Chinese internal styles? I'm talking about the dropping of the pelvis to straighten the spine, as opposed to maintaining the spine's S-curve and relying on your triangular posture to channel forces (this is my current unnderstanding - feel free to correct me). And is it important to be able to move smoothly from one to the other? You clearly go with the Chinese 'double weighting' line of thought.

And in terms of training, the internal Chinese folk are usually sticklers for standing-post practice. Do consider such practice to be necessary or important, or do you find less formal aikido exercises, done with mindfulness, heavy arms and a keen sense of gravity to be an adequate substitute?

A bit of a bombardment of questions there - I'll stop now.

Cheers,
Martin.
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Old 08-29-2008, 07:03 AM   #12
Shany
 
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Re: Minimal Circle Throwing

that won't work with someone u don't know, say the least fall.

A good stance and posture reflects a proper state of mind
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