I think that a lot of folks think I'm the kid that keeps playing in the street despite warnings that it aint that great of an idea. My daddy told me I was the most hard headed human being that ever lived and I try to live up to that. When It comes to Aikido I'd rather just be the Uke, because I know that If I try to get something right then half the time it wont come out right, but If somebody does something that feels right to me then it gets past the hard headed noise going on in my brain. It sticks in there for a later date somewhere down the road.
Kuzushi is a pretty hard headed subject. Releases is a related hard headed subject. I like doing releases, but there are times when they don't connect up well with the other stuff going on. The regular Tomiki crowd calls the releases the 7 forms of kuzushi. And while I call my own form of Aikido, horse shit aikido out of frustration, when I see other schools working these 7 forms of kuzushi I have to say they look like horse shit aikido.
This first clip is a couple of guys that do the releases pretty much how I know em, and have ran in the ground like a dead horse in the desert. They have a couple of under the arm variations that I suck at 7 forms of kuzushi crowd saves for later. I've seen Senta Yamada do things that are in this neighborhood, and Ive posted elsewhere how the Tegatana no kata that we do is pretty much The same as Senta Yamadas. So something tells me that My School of Aikido was born in the same room as Yamadas. We call this Hana-somethingsu kata, but I've heard that Miyake sensei said it wasn't a kata. It was just an exercise that yielded some sort of point/benefit. I heard the same story about the Big10, how Kogure was surprised people were still doing it.
This is the standardized take on it. I bad mouth my own school, but this is just because the Horseshit usually comes from one source, and its just how one guy somewhere down the line liked to do it, it either worked for him, or it was easy for him to teach, which is usually never the same thing. Most folks do one thing that they cant explain and teach another.
Standardized martial arts is horseshit not organically grown, but processed focus group approved horseshit.
I could tell you that there is one full proof way to set your farts on fire and you would probably say I was an idiot for two basic reasons. The first is: Why would anybody want to set their farts on fire? Two: How much trial and error does it take to find the supreme method of lighting ones farts on fire? And why would you trust someone who put so much work into lighting farts.
This is pretty much the mind splintering zen riddle of the martial arts. Listening to people coming up with better ways to light farts. Anyway, its always good to look at the standardized method of lighting farts and form opinions. Sometimes folks take your word for it on farts and fire. Just because they are impressed by farts and fire, or they dont want to take the time to test every possible method.
I give my own school of Aikido a lot of grief because they have this thing about going slow. Yeah, just about everybody new to anything starts out slow, but my question is, "okay Ive moved like a dude crawling on a complimentary wal-mart scooter for five years now, when do we speed up?"
Speed has a lot of bad side effects. The first is that it masks a lot of horseshit. Heavy metal music sounds great only with a distortion pedal. Those Japanese dudes are bouncing around so fast that they aren't breaking into any kuzushi. They are going through the motions. Looking cool.
Another thing is that kuzushi is divided into three levels. Jodan, Chudan, Gedan. I never really got what in the hell that meant. Gedan was easy to pick out, but because I was looking at the whole thing, in a how in the hell does this shit teach anything about kuzushi? kind of way. I never really gave a bag of monkey crap about the classification.
But Ive been doing some suwari waza in san kata, and Eric Pearson showed us some daito stuff the other day, and I think I figured out what this whole 7 forms of kuzushi is and what the releases are about. At least in theory. The thing about Tomiki Aikido is that it doesnt mention the first two items, and starts the student on the third. Its a pretty frustrating way to live, makes you think you're learning bullshit half the time, but if you are stubborn enough to stay with it, and assume you are finding diamonds in bullshit, then you get something out of it. All that matters is that you have the diamond, nobody cares where you found it.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure kuzushi studies in tomiki aikido came from suwari waza. Judo kuzushi is different. With judo its like you are carrying a big box where you cant see your feet and somebody puts a bar out at varying levels anywhere from ankle to hip height and you dump over. Yeah, there are asides here and there but thats about it.
But Tomiki tried to classify things with Aikido Kuzushi. There were other elements at work.
The first is Jodan. Jodan is like your legs aren't moving and you are reaching for something up high to catch yourself. Kind of like you are about to fall in a hole and you notice a overhead subway handle out there. The first place I think of this is in San Kata that part where you kneel and the other guy stands. The uke has to deal with this kind of thing a lot. The heaven and earth throw has it. There is a part later on where Jack teaches to take the slack out of your arm and flop your arm over the guy, and Pat Parker has a similar thing going on in Ichi kata the first standing technique where you take the slack out of your arm. The Japanese version of Hiki otoshi works on this type of kuzushi. Its basically when you take all the slack out with a hole waiting. Nariyama says you have to back up to do this, but its just another way to take out the slack.
Chudan is illustrated in the Yoshinkan suwari waza and the two college kids going in granny mode. its because they are going in granny mode you can catch the same damn thing that the Yoshinkan guy is doing. A lot of people put a lot emphasis on flipping the wrist and the footfalls and stuff, but the kuzushi here is like putting your hands in the center and wiping cornbread crumbs off the table laterally. The walk around is something else, and I'll get to that later. But the kuzushi is pretty simple. Ive taken to taking a side step on number 3 release, the same way the Yoshinkan guy does. I figured that out myself, but its good to know my instincts are up there with Gozo shioda. Really, I think number 1 and 3 should be looking for a back corner/ front corner kuzushi. The touchdown is sumi otoshi, the field goal is control of the wrist. or hiki taoshi. Nariyama describes this as two guys standing still. Like it starts with an equal situation up and down that moves laterally.
Gedan is easy. Its anything that pushes into your center where you have to turn. Its the hipswitch motion that a lot of folks subscribe to a shihonage set up, but its really #2/#4 release. Its a situation where you have to turn into something and let it slide past. The kotegaeishi in san kata kind of illustrates this, so does the shomen iriminage and the sokumen iriminage of Yoshinkan. They all operate in a turning movement. Nariyama shows gedan kuzushi basically going towards your nuts, and then turning, when you turn you bend your knees and pick up what ever happens from that point.
The thing is that Tomiki was thinking about Yield when he designed his releases/ kuzushi movements. I figure He wanted to teach three things at once. The kuzushi is pretty much the first damn thing. What folks call the recovery step or what I call the swing back is Tsukuri. And then it all hangs on a wire waiting for the finish where ever it needs to go. Tomiki also wanted to practice whole body movement which I think the Japanese do better than what I usually see, but they are clueless about the kuzushi.
And that leads me back to Senta Yamadas walking style. It accounts for the under the arm stuff that the two college kids are doing, and the step to the side motions could account for the lateral hand movements and turning ideas. I dont think he's facing towards other opponents to the side, thats a karate idea. I think he's either wiping a table for chudan, or turning to get gedan kuzushi going. The clockwise circles make sense in this way in returning to center rather than steping from center. It't a #4 release. The pet the dragon/deliver the pizza movements/ maki zuki are wrist control ideas after you've wiped the table.
I think our releases and walking ideas have a lot more ideas than the standard Tegatana dosa. But not many people talk about the 8 releases and Senta Yamada's walking being related, except me. Tomiki simplified things when he tried to find a better way to set farts on fire. But I'm pretty sure that he got his Aikido Kuzushi ideas from suwari waza techniques. Morty Youshiba swore by them, and their had to be a reason. What you see with his 7 forms of kuzushi is an attempt not to address kuzushi, but also Tuskuri and whole body movement across space. He had a lot of concepts to teach in a short time.
That's why such a simple exercise has a lot of explanations on how to go about it. It was an attempt to move suwari waza lessons to a standing exercise, but also tried to splice in other principles too. Teachers try to multitask. By doing so I think some of the issues got confused. I have never seen a link between footfalls and the releases. I think that's supplying Judo Think. But like I said its confusing when you try to sort through it, and people tend to make their own sense of things. Sometimes they find better ways of doing things. I know a lot of people like that.
I think its a simple push/pull thing. I'm not saying that footfalls can't be used to explain things, balance the last time I checked was heavily dependent on whatever the feet are doing, but its pretty clear to me that the 7 forms of kuzushi are suwari waza based.
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