Saturday Morning at the Dojo 6/30

Aikidokas: a bunch, but a number of folks were off at a developmental judo tournament.

First Session: 1.5 to 2 hours on ukemi and stretching. We didn't get to big falls. We did do falls starting from one knee and standing. We also did some front, what I call flat, falls. Similar to what you might take on Oshi-taoshi.

I got some pointers from Carla on my rolls from the knee. My butt was moving off-line on the roll: if I stated with my right knee up, my posterior would travel more to the left than it should. I managed to improve it a little bit. She was going to tweak my standing rolls some, but she and Sensei Tim discussed it and determined that it was something specific I'd been taught and did not need correcting. (At least, that's how I interpreted the conversation I saw going on in a corner of the mat).

The second session of the morning was on Owaza Ju Pon. John got to teach that session. It was a fun introduction to those techniques. I think I ended up attempting 9 of the 10. By the time we got to number 10, I did not feel I was properly energized to do it safely. It was lunch time.

I did manage to get a throw on the Big 10 version of Kote-gaeshi. I stood there for a few seconds afterward with a big silly grin on my face. It may have even been caught on tape. I'll have to check.