Wednesday Night at the Dojo 11/29

Aikidokas: Tim, John, Keith, Oliver, and Joey.

Ukemi: A little work on a new roll: rotator. At least thats what I'll call it. Stand facing a near wall, go up on your toes and rotate on them so that you're now facing the opposite wall. Now you just take a nice forward roll. I did one decent one on the right side, a bomb on the left, and then a not so great one on the right. Practice, practice, practice. Gonna have to work on these, they're not intuitive.

The Walk: as usual. Facing into a circle this time. Then, at Sensei Raymond's suggestion we did another round of the Walk, left side only. That wasn't too bad until we got to the parts that, after doing only half of that movement, had us facing 180 deg from starting position. That was weird.

Big falls went ok. The one that everyone liked, technically, is the one that was least comfortable to me.

Releases: Worked with John. Some tweaking on 7th release

Techniques:

Worked with John on 6-10, right side only.

Sensei Raymond had some improvements on Oshi-taoshi for me: move like a scared rabbit when you have the final upright kazushi on uke.

Ude-gaeshi was ok, need to look out for uke's minions while exerting control over uke.

My first attempt on Ude-hineri for a night seems to result in me not getting the first off-balance.

Waki-gatame needs to have uke's elbow going through the space between his shoulder and his ear for folks my size and smaller. I attempted to get more off-line for John after being uke for Keith on this technique in the past. Apparently, the height relation between John and I is within the nominal working range.

Did a test run of Kote-hineri and it went ok. I can't remember the entry this morning. That's the main difference between it and Oshi-taoshi.

Spent the rest of the evening on Kote-gaeshi. My main problem, as far as I'm concerned, is the entry footwork. The off foot needs to circle behind the anchor foot and then extend down the line of uke's momentum. Short-changing that motion eliminates any chance at kazushi. I did manage to throw John on it once and came close, by his admission, several times.

Watched Keith work with John on Kote-gaeshi. I was concentrating on his footwork and it appears he has some of the same issues.

Aftermath: No new pains from this session. Ankle is still bruised and swollen.

Dojo looks properly festive for the season.

There's a possibility we may try to be a stop on a Japanese Sensei's potential U.S. tour. That would be fabulous if the stars align for it to happen. More on this I will not say.