Aikido Saturday Afternoon - 12/12/09

Aikidokas: Tim, and Trey.

Ukemi: Light warm-up. Tim wanted us to start working quickly.

The Walk: None.

Releases: None

Techniques:

I was the subject of work today. We started off with the kneeling portion of Koryu Dai San and then did some work on Owaza Ju Pon. No, it was the other way around: Owaza Ju Pon and then Koryu Dai San. Trey got some time on Owaza Ju Pon as well.

We started off working on the garumas: Kube, Ude, and Hiji. They all are started by getting uke's hand to tori's hip. If you don't accomplish that smoothly, it's not going to work.

After Trey and I did that, I went through Kata Otoshi, Aikinage, Shihonage, Ushiro-ate, Kote-gaeshi, Ushiro Kubi Gatame and Shizumi otoshi.

Next up was the kneeling portion of Koryu Dai San. We only managed to get through the first three: Oshi Taoshi, Gyakugamae Ate, and Kote Gaeshi. There were some tweaks to all three.

On Oshi taoshi, I need to knee walk with a purpose. There should just be two steps to get to the arm bar. The second one (with the right knee off the ground) should have uke's arm on top of the leg in order to keep him under control.

We did a major change on Gyakugamae Ate. Previously, as uke strikes, I've been moving my left knee into uke at a 45 degree angle. I would end up with my knee behind uke's knee. The change is for me to just open up my stance by moving my knee horizontally so that it ends up in the same line that it started out. Uke reports that this is a far softer techniques when done this way.

Kote gaeshi acquired a tweak to the initial off-balance and a reinforcement of the knee-walking at the end. For the initial off-balance, I had been taking uke at a 45 degree angle. According to Trey, this is tough to recover from and we want uke to be able to recover and pull back. So, I am now supposed to take uke down the line of the punch he throws.

For the knee-walking portion, Tim reiterated that that is what is turning uke over. I need to keep my hands in my center while knee-walking and make certain that the two steps are full knee walk steps.

At the end of the session, Trey and I both did some slow work on Aigamae-ate and managed to do ok.

Aftermath: None of note.