Spring ATAA Seminar

This past weekend was the Spring ATAA Seminar here in Houston.  The theme of the weekend was: "It's uke's show".

Friday evening we played with some of the releases from Koryu Dai Yon No Kata.  There are options and reactions in there that depend on what uke decides to do.

We also had a Nidan demonstration from one of the members who is shipping off to Afghanistan for the next twelve months and so will be away when his time in grade requirement is met.  He did a really nice demo.

We then went off to a local Chinese buffet place for dinner.

Saturday morning was an open mat opportunity for the first hour.  Trey and I worked with Brad on some of his techniques, trying to give him some suggestions.

The next hour was more demonstrations.  We normally do it in the order of increasing rank (e.g., sankyu, nikkyu, ikkyu, etc), but since I was going to be tori and uke for the demos, Tim Sensei wanted me to tori first for my Nidan demonstration.  I don't remember much of it.  There were parts I thought I left out but, apparently, I was in the zone.  There's one technique, shizumi otoshi, where uke goes flying over my back.  There was a discussion about this technique before the demonstration and bets were placed.  Trey, my uke, was offered $15 to slap my butt as he went over on that technique.  He managed to accomplish it, and we have video proof.  I'll be posting it soon, I hope.

Next was Trey's demonstration for Shodan.  I uke'd for him.  I made a mistake and gave him an out of place attack not to far into the demonstration.  He recovered extremely well.  I'm not sure it was noticed by many folks.  As payback, he gave me a little rougher throw a few seconds later, but I deserved it.  We made it through the rest of the demonstration without any trouble.

I was a little light headed after all of that for about an hour or so.  I'm not sure what was the cause.

We spent the afternoon working on chains of releases (aka Ki Harry, Ki Hara, and Name No Waza).  I got to work with a bunch of folks while exploring all of this.  My brain wasn't fully engaged in it, so I hope my body remembers at some point.  I've got a hand out for reference, and I shot some video, so maybe there is hope of retaining it.

It was a blast getting to work with everyone.

After the seminar, it was dinner time at a local restaurant.  I left after 2 1/2 hours as I had to get home and feed the dogs.  The drinking was still in full swing, so there's no telling how long the folks stayed at the restaurant.

I'm currently in the process of editing the video and hope to have some up shortly.

Now it's time to start learning for Sandan.  At least two years away.