Texhomiki , Tejazushi, and Strategy of Movement( an Okie-do ramble)

I write a lot about the atemi/ self defense part of aikido, and I dont want to come off as one of those guys.    I'd say That about 15% to 20% of my aikido thinking is self defense, but I think that self defense based martial arts training instruction takes a lot of the long term enjoyment out of the study.  To be one of those guys, you have to be always "on."   There is a lot of fear and paranoia with self defense issues, and its just not fun to go there on a regular basis.  A lot of my aikido is light exercise and stress relief and not to sound like Morty too much, I think that the best way to "connect" with the world is through physical movement.

Jack calls Aikido the strategy of movement.  With the strategy of movement there lies the realm slowness and softness, and tactile perception, balance perception.  In my other posts I call this the footfalls and cottonballs approach.  self defense wise, its sketchy.  But when you think with a self defense mind set its all sketchy.  You don't know who is gonna jump you, when, how many, and what have you.  You approach things with a scattered outlook.  Scattered isnt a fun way to live.  The strategy of movement isnt scattered.

I think that most soft martial arts have a problem with atemi, or unconnected disruptive force.  It lends it self to a seeing mentality.  looking for openings.  instead of feeling for openings or oppurtunities.  there are balance and extension issues that don't jive well with the aikido.  A seeing mindset is a different mindset than a feeling mindset.

Also, soft martial arts work along a system of actions/reactions.  It has been called a Tori/Uke relationship but I think this becomes abstract to a point.  A matter of philosophy.  I think we are behind the curve a bit in aikido in general, however  Texas/Oklahoma Tomiki Aikido (yeah, I said Texas and Oklahoma) has bridged the gap somewhat.  Aikido has been called fake because people dont understand the system of actions/ reactions and really, compared to other soft arts, it just isnt there on a concrete, instructional level.  The problem is literally placement of the hands.  In judo, you have hands on the jacket somewhere both hands engaged action reaction is taught explicitly  In tai chi, you have push hands, two hands engaged and its really the same as judo.  Kung Fu sticky hands; the same deal.   Goju ryu karate has kake, which is a form of sticky hands.   Aikido tries to have disconnected softness.  It has the grabbing of hands, but mostly its a disconnected artform.  Tomiki called it separated judo, but to keep it separated he used the Tanto. 

Anyway, the separated nature of aikido makes it unique.  I hate the word connection, but I think here its a valuable descriptor.  It's connecting with softness.  Instead of a strike, its an off balance movement that terminates in a throw, or pin of some sort.  It is kind of like Jodo, an interplay between sword mechanical themes, and stick mechanical themes, but not quite.

Here is what Tomiki Aikido has turned into with out Tanto Randori.   I can't say that my execution of this Kata, is the same, but I have been instructed on the concepts of principles and I can look at it and understand what is going on here.  Its very circular and wavelike.  Don't let the Hakama's or the cool looking dojo fool you.  This is an American translation of Tomiki Aikido, and I think its a damn fine version.  It's from the Windsong Dojo in Oklahoma.  This is Texhomiki Aikido.

Here is a traditional version From England.  I  dig it.  Looking at it raises questions, however about some of the things Texhomiki Aikido does.  Let's just take it technique by technique. 

1.  shomenate.  This is about how I have been taught to do it.  pretty simple.  The Windsong guys do a late timing version.   In Texas and Oklahoma we have a Kata called the Owaza Ju Pon, that is very circular and  I think it may have had an influence on the movement, but I may be talking out of my shodan ass here.

2. aigamae ate.  I dig the English version.  I've seen the daito ryu thing where tori controls uke's elbow and gives him the middle knuckle "eff U" to the short ribs before finishing a technique, and I now see this as a related idea.  Its almost seems like a failure response to a #6 ikkyo.  I think the version we do in texas/oklahoma is very dependent on a Uke that reorients strongly.  I asked Jack about the goofy wind up, and he said simply, its in the case that your hand slips off.  also, we see a suggestion of our Texas signature off balance-Tejazushi. (nobody has bothered to put a term to our stepping forward offbalance, so I'm calling it Tejazushi.)

3.   Gyaku gamae ate-   here is a offbalance that we sort of discount, because it seems limited in a self defense framework.  but I wish I worked on it more.  I think it may help a guy with the footfalls and feeling offbalance.  we lose a vehicle for soft connection.  sometimes instructing from a self defense perspective muddles things.  If you ever slow danced in canvas pajamas judo style to feel footfalls and balance then you should have time to do this.  tomiki did this, and tomiki wasnt an idiot.  The Texhomiki version goes to the face, and has a spinelocking variant. 

4. Gedan Ate--the same--except I think Texhomiki features a superior fit-Tsukiri.  

5.  Ushiro--Both are about the same. 

6.  Oshi Ikkyo--  The english version has the back up kuzushi and then cycles the balance shift into the technique, again I think the back up kuzushi is a good cycling idea.  The Tejazushi version appears to work off a cycle and a reorientation by Uke. 

7.  Texhomiki features a pin

8, 9, 10.  My take is this is where tejazushi comes from.  you notice the offbalance toward the same back corner in the English Kata.   People call em butterfly catches.  Tejazushi is a onewing butterfly. 

17.  notice the hand flick to get the rise.  hmm where have I seen that before?   

Anyway, while The English kata seems more staccato but it features some different kuzushi ideas.  I think we limit our kuzushi options when we muddle the strategy of movement with self defense notions and  scattering. 

 

Technical Drift from Reality (Dojo Unicorns)

I dig Rory Miller.  I read a book by the guy named, "Meditations on Violence" A couple of years ago.  I'm rereading it  here lately   To nutshell it: It's about examining reality vs fiction.  It's about classroom/dojo realities and practices vs reality as Miller has experienced it.  Here's a clip on the guy.


He talks about a guy who sees a Rhino in Africa tells a story about it. As more people share the story the Rhino turns into a Unicorn with all the made up effed up notions that come with a Unicorn.

You may notice in the vid that he shows a guy throwing a Kote gaeshi wrist throw against a knife, then he shows how knife attacks really happen.   One's a Unicorn but with a lot of classroom/dojo reality mixed in(that is, all the angles and moves are technically right).  The other two attacks are straight up Rhino.

I mention this stuff because the other night at class we did some knife randori.  It wasn't  Miller realistic but it was very beneficial and I hope we can get a steady diet of it.  It just makes the aikido more aikido if you know what I mean.  The principles/rules of thumbs we learn just pop out a lot more.   I'm not going to stop doing it because it isn't sociopath realistic.  It helps you find stuff and raise questions.  That's the point of practice. I think that if you are highly skeptical about the martial art that you study, then the self defense aspects of good, not so good, and stupid reveal them selves over time.  Don't get  Cocky or delusional.

If you read what you can about Tommy Key and Tommy Key's students , Tommy put the Tanto Knife randori in after Toshu hand Randori.  According to what I understand,  Tommy was having trouble with things becoming a judo match.  He put the knife in as distance regulator, to keep two guys off of each other, and make sure that an extended arm was always in the equation.  It didn't  have anything to do with handling real knife attacks, even though by doing it you maybe come more aware of issues pertaining to knifes(unless you are living in cloud KooKooLand with the Unicorns).


Anyway, my take is that Tommy wasn't putting knife notions out there, he was putting separated judo notions out there.  One of his early scoring systems he lifted from volleyball.  He wasn't trying to model reality, but more importantly he wasn't deluded into thinking he was.  But there were some things he was doing that seem alot more Rhino than Unicorn.  lets look at the the kyogi vid some more.                                                                                        
                                                                                                 

         

Tommy does a lot of  two handed stuff.  He latches on alot with both hands.  His movement doesn't look  akikai smooth, but it looks right. A lot of folks say that he's old, but he doesnt have the typical bad judo knees(which means he knew how to move without wrecking his knees), and he wasn't a chicken mcnugget eating fat hakama wearer.  He moves.  He moves. He moves.  Did I happen to mention that he moves?   Also, look at his Kote gaeshi and compare it to the unicorn in the miller clip.  What alot of people miss is that a lot of what Tommy was teaching was based off of avoidance. We call it stepping off line, but I think Tommy made more of it. Alot of his techniques are based on which way you avoid.  I say this because in his walking kata, he's getting the hell out of the way.  He gets Ohba to try to whack him with a stick. And jumps the hell out of the way.

Tommy models 4 kote gaeshi, 2 avoiding to the outside, 2 avoiding to the inside.  He latches on with two hands and doesnt do anything real fancy.  But for an old guy he sure makes the point of showing that you get the hell out of the way on kote gaeshi.   Tommy had three principles he worked with. First was the natural posture, second, non-resistance.  Third, breaking balance.  Non-resistance was his way of saying, "get the hell out of the way."   It's a tanto/ spear/sword based principle, not an airy fairy hakama hippy principle. 

Anyway,  I had so much fun doing knife randori the other evening I got thinking about the Tomiki way of doing things and I also started looking at my Tomiki books that I previously deemed a little bit too much on the sport aikido side of things.  One is called "Aikido Randori" by  Tetsuro Nariyama.  I got looking at it and I thought there are a lot of good things in here that just sort of have been lost, excluded, or ignored.  Some pretty simple rhino shit about how to grab a guys arm and toss him.  A lot of two handed stuff, no Ki discussions, no Hakamas. 

Going back to the Rhino/unicorn Ideas from Miller.  Miller says something along the lines that when you teach/practice martial arts there is a cultural assumption that you are an expert on violence and violent people. ( I aint)  What has typically happened is that every style has the equivalent of a patient zero in the medical realm, the source of a technical outbreak of ideas, specific or general that helped them out of deep shit (what type of deepshit depends on the time and place). They put ideas out there and they start to degrade over time. They start out very rhino and become more and more unicorn.  In Tommy Key aikido we have a person who wasn't a Patient Zero, he was a judo guy who never stopped learning. He was very realistic ideas about 3 things:  natural postures, non-resistance, and breaking balance in a controlled environment.  If these things happen to help defend yourself then that's a positive side effect.  But that was never the original intent of  a majority Tommys ideas. .  My advice is don't try to be an expert on violence and violent people, and more importantly don't try to be a hakama hippy and a violence expert at the same time.  Don't invent more unicorns.     

                                                     

Take a Big Koshiki and Call Me in the Morning

I tell people that Tommy key aikido is the love child of judo and aikido, but Ive heard that specifically its a mix of Daito Ryu and Kito Ryu.  Kito ryu is the parent form of Judo from what I hear.  Somebody told me that kito means  rise and fall.  I always assumed that kito ryu is  where we get our cottonballs and footfalls ideas from.   Over the last four years I have tried to feel what the other guys feet are doing.  I have tried to become so sensitive that I can tell how many cottonballs someone has put in my hand in a pitch black room.  So far I suck at it.   

I have a Nariyama book at the house called Randori.  In it he has a couple of interesting tables where he relates moves in the 17 kata to a Kito based Judo kata called Koshiki no Kata.  Its basically how to tip a big dude in armor.  I got to say, I really dig the Koshiki man.  Here's a black and white thing on Koshiki.



Koshiki is  all gross body movements.   It also seems like these guys are operating in an up close and all the way in mode. Its like you put all the atemi waza in a blender.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that our 5 atemi waza aint daito concepts.  They are kito concepts.   also  Koshiki doesnt have anything to do with "sensitivity." At least not the cotton balls and footfalls type of sensitivity. The Koshiki type of sensitivity is basically:  Can I feel this guy trying to run my ass over?  I can also tell you that that damn 2nd step in the walking looks very damn koshiki to me.

For laughs, lets look at a 17. (skip to 3:00) I can tell you that I see a lot of Koshiki here.  It looks like Tommy is basically koshikiing a guys arm, and he does a lot of go to the knees koshiki shit(which effing works).  Hell, his foot work looks Koshiki.  Granted, Tomiki is hitting the Geritol pretty hard at this point.  And its a demonstration Kata, but Tomiki doesnt ever look like any of the other Ueshiba students.  He never has.  Maybe its the Koshiki.   


Theres a lot of talk about kuzushi and taking an ukes center and connecting with center and what have you.  Its all pretty damn confusing. I relate it to hakamaitis.  The more you wear a Hakama the more confusing and abstract your explanation of Kuzushi becomes.  Like some conversation Yoda would have on the force or some shit. Truthfully, I'm about Kuzushied out.  I think I'm going to start using the term Koshiki, as in, " this aint no good cause you aint Koshikied the guy yet. "

I started reading a book by this lady: Martina Sprague. Its on throws, takedowns, and locks without all the Yodas and shit.  What I take from reading her stuff is that a lot of what we do is proportionate to the amount of head movement away from straight up center.  Basically where the head goes the body goes.  The other night I started to think about techniques in relation to the amount of  head movement (dipping down or swaying back) I got.  A 6 inch movement gets a 6 inch technique. a 1 foot a 1 foot technique and so on.  This is what I call kuzushi.  The dip and sway.  A kuzushi can come from a gnat flying up your nose.  It can come from a notion.  samurai swords and testicles. There I just kuzushied you.

Koshiki has another thing going on here.   You can see the rise and fall shit.  And yeah you can say the guy would have got kuzushied into them.  But these things dont arise from fine finger work and chalice steps.  I aint good enough to articulate everything here, except these are gross motor movements going on.  easy to teach, easy to learn, easy to feel.  Because you aint trying to feel a cotton ball, you are getting a cinder block dropped on you. 


When I think of daito ryu, i think of suwari waza angle tricks, slick hand grabs, and knuckle punches, shomen uchi stuffs, very specific locks and pins and pressure point stuff.  very fine stuff, detailed stuff.  stuff you have to go slow to learn.  Stuff that really doesnt really go right at speed.

Releases can be defined into two ways.  It depends on the hand grabber, the bigger the grab(more stepping) the more Kito. the finer, more static the grab, the more daito.     Daito guys only step when they need to step.  They stand still, do something very finely defined, and then move. As opposed to get offline/ move, feel where the ox is going, and help the ox hit the ground,  or koshikiing the guy. 

Anyway,  I think we have to look at our randori concepts.  (Honestly, I write about this shit a lot but my randori skills suck so please, I'm begging you, take anything I say with a grain of salt.)      I think we need to look at the slowness of it.  The more slow the more daito you are.  The bigger faster stuff is kito/koshiki.  Most of the 17 depend on a big koshiki  of some sort.  Techniques never happen because people put to much daito in their koshiki or too much koshiki in the daito.  Or else you just get a koshiki dump of some sort with no daito.  I'm going to  call it the Big Koshiki.

  

The Kurious Kase of Ricky Kogure.

This is Ricky Kogure.  He came up with the big 10.  I always wondered how much of this guy we have laying around in our techniques, because our branch doesn't look like any of the other branches. 





Here's some film on the guy. (  skip to about 8:00 on the first clip for his technique. )  

Short post without any dipshit remarks.  I've never seen anybody post these.

The Controlling Whack of Peace and Harmony

 You can imagine an ancient conversation going like this:

Student: What happens if I drop my sword?

Wise Sensei: Most likely you are effed.

Student: really?

 Wise Sensei:  well, you maybe able to improvise something?  you may have a half a chance if you...

 I think we need to realize from time to time that aikido is a  solved chicken and egg problem. By that I mean, we have gotten past the what came first, the chicken or the egg.  We all know that this stuff comes from weapons, that's sword and stick, and knife.  Jujutsu has been called the art of no sword, which is: what the hell do you do if you aint got a sword(either you dropped it, taken it off, switched it from the left side to the right) or you need to take a sword?  The simple most comforting answer is you improvise and act as though you are still armed.  Most  Grade A quality improvisation is done with a stick. 

Here is a Jodo clip.    Its kinda like what Jack Bieler, my Aiki Arts teacher does.   I like watching Jodo because it helps fill in the blanks. But I aint a Jodo guy so anything I say you should go over with a Bull-shit-o meter. 

     

  
When ever the stick dude doesnt have contact with the sword mans body, or  arm joints there is  a controlling whack of some sort.  The nice lady narrating explains it as a response to a lapse of concentration.  You notice there is a lot of kiai.

Now if we get rid of the notion of  striking atemi and replace it with techniques to take initiative and/or keep initiative.  Things start to clear up.  A controlling whack seems to take and keep initiative along with the kiai, and so is everything else we do in aikido.  If it doesnt take or keep initiative then it aint aikido.  
                                                          
This dude is named Smitty.  He's an honorary Okie along with Tommy Key, and Morty.   Smitty studied with Morty after the shit hit the fan.   If you want to clear up a lot of nonsense about atemi, you have to have to give Smitty's body of work a look-see. 
                                           
                                                                                      

You notice any similiarties between the jodo dudes and Smitty?    I noticed that Smitty employs a kiai.  He also employs a controlling whack before/after/during a joint control.  He keeps initiative by pulling a guy down or pushing a guy in once he has control(employing that stupid little side to side step we do in the walking, that doesn't show up in the releases or the 17 so we wonder why in the hell we have to do it).  Also, notice how the bad guys arm has stickified itself sometimes. 

Also, you may notice that Smitty breaks contact and does a controlling whack to the hand/sword before he clocks the guy with irimi nage( a controlling whack ).  Anything else he does is calculated to take or keep initiative, keep safe, and not have to deal with the same problem twice; its not about doing a technique. its all some form of initiative  from punching, chopping, stepping, spiraling, turning.   Its all different body mechanics meant to take and keep initiative.  Its aikido.   

Notice that middle knuckle punch?  I always have wondered why that shows up all the damn time.  Is it symbolic for a dagger, the way a yokomen strike is symbolic for a sword?  or is there a rule of thumb going on there?  (i.e.  If you break your finger the middle one is the best one because A) its the biggest and least likely to break, B) you can still grip a sword with it broken( someone test this out)...C)  it works like a jo pointed to the eye, makes you back the hell up(its not intended to get broken, its just for show) D) when you are victorious a broken middle finger keeps you humble by restraining you from flipping the losing team the "bird"

When I watch weapons people and strikers work they all operate under rule of thumb that you are safer and more effective with your feet firmly planted on the ground.  When I watch the Jodo and sword guy, the sword guy is never really off balance (except maybe once,) but he is controlled.

I think that we are sometimes operating under a dipshit assumption when we teach footfall kuzushi like its the cure all(its just one method to take and keep the initiative), like it will work against someone who has practiced for years to keep their feet planted so they can hit harder and not fall down(watch uechi ryu karate dudes sometime).  I think we've thought about the sport of judo(thanks Tommy) too damn much, and that lesson where you slow dance with another dude whilst gripping a canvas jacket to feel his steps.  That's feeling for an advantage from a state of equality.  In Jodo, you start from a inferior state. 

Jodo operates off the notion that someone wants to hit you with something aerodynamic, long, and sharp, and the longer the engagement lasts the more likely the sword guy is gonna win and you are going to have a catastrophic hydraulic systems failure with cherry blossoms falling on your dead ass in rhythm to Japanese banjo music.  

A lot of people say that hitting someone is cheating, especially in an aikido dojo.  But in the great words of J.W. Bode, the Grandmaster and originator of the term OKIE-DO: "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't trying."   Cheating in the dojo is basically refusing to give up initiative.  It's being an initiative hog. If you aint an inititive hog, then how is someone going to learn to take that initiative?     

Anyway, here's how the Ancient Converstion continues:

Student:  What if I don't have a stick"

Wise Sensei :  Then just stiff arm the dude, its the same thing. 

 In Aikido you go one step further.  You improvise twice.  You lost the sword, you aint got a stick, so now you use your arms like a stick.  Its the "Art of No Stick"     

 



    

Aikido( A Techno-Okie, Highly Edumucated, explanation)

  There is a lot of talk about efficiency in the martial arts.  I never cared for the word efficient.  Being a working class dude, I always had some suit telling me to be more efficient,, organized, and manage my time better.  It all amounted to paying me minimum wage and wanting me to work myself to death.  I never really cared for the word Uke (it sounds funny), or connection either.  The uke is the pretend,reusable, bad guy with an owners manual that you go out to lunch with, a real bad guy is a disposable bad guy, or the Asshole.  I don't want to connect with an Asshole. If you do, then that's your personal business.  I don't want to connect with a guy and feel his effing center.  I just want him to go away and stay away. 

 In Aikido you have to have some asshole help you kick his ass.  Assholes tend to start shit..  Often times they start shit and bite off more than they can chew.  This biting off more than they can chew comes in the form of missteps, stumbles, and wobbles.   Aikido dudes study and practice taking advantage of the missteps, stumbles, and wobbles.

When someone starts shit, you finish shit.   Finishing shit is what we commonly called a technique.   

Three methods of finishing shit. 

Knocking his ass down(throwing):  when guy A pushes or pulls guy B and Guy A falls flat on his ass, or face. The closer you get to the ass/face paradigm, the more efficient you are with your technique. It helps if the other guy wants to fall on his Ass/Face, or really deserves to fall on his ass/face. A lot of training deals with recognizing when you have enough  tori/uke energy(also called Taking Shit TS) to enter the Ass/Face paradigm (AFP ).   

Convincing him to knock his ass down(joint locks):  When your TS meter is at the max but you aint got a total AFP, planned or serendipitous( AKA Dumb Ass Luck  DAL) hand placement  could allow a joint lock .  It is also highly dependent on the reaction known as  the Deep Shit Reaction  (DSR).  DSR is a highly subjective state.   The key is  that the asshole subjectively feeling like he is in deepshit.  If he's crazy or on dope, he may not be able to  feel a damned thing.   
  Here's a NIKYO.  You can be the judge  on the DAL factor of this.  Normally, the discriminating gentleman wants to avoid jointlocks with a high DAL factor. 
                                                     


Beating his ass down (Atemi/striking):

This has always been a point of conjecture in Tommy Key Aikido.  Morty was quoted to say that X% of Aikido is atemi.  X has been placed at somewhere between 70 and 80 cents worth to the Aikido whole dollar.  The rule of thumb is don't hit a guy with anything that is easy to break. Fists seem to break easy, especially when you pound on coconuts.  Although, Morty is photographed hitting a guys short ribs instead of his coconut.  So fists and ribcages seem to be a rule of thumb.   Anyway, Shomenate is basically an educated man's palm heel strike.  Elbows and forearms seem pretty durable.  I like a good backfist, but I think a backhand is a bit safer.  Atemi occurs when you ain't quite ready to Take Shit(TS).  Atemi allows you to take shit that is acceptable.  Its a shit regulator if you will. 


Here's morty.  A lot of modern internet primates call his demonstration bullshit. it either revolves around "nobody can take that much shit".  Or "that shit" would never work. 

 

Realistically,  Aikido comes from Daito Ryu.  And Daito Ryu teaches you how to take "ancient shit"   By Ancient Shit, I'm saying, shogun shivs, hand grabs, kimono grabs, and simulated sword yoko ono strikes.  It informs us about how to handle and take modern shit.    After all shit is shit, no matter what century you live in.