Aikido Saturday Afternoon - 11/22/08

Aikidokas: Trey.

Sensei Tim was still under-the-weather, so I got to run another class

Ukemi: The usual set and we worked on some knee-walking to get Trey introduced to it.

The Walk: Twice. Once with the eyes closed. I really messed up in the midst of one stone on the Walk and ended up 90 degrees from where I should.

Releases: with Trey. I was not doing well: rushing and being late at different times

Techniques:

We went through 6-13 of Ju Nana Hon Kata. We spent a lot of time on kote-gaeshi without much success. Trey can see what he needs to change, but he's not having luck changing it. He stops moving partway through and should keep moving throughout the technique. When he stops, I can regain my balance very quickly.

We also played with oshi-taoshi and came up with some information that was new to both of us.

Normally, you get the initial off-balance and uke's lead foot lands. If there's sufficient off-balance that uke has to take a step with the trailing foot, the angles for taking uke to the floor change.

In the normal case, we say tori should go over the mountain, taking uke's elbow through his ear. This does not work if the non-lead foot is in a strong position for uke. If you go over the mountain from this position, uke will land in a heap, possibly on his back or shoulder. I found this out the hard way.

We played with the foot positions and angles for a bit and discovered that over the mountain works for the normal case because uke's fourth toe is right in line with over the mountain direction, so tori ends up taking uke's balance off of his fourth toe which will lead to a fall.

We then played with the angles for the second case and discovered that tori needs to take uke's elbow out over the fourth toe of the non-lead foot. This is just a little in front of uke's face and allows a good fall and face plant.


Aftermath: A nice solid workout that caused some muscles to ache.

I certainly hope my muscles get used to this work.