What is this rowing technique?

Hi Aikiweb,

I was wondering if someone could please explain to me the warm-up rowing technique that I have seen some Aikido dojos do. It is where a sort of two handed back and forth rowing movement is done whilst vocalising loudly and deeply "hoooo haaaa" (and repeat). Thankyou in advance.

It's called funakogi undo (literally boat-rowing exercise.) The vocalizations depend on who is teaching it and what school they are from, as does exactly what it is designed to teach. I could tell you what I am trying to develop when I practice it, but that is probably different from others and probably wouldn't really be conveyed properly in text form anyway, so I won't.

In Shinto mythology, Ame no Torifune was a deity, in fact a boat, used by the other deities for transportation between the high plain of heaven and the land of reed plains (i.e., Japan). Morihei Ueshiba was steeped in Shinto, as interpreted by the Omoto religion, and used this exercise as a form of purification, called misogi. The exercise is followed by an exercise called furitama, shaking the ball, which was originally believed to be a form of inducing divine possession, called chinkon kishin. As Robin stated, the rowing exercise is also called funa kogi undo and all my teachers followed Ueshiba's example by doing this exercise at the very beginning of a training session.

And, unless I'm mistaken, you can see an approximation of it moving boats in the opening scenes of Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon as the characters are introduced...

Edward Matthews wrote: Hi Aikiweb, I was wondering if someone could please explain to me the warm-up rowing technique that I have seen some Aikido dojos do. It is where a sort of two handed back and forth rowing movement is done whilst vocalising loudly and deeply "hoooo haaaa" (and repeat). Thankyou in advance.

https://youtu.be/B2AjCGY9KRc

Here you can see different people do the exercise

Also som source material here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B2PMwdD2cc

It's like push/pull using whole body. You can get subtle kuzushi by it. Up or Down follows it. As a result uke falls down or floats up.

Walter Martindale wrote: And, unless I'm mistaken, you can see an approximation of it moving boats in the opening scenes of Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon as the characters are introduced...

I would expect your answer considering you're a rowing coach. Kiwi humor.

Richard Campbell wrote: I would expect your answer considering you're a rowing coach. Kiwi humor.

Kia ora. The "rowing" in the cormorant boat has zero resemblance to "rowing". I used to joke around a bit and make the hand motions of sculling when I was at class doing the rowing exercise...

Thank you for the replies everyone, much appreciated.

Today I watched a video of a friend performing the rowing exercise in freezing weather before dowsing himself in freezing cold lake water as a Misogi practice. The idea of the rowing exercise was to generate body heat. It was fascinating to watch and I thought about how this exercise is used to build up energy and then the shaking of the ball (as Peter eloquently states) is done to distribute the energy. I think Sensei Pimsleur said that the energy gets absorbed into your body as the ball decreases in intensity so you should feel the energy permeate your being as the ball shrinks. Just my added thoughts on the ideas stated so far.

I can't speak to the spiritual aspect, but technically you're learning to transfer your weight from one foot to the other without bobbing up and down, keeping your hips at a consistent height, trying to stay on the balls of your feet so your ankles and toes are also involved in the action, and keeping your upper-body in good posture. You can turn your hips naturally during the movement with practice.

Tsugi ashi is a good exercise to do after Torifune, since it's essentially the same thing but your feet are moving instead of planted. It's sometimes done by shuffling forwards only, but by going both forwards and backwards it's easy to see the application of Torifune.

After that, Kaiten/Henka might be the next thing to connect: Turning on the balls of your feet to face in the direction that was previously behind you. It can be done standing still like Torifune, or with movement as Tsugi ashi, so you can learn to be light on your feet but again, grounded and centred while able to change your stance and direction.

As far as I can tell, these are the most basic footwork routines you can possibly do, and everything else is an application of them. All have the aim of developing hips that "float" above strong and flexible legs, affording both sensitivity with your movement as well as stability.

In addition to what the others have said, it is a practice in initiating movement from the hips. The hip movement drives the hands forwards, and pulls them back. This helps reduce trying to use arm strength in some techniques, which results in struggle.