Musashi once said something along the lines of what is fast is slow, and what is slow is fast..
Slow seems simple to do and simple to explain but it aint. You can't see slow because slow is fast. If you have done hand randori with a high level guy you know what I mean.
Theres this old saying about the small in the large. In martial arts practice a lot of folks tend to make big movements. The big movements help you see things better. If you think you are ever going to pull off that #2 release around the world throw in Yon Kata you are smoking wacky weed. That's to show you something. It's big and obvious and utterly useless, but somewhere inside that thing there's something to be learned. Something useful. I can't see it, its in the corner of my vision.
The Old Timers said that in Budo things are determined in a flash. Against a high level Randori player you know you are screwed on in that space between one and two even in absolute slowness. The longer things go on the more they tend to collapse and break down. Aikido is an art of diminishing returns the longer things carry on past the first touch. That's the lesson of Jodo. A damned stick against a four foot razor blade.
I like to go workout with the other Aikido place in town not because they are flashy and cool, its because fast is slow. You can see and tell what they are doing. A big grab, a big shomenuchi, a big yokomenuchi, you can see it. It's a matter of slow blindness.
I said a thing or two about how the Morty Aikido folks can string things together and ours is waza in islolation. That may be true, except in randori. The point of the string is to keep moving, and to keep the guy three steps behind. You can be slow and put a guy three steps behind. Happens to me every damned week. That's another truth about aikido: It's the Art of Keeping the Other Guy Three Steps Behind. You three step him into the ground. Kuzushi starts all over once the guy is on his knees. That's the simple kuzushi, that's the point of all the seiza pins. From the knees to the pin, pull em, push em, Kuzushi.
It's a lot easier to jump out of the way of a hand chop, its another thing to offline off of finger pressure. Cottonballs falling on your arm is the same thing as a sword swipe.
I like Aikido Kyogi because you see how Tomiki taught the stuff. It was in big movements. His principle of Non resistance was getting offline, he literally jumped out of the way, BIG. He always employed two hands. BIG. He was showing a student what to do, It was offline, and Tsukuri. It was implied transition combining walking steps and Techniques, the 3 steps ahead spot.
Kuzushi, the simplest kind, lies in moving offline. Sometimes a good tsukuri is kuzushi. Kuzushi also lies in transition to the 3 ahead spot, and in reception. High level randori guys blur all of these. And they can do it slow.
You can know that you are talking to a true Okie when he has to tell a few stories before he gets to the point. --not Will Rogers.
Miyamoto Musashi said something like, " If you understand and do one thing well, you can understand a lot of things well." I think that every martial art has the invitation to understand a do one thing well. To me, that one thing is Tegatana no Kata. I practice two forms, our walking kata form, and tomiki's final form. Ours is an older form that contains ideas that Tomiki later extracted to form two man exercises. When practiced together I feel that they give you a toolkit for Mitori Geiko, or "stealing with the eyes." Mitori Geiko is observational learning. You just hang around and watch, and you connect it to what you already know. In our case its, the walking kata.
I've been known to cross pollinate. That is, I visit other Aikido dojos and try to pick things up and round things off. I noticed that all good martial artists cross pollinate. My teacher Jack Bieler holds high rankings in Aikido, Jodo, Iaido, and Judo. Morty Youshiba cross pollinated, as did Jigoro Kano. Tommy cross pollinated. Gichin Funakoshi and number of other Karate teachers cross pollinated different schools of Karate. Most Tomiki-ryu teachers in my branch cross pollinate aikido and judo. It's all cool, man. We ain't supposed to be married to this shit.
Anyway, by visiting other schools we can fully appreciate what Tomiki has done. He provides us with a toolkit to figure things out. The interesting thing about Akikai Aikido is their way of stringing things together. They do it the way Morty did it. The teacher throws a guy around with good ukemi and then he turns to the class and says now you do it. They tend to start small and build up and by the end of the practice you are stringing together a dozen or so things. The teacher, he stands back and watches and gives a tip or two here and there. Its an interesting way to learn, but so is Tommy's spoon fed approach. Add em both together it paints a picture like a damned Farrah Fawcett poster.
From what I understand Morty just threw people around and did crazy shit to them and then said okay you figure it out. Tommy came up with a way to look at what Morty was doing and make some kinda damn sense of it. The mark of a good student I suppose, is one that goes away and comes back for more. When I go to an Aikikai class it gives me an almost insatiable desire to go back to our 8 releases and 17 kata, and Koryu. Watching Aikikai folks string together the techniques we study all by their lonesome makes me absolutely giddy. Like findin' pearls and wearing pearls, if you get my drift.
This may be a weird thing to say, but visiting
another Aikido school makes me feel like I've earned my keep and paying my proper respects to Tommy. The genius of Tommy is that he supplied us with the doing and the seeing. When you understand the doing and the seeing you can string together all the tenkan, irimi, omote, ura you want. You can string any number of pearls together.
Anyway, Here's some insight I'd like share with you. It's the result of cross pollination, Mitori Geiko, a good Tomiki tool kit, and some old fashioned head scratchin. If you dig it fine, if you don't just tell me I'm full of shit and buy me a beer sometime.
All releases seem to come from what this ol'boys doing. Something as simple as shit:
This is the first hand notion of Tegatana no Kata and in tegatana no kata dosa. It also figures into the first Two moves of Koryu dai Yon. The odd ducks of the whole set.
Here's Nick Lowry showing the old Yon one, two.
Here's a snippett that has been floating around the webosphere:
The walking in the little book an older form of walking much like our own Tegatana no kata. This book was published in 1966. It seems to connect some dots.
Anyway, the other night we did the releases part of koryu dai yon 1-14. The first two movements seemed to stick out and I left with my usual thinking of: Why in the hell is this sandan material? It's counting to ten with out one. It ties the room together like the Dude's rug, man.
Then I went to get a little cross pollination at the other Aikido place in town, for a ten buck mat fee i get to see alot.. They did their string of pearls but the first pearl was this yon kata release action # 2 except they didnt toss the guy. They used it to put in, so they can take out, using two release actions in combination.
This is what they were essentially doing putting in the Yon #2 release and taking it back into this:
Instead of Nikyo, they put # 6 ikkyo movement on.
Anyway, Koryu Dai Yon has the release actions but they also do counters and like the Dude's Rug they really tie the room together.
Now watch this gal do Tegatana Dosa. First step she "yons" in: . Saying she gets some kuzushi and takes it out and turns then she gets in the territory of the Akikai clip, if she Yons in and stays in and turns she's thats the same story as with the kata. If she takes it out from a mirror hand grip, she is in #3 release kote mawashi country, if she takes it out in cross hand she gets a mae otoshi grip/keeping up with the kata. Also, check out the kesa uchi/hipswitching.
Now look at our older walking, refer to the book link and take a look at these two.
pay close attention to the swinging chop, standing on the toes, throw the banana over the shoulder part.
It shows you in the book, but that weird walking movement is the iriminage from #10 Yon.
Anyway, in my last post my general assertion that the principes of the walking were seen in the practice of the 19 set. I guess, my assertion here is that the walking kata and the first 14 of Yon kata are so related it aint even funny.
Also makes you want to try this stuff in your Yon kata/ releases.
one other thing when you do the walking put a little more into it or its going to come out like this:
We have a thing called the Walking Kata, or Tegatana no Kata. We all say its chock full of aikido principles and productive movement patterns. Other schools break it into two parts: unsoku dosa(footwork), and tegatana dosa( hand work). We throw it into a big ole ball. We are going to look at Tomiki's master clip here, Aikido Kyogi. While I don't speak Japanese, Tetsuro's Nariyama's book Aikido Randori has a conceptual blueprint on page 286. I think they actually show it in the film.
Basically Tommy had 3 principles of aikido: natural posture, non-resistance, breaking balance.
His practice of these principles of Aikido had three areas: tai sabaki, point of contact, and te sabaki. Tegatana no Kata figures heavily in all 3 practices.
Tai-sabaki practice,included posture and movement(this section in Kyogi is when Tommy is standing and sitting in seiza, he's basically saying you have to stand and sometimes sit in seiza. Then he goes into his 8 ways of moving, unsoku dosa, and then kneewalking.
The next part is classified as point of contact. he does a high, medium, low. Then he does some hand movements and sword movements and then he does Tegatana Dosa. Like I said, the lesson here I suppose is the range of motion where you can be touched or touch the other guy. The exercise he does here is called tegatana awase where him and Ohba dance around and keep maai/metsuke. After that he combines the first practice of tai sabaki, with maai and metsuke, with dodging Ohbas shomenuchi and bokken. Tegatana dosa supply's the variables of ways of touching being touched, point of contact ideas.
Then there is the te sabaki (hand movement) section. This is broken down into two areas with 2 subareas each. You have when grasped: breaking away, and nigiri gaeshi. And when separated: avoiding and grasping. The blocking exercise would fall under when separated, I suppose this is avoidance, I also suppose that grasping could come anytime after avoidance. We see actual hand movements from tegatana dosa. Next we have the when grasped practice where Ohba has a knife. we actually see hand positioning and movements from tegatana no kata.
The next section I'm going to have to bitch about for a minute. Folks, 17 kata IS NOT the primary mode of Tomiki ryu instruction, not how Tommy saw it anyway. The actual instruction is the set of 19. You have 5 atemi waza, 6 hiji waza, 8 tekubi waza. If you believe Nariyama he relates the atemi waza in principle to koshiki no kata and kendo, He relates the hiji waza in principle to Koshiki No Kata. The Uki Waza he attributes to Judo which makes sense because they are present in randori no kata and not the 19. Anyway, the concepts in Tegatana no Kata relate more heavily to the 19 than they do in randori no kata.
Tommy places the concept of tsukuri(fitting) after practice of principle. He says that tsukuri has to do with the wrists, elbow, and chin. He also says that jodan and gedan are tsukuri also referring to the atemi waza. He goes over straight techniques, he fits and throws. Then he does some more easily identifyable tegatana movements when he is grasped, but all of these throws have tai sabaki, point of contact, and te sabaki practice involved. He actually does ten(10) separate techniques.
Next is the hiji waza. He does the separated and grasped. Tegatana no kata is present everywhere. He practices tsukuri to both the elbow and wrists. He actually does 15 separate techniques. So thats 10+15. Is 25 more than 17? I forget?
Next is the tekubi waza. He separates it in kote hineri and kote gaeshi. same format, same thing except this illustrates the breaking away from being grasped portion of te sabaki. There are 9 hineri if I counted right. 25+9. I think thats 34. Next is kote gaeshi. same format. separated and grasped. 8 techniques/ideas. 34+8. 42 I think. I may have missed one or two here and there. But that's 42 ideas, all involving some kind element that can be traced to tegatana no kata.
Also, to take a break from my bitching. I may have been looking at the kyogi too much but I think that alot of what Tommy is doing has to do with the last two movements of tegatana no kata at least in his applied tai sabaki. He moves alot in a backwards diagonal, and also seems to move forward in an opposite hand foot manner. You can see it some when he applies tsukuri in the 19.
Well, since I went brain dead looking at the 19 and counting. We finally get to the 17. The one thing that I notice is that his tai sabaki seems to combine a side step and a chalice step facing sometimes its straight 90 degrees, sometimes it has a little backwards diagonal. Also, the tsukuri is almost always at the wrist.
My point is that Tommy had a much wider base of instruction than he's given credit. He had his principles and practices to apply these principles. He had is tsukuri (fit) and kake (execution) as well but the meat of his instructional sandwich lay in his practice methodology, and most of it had to do with Tegatana no Kata.
Our style of Aikido is a idiosyncratic form of Tomiki ryu. But really every martial art is idiosyncratic. Aikido is an idiosyncratic form of daito ryu. Tae kwon do is an idiosyncratic form of shotokan karate. Judo is an idiosyncratic form of jiujitsu. Brazilian juijitsu is an idiosyncratic form of judo. However, If one would say Tomiki ryu is a combination of kito-ryu and daito ryu, then I would say that our lineage of Tomiki filters this kito/daito bag of tricks through the practice of non-competitive judo.
You can almost compare us to Brazilian jujitsu. Things have been filtered out. I say this in relation to Tegatana no kata. Tomiki's tegatana was expanded upon through the medium of 42 techniques. Our relationship with Tegatana spans 17 techniques, with our sheering off balance its hard too see sometimes. But like Brazillain jujitsu what doesnt get filtered gets magnified. Things get added, like a sheering offbalance concept and the Big 10. I'm not bitching, I'm just saying we've picked our poison and specialized just like Brazilian Jujitsu. I can say that about Shodokan Aikido as well. They have the same 17 that we do, and don't apply tegatana no kata the way Tomiki envisioned either. They filtered other things out, and magnified others. However, I think our soft touch is pretty neat thing that makes us different. I do wonder what a non-competitive Tomiki Branch based off of the 19 model would look like.
I've been studying this clip a lot. I mentioned in part I, that our 17 kata assumes that 2 guys are walking toward each other, one trys a shomenate and the other attempts a tejazushi. These dudes in the kata walk towards each other and the other guy stops in extension and the other guy does a technique. The off balancing is implied. In Texhomiki the actual kuzushi is attempted in some way.
Anyway, My question was where in the hell did Tejazushi come from?
Some one posted that it was an adaptation of a Judo move. In the early years of Tomiki Aikido, you can pretty much say that the style was more or less propagated rather than directly transmitted step by step to foreign students. Most, if not all. of these students were, go figure, Judo Guys. I can say that in comparison to Japanese direct transmission styles Texhomiki could be called "patchy". Martial Arts instructors tend to teach what they can explain well and demonstrate. Its not that big of a leap to suppose that an competent Judo instructor could adequately fill in the blanks where needed and make it work.
When I first watched Aikido Kyogi, I noticed that the walking had gotten a kendo, almost karate look to it. I also noticed that there was no diagonal X stepping. That showed up later when Ohba was trying to hit Tomiki with a bokken. It was meant to be an evasion step. The first walking step was a tsugi ashi concept backwards and forwards. the X stepping was implied and shown later in a separate exercise. (heres a clip of some dude doing non- x stepping footwork)
So when did tsugi ashi, get replaced with the X stepping? I have heard many Texhomiki folks say that the X stepping in the walking is related to Tejazushi.
So this is my question: where did the X stepping come from? and when did change from an evasion concept to an offbalance concept?
I have also wondered where in the hell that 2nd walking movement kicks in. Its used in the above clip in , #8 and # 9. The forward X step is used in #10, wakegatame and in Ushiro ate. In fact, all the techniques have a strong correlation to some sort of walking step. The angular stepping on the atemi waza, I would say correlate to the chalice step. Shomenate is an abbreviated chalice stepping angle and so is Aigamae ate. gyuku gamae ate/gedan are shortened chalice steps backwards (if you are doing Tegatana dosa with no x steps). completion/kake steps seem to correlate with tsugi ashi .
In fact, I would venture to say that anything that appears to be an x stepping concept is actually a chalice stepping concept. When you look at Japanese school Tegatana Dosa there is no actual X step. Its a tsugi ashi, the X is implied in the chalice step.
I'm going to qualify my following remarks with my I'm just a Shodan admonishment. Folks, I really think that Tejazushi makes the walking kata almost pointless. Sure, I'm basing this on one clip and 4 years of having that not so fresh feeling about tejaszushi. And here lately, Ive tried staying way the hell out, on the edges, and trying real damn hard not to do a tejazushi and Ive actually gotten a little better in Randori. I could have had a lucky night, who the hell knows. One thing I do know is that judo guys and tai chi guys tend to eat my lunch because I'm constantly trying to "X" in with a tejazushi movement.
Anyway, when did the Tsugi ashi get replaced with the X stepping? Was Tejazushi the culprit? Somebody weigh in on this. Also, are the walking kata and the tejazushi 17 even related animals anymore?
I've read a whole helluva a lot on Aikido and some Old Timers say that you don't clash with the other guy. That is, two guys running into each other and trying to one up each other either in the strength or speed department. I've been at this for 4 real short years and while I occasionally say something halfway interesting on this dipshit blog( my throwaway post on Taichi and Tomiki has the most hits), I gotta give myself a C average in Aikido. I think my problem is with clashing with people. And Right now I'm looking at our notion of Tejazushi( that's the crosshand stepping forward/diagonal offbalance that seems to only exist in the Texhomiki Aikido world. I've watched a lot of Tomiki stuff on the You Tube and I havent seen too many other people do an off balance quite like ours.
It leaves me wondering where in the hell it came from and whose idea was it.
I've been trying real hard to lighten up lately; My approach to martial arts has always been a scared shitless, knock the shit out of the other guy mindset. And it just aint working that well. I think guys like me should naturally learn to back up and rotate around the edges of conflict instead of going in. The simple reason is that if you get the drop on someone enough to execute a Tejazushi offbalance then why not start beating the shit out of em instead of waiting for the rise/fall reorientation?
Another thing I've been thinking on lately is the Psychological aspects/contexts behind our techniques. I've seen plenty and heard plenty about how tejazushi offbalance assumes that both guys are walking toward each other. I call this mutual kick ass mode. If I want to be like Morty then shouldnt I stand there and try to deescalate the situation. Even Aikido Bad Ass Shoji Nishio says you dont even try stop the other guy. Just let the guy come. My Tetsuro Nariyama Randori book says that one of the main principles is non-resistance, and the notion of walking towards a guy who wants to kick my ass seems to violate this one.
Anyway, If you watch the Shoji Nishio stuff on YT and you read and look at what Nariyama has on the YT, I think their notion of non-resistance means getting offline. Both say you should step off line at about a 30 degree angle. They say its related to the sword. I have to say that our Tejazushi concepts dont illustrate this real well, if at all. I think its another animal altogether.
Here's clip i've been studying here lately. It's a Fish and Chips group that I believe may be of the lee ah loi branch. I say this because of the windup aigamae ate, I think she has that in her book. anyway, I could be wrong.
Anyway, We all know about Maai. That space where things seem to work or they don't. It's been called maintaining Maai, or controlling Maai. I like to think of it as respecting Maai. When you practice with a fake knife it makes you respect the edge/radius and point of an attack. Doing tejazushi against a knife seems like a real dipshit thing to do. If you notice that shomenate gets off line by about 30 degrees and Aigamae Ate does as well once the guy puts his hand on the elbow. ( I also like this variation because it foreshadows oshi numero 6.)
I always have had a problem with Aigamae Ate. It seems like a dumb technique. It presupposes that Uke is an idiot thats going to float arounds and turn right into you. If you put it in in a non resistance/ get off line 30 degrees frame it makes a lot of sense. Its pairs up with shomenate in this sense. One evades one way, the other evades the other.
Another thing about Tomiki aikido is natural stances. We dont stand in the standard hamni of other Aikido styles, we move into it. Hamni should be called a 30 degree position. Our Walking Kata embodies the often said concept of " Small in the Large" . We do a lot of chalice steps and within those chalice steps is a 30 degree position. These arent textbook akikai hamni, but they underlie the principle of the hamni stance which is the angle of evasion/position of counterattack.
Tejazushi seems to be a concept apart from non-resistance/evasion principle. Its something unique. I've heard it called a sheering effect, and I wonder if more traditional schools have a similar sheering principle at work. I think its unique to Texhomiki Aikido, but I could be wrong. Anybody, who knows about the history of Tejazushi( Cross-arm offbalancing) I'd like to hear from you.
I'd say that learning and repeating the releases is probably 70% of the game of Aikido. Every Aikido branch does them, although they may not classify them the way Tomiki folks do, and even among Tomiki branches there is a variety of handgrabbing basics. Texhomiki schools tend to classify them into 8 actions and really there are only 4. 5 through 8 are extensions of the first four. I think they teach two different concepts. Reaction mechanics vs Action mechanics. They need to be taught with variety and experimentation. There is no textbook.
First off, why are they called releases? The common sense explanation is if you can keep from being grabbed then do so. Rule of thumb #1 is get your hand back. The other day I had an epiphany about martial arts when I watched a Koryu Dai San performed by Hideo Ohba. His version was a lot simpler,rougher around the edges, and had alot more Atemi concepts. My thinking is that the Old Timer martial artists in Japan knew that techniques were going to be performed under emotional pissed off/scared shitless circumstances. They are based off of reaction mechanics.It's a myth that a person can do this shit in a zen like trance. The core reaction mechanics are get off line(get your ass out of the way), get your hand/bodypart back, and/or hit the guy. Run like hell is also a core concept. The reaction mechanics wave into action mechanics.
Anyway, most of aikido functions once you have returned to an emotionally collected state where you can recognize what is going on. Most plans go to shit once someone punches you in the face. If a martial art doesnt have a way to bridge the gap between scared shitless/pissed off reactions into techniques from a collected action state of mind, then I'd have to say that your martial art is a waste of time. Like I said in another post, Its not fun to live in perpetual self defense mode. I'd prefer not too. It's a paranoid, angry way to live. But repetition of non-bullshit simple techniques seems keep a guy in a healthy state of mind. I'm talking about easy to explain, easy to practice techniques. I'm not talking about dojo koolaid.
Nick talks alot about matching footfalls. That's something that I'd say comes from a collected Action state of mind. Ask me again in a few years. It's a very high level skill that gets taught maybe too early to fully appreciate. I have never been able to make much sense of the other guys feet. Right now, four years in, I'm trying to lighten up, and quit arm wrestling. I have also started to look at my shoulders and hips. That thing Nick talks about in release #3 about locking the shoulders. I'm just now trying to deal with that. Here lately I've been trying to sort out what reactions naturally put a guy on the front foot and what puts him on the backfoot. I think our Tejazushi crossarm offbalance gets in the way of alot of natural reactions. We throw a guy off then wait for him to stand up or turn into a technique. I see a lot more reaction mechanic offbalances in other schools 17. Backing up off balances have been highly underrated, as well as simply dropping the hips. I see two hands on the ukes arm as a reaction. You see a lot of the shodokan/English schools do that. Tomiki was a two hand guy himself.
You ever seen how release #1 and #2 operate as a unit. Try doing #2 first. Its the most natural one. Then let Uke pull and swing up and around to #1. Do the same with 3-4. pulling away and turning are a scared shitless response. natural as an eyeblink. pushing and stepping around are more of an Action idea. You could say its Yin/yang to impress the chicks.
I like watching this Lady. She's an Iwama ryu person. Morty was one of those connected to the natural world shinto dudes. Iwama is country side Aikido. Akikai is city folk aikido. My dipshit theory is Morty's aikido reflected his enviroment. Anyway,They initially train from static. no footfalls. There are times when I feel that Texhomiki trys to showcase too damn much principle into eight releases. Iwama ryu working from static is pretty simple. Its reflects my scared shitless natural reaction mechanic theory. A deer in head lights. static. The rest is when you are collected enough to see things coming. Action state.
This is the biggest Nariyama freebie on Youtube. skip to about 50 minutes in and you see his notion of getting offline and hitting back. Getting offline is a rule of thumb. It works against a swing and a grab. Getting offline should be as natural as blinking your eye. If you dont get your head chopped off, then you get a turn. You either flinch left or flinch right. Reaction state.
Getting offline tends to straighten out an ukes arm. You can call that kuzushi if you want, but there are other things that crop up. Collected state aikido operates off of grip, and hand change. Have you ever noticed the ratcheting effect, the more you change grips the worse it gets for the other guy. Apparently Tomiki had a 19 kata that ran parallel to the 17. there are two standard grips. natural and reverse. They are represented as the palm up, palm down in the releases. Hand change, grip change. releases are a two sided affair. You can release a guy into another grip. release him into a technique. These are collected mechanics. Grip change usually occurs when arm is extended out, swinging low, or swinging high. Thats an action state.
This guy isnt exactly saying it, but it's there. You ever had that #3 release discovery that when you change hands and grip and you dumbass yourself into kote mawashi/nikkyo territory?
Another thing I want to talk about that comes from first order scared shitless/pissed off reaction mechanics. Is maai. That delicate space between dipshit and safety. Some call it maintaing Maai. I call it respecting maai. It maybe the first action mechanic that you can learn. Maybe reaction mechanics can be classifyed as, getting out of the way, getting your "hand" back, hitting the guy. Everything else, respecting maai, gripping, throwing, jointlocking, pinning, comes from the action state of mind. I suppose you could get attacked by a guy and flinch yourself into sleeper holding the guy. But I think we are taken more seriously when we look at reaction/action. Offbalances may be actions to you, but they are reactions to me. Maybe its because I'm just a dipshit OKIE.
The problem with Koryu Kata is that there is not window of opportunity to put the time in to teach/learn them on a regular basis. Here's a hypothetical problem: If 1 in 10 students make it to shodan, then it takes a 100 students and 2 years to make 10 koryu ready shodan. From there you have to figure on your Black Out rate. If they " Black Out" which means they quit upon getting shodan that means you have 1 or 2 shodans out of the 100 original students. These shodans would spend most of their dojo time working with lower level beginning Ukes. No wonder we seldom advance further than 35 basic techniques, with The Koryu being just a vehicle for promotion instead of mastery. No wonder we only do 2 koryu.
I think that its time someone in the Tomiki World grew a pair of
pedagogical nuts and started teaching the Koryu movements. You noticed
that I said movements and not Kata. What I'm proposing is looking
koryu kata across all six kata, and putting movements into related
sets. I guess you could call them new kata if you had the balls. But you could call them sets and avoid a lot of arguments.
The most obviousset of koryu is the suwari waza, or sit on your knees techniques.
If your knees can handle it get on them and use them. It's taken me four years to get a basic comfort level with knee work. Western folks should expect to suck at suwari, and suck for a long time.
Anyway, we have Ichi kata suwari waza. These probably provide the most basic concepts, but all suwari are basic by nature. . The first thing I noticed is that suwari techniques feel exceptionally strong and effective. My hypothesis is that this trains an kinesthetic expectation of all other techniques.
the first minute of this clip has 5 very important movements, ideas, concepts. I've wrote about these before, and I think they provide a different perspective of aikido apart from the 17 and releases.There are eight here in San Kata. Seems to be a lot of Atemi concepts woven into Old Boys version that I havent seen over here in Texhoma country. I dig it. Its the probably the Daito Influence
Here are some Go movements, some are similar, but some look like they are touching on different principles or concepts.
Here are some Roku movements, it looks like suwari release techniques.
So there may be 12-20 Suwari waza once you sift out for redundancy, if there is redundancy which I'm not so sure there is. I think we need to look at the Koryu as a whole, and start classifying the techniques into sets. It's worth doing. Nick Lowry has mentioned a lot about keiko and Renshu. That's shut up and do it versus talk a lot, do a little. We might as well use these concepts as instructional guides too. Renshu=reps. Keiko= familiarity
Here's a talking out of my ass curriculum /ranking proposal.(remember I'm a 400 hour shodan so take this with a grain of bullshit) Remember ranking was originally used for matching purposes. It came from that Japanese checkers game GO. Non-competitive Aikido folks should use the ranking for instructional/training purposes. You could still have your rank demonstrations, but the rank means what you work on with dojo time, and how you should approach your training.
Rank 1- Ukemi_renshu
Walking part A(renshu)
Walking part B (keiko)
releases 1-4 renshu
5-8 keiko
17- (1-5) renshu
(6-10) keiko
Koryu set 1 (part A) keiko
Rank 2
ukemi_renshu
Walking (renshu)
releases 1-8
17- (1-10) renshu
(11-17) keiko
Koryu set 1 renshu
Koryu set 2 part A keiko
Rank 3
ukemi_renshu
Walking (renshu)
releases 1-8 renshu
17- (1-17) renshu
B10 (1-5) keiko
Koryu set 1-2 renshu
Koryu set 3 part A keiko
Rank 4
ukemi_renshu
Walking (renshu)
releases 1-8 renshu
17- (1-17) renshu
B10 (1-10) renshu
Koryu set 1-3 renshu
Koryu set 4 part A keiko
You can see the pattern I'm talking about. It's about about dojo work. Its about putting the Koryu kata back into our Aikido practice. It's just cool shit, folks. And people shouldn't have to wait for years to fiddle with it. I think that the 17 and releases should be taught as quickly as possible in order for people to have a Physical Vocabulary for understanding the Koryu. Yeah, certain things will look and feel a lot shittier for a while, but its got to look and feel shitty before it gets better.
Aikido works best once you've taken the trash out. The old timers call it an empty mind. Competition, trying to win seems to gather the trash. Same thing with trying not to lose. People like to compete because it gives them a measuring stick of how good they are. Its a room full of fake boobs. There is a difference between how good you are in relation to some phony measuring sticks and standards and how good you are in relation to the deep shit life drops on you.
Competition has the notion of external enemies. Survival has the notion of weathering bad situations independent of people.
I've been trying to take the trash out here lately. Trying to put my self in that state of mind where I have no external enemies, no assholes to deal with. The biggest asshole is me, or more specifically all the ignorant ass notions I have in my mind. You don't have to be a Morty Youshiba to understand this shit. Ever had so much on your mind that you ran a red light? Maybe because you were dealing with the inner asshole.
I don't know what budo is. It's a old timey Japanese concept. You had to be old timey and Japanese to fully understand it. The way Indians used to have 50 different ways to say brown, or the Eskimos 50 different ways to say snow, or the pacific islanders had 50 different ways to describe the ocean waves.
An empty mind isnt the same as not giving a shit. I havent been so scared that Ive taken a dump in my pants, but that's the common knowledge about fear in relation to shit. I suppose that the term "not giving a shit" means "holding your shit together." That when faced with a dangerous situation not shitting your pants seems to be the standard measure of preliminary success.
One old timer said don't blink. Another old timer said go ahead and blink, its natural. Not blinking means suppression of natural actions. I don't think that an empty mind has anything about suppressing emotions. Emotional responses are like blinking. I don't think that martial arts training keeps you from being scared shitless. It just allows you to treat being scared shitless like blinking. Same thing with getting pissed off.
Looking to box things up into explainable actions: the walking, the releases, the 17, the big 10 makes for a good story. A cause and effect. But it eventually becomes potential trash that needs to be taken out. Failure in randori amounts to holding on to the wrong response, holding on to the trash. That's dealing with the internal asshole, the guy standing in front of you has nothing to do with it.
Kata is a box. A box fills up. You keep it or you throw it out, in relation to the deep shit life throws at you.
I think Iaido is the purest martial art there is. It's all kata. If you were ever in deep shit and happened to have a sword in your hand, I think you'd know what to throw out and what to keep. Most of Iaido is dealing with the inner asshole, the guy who just has to have his way. It take's this dude a minute and a half to draw his sword. All the proper sitting, and skirt tucking, is squaring away the inner asshole. There is more non sword shit, than sword shit. I think that's budo. Bujutsu, or being an effective asshole, tends to have more sword shit. Its more about the winning.
