Wednesday Night at the Dojo 4/18

Aikidokas: Sensei Tim.

Ukemi: Not bad. Big falls were fun, as usual, but some were not as soft as I'd like. Had one where the legs ended up on top of one another and resulted in aggravating the bruise on the right foot.

The Walk: per usual. Tried to widen my stance.

Releases: Worked with Tim, all evening on Koryu Dai Yon no Kata. I think it's a Sandan level kata, I'm not sure.

A good portion of the kata is based on the first 4 releases plus the addition of two new releases. You take the releases and extend them into falls for uke. Backfalls for releases 2 and 4. Front rollouts for 1 and 3.

There are variations for the first 4 releases where uke does not let tori complete the release and pulls back on tori's arm. That results in tori either stepping in a circular motion (if uke is inside tori's elbow) resulting in an aki nage or tori stepping down the line (if uke is outside tori's elbow) resulting in a gedan-ate.

There are also releases in which tori's hand is in a knife blade position, but we didn't get to that.

Aftermath: Bruise was getting better, but got made a little worse tonight.