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Sunday, February 1, 2015

Counter-Judo roots of Tomiki Aikido, and the Problem of Realistic Fluidity

I study two martial arts that you could say are derivative arts of Judo, Tomiki Aikido and Brazilian Jiujitsu.  Or you could say that they are both parts taken of a Judo whole.    BJJ is judo starting on the  ground, the newaza, and Tomiki Aikido is judo displayed in Goshin jutsu kata, the self defense ideas of Judo.

 BJJ has a deep emphasis on transition, positioning, and counter attacking. Some folks call it fluidity.  It has a ton of ways to keep the faucet turned on and flowing. The thing about BJJ is that there are no kata to tell you what the movements are, and as a result they don't try to see problems in linear-scenario based fashion.  They have mounts, and guards, and transitions between this and that, and of course they have the submissions which really are the end of the rope of movements.

  I can't say that I am good at either Tomiki Aikido or BJJ. In fact, I can definitely say that I suck at BJJ.  One thing I can tell you that I figured out is that within failure principle can be found. There is a lot of talk about principle in my branch of Tomiki Aikido, which is a slowed down version of Tomiki Aikido.  But since randori in Aikido is artificial at any speed, in that the movement is not fluid, and that natural options are limited by supposed principle behind the technique and safety,  it only becomes fluid when you coach folks to slow down to speeds that don't represent reality.  There is not enough failure in the  aikido randori to really reveal principle.  The  spoken principles in Aikido  are really starting points for discussion, and don't reveal themselves in resistant randori.





The common thread between Tomiki Aikido and BJJ is that they both seem to work ideas from states of  perceptual inferiority. BJJ is known for working from the ground and on the back.  And Tomiki Aikido works from states of inferior timing, or states of pre-control, and control.

Martial arts are based on mechanical repetition, and cognitive-kinetic recogniton.  Or how the body bends and doesn't bend, and how people react in an choice A or B fashion to pressure: pulling, pushing, leverage, and weight.  The common thread being is that techniques have to be repeatable.  And variations of techniques apply to specific instances.  A big guy presents this, or a small woman is presented with this.

There are things in martial arts that don't lend themselves to being repeatable.  Like punching someone in the face.  You can punch 7 guys in the face, and get 7 different results.  Kiai shouting may shock someone or not.  Pain compliance is another thing.  One guy may tap after a half inch of a crank, another guy will just lay there.  On the other side of this coin, are  scenario based defenses such as defending against a punch or a knife.  punches are hit and miss and the timing and targets, and contexts are random.  Any body who teaches how to defend against a punch or a knife is full of shit.  You either know its coming and fend it off or you don't.  They don't lend themselves to cognitive kinetic recogniton.

  Aikido has a problem as a martial art, even the sporting kind.  It seems that it wants to defy the laws of reality, and common sense.  You can see this in both the sporting kind, and the kind that is totally fake.





This is aikido randori in which the environment is so limiting in both the rules, and how things work that virtually nothing happens.  Except the NASCAR occasions when there is a wreck and someone gets hurt.    


Aikido suffers from the notion that everyone can be like Michael Jordan.  That if you tap into the right technique, you can stop anything.  And if you can't there must be some other worldly power or spiritual reference point that explains how things work.


Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido, may have been like a Michael Jordan. Everyone else is like Jimmy at the courts at the park.  My two cents on the greatness of Ueshiba is that he could improvise very well.  That he could perform well in a cognitive-kinetic environment using idiosyncratic techniques, and then live in the spaces between them. He taught fundamentals, The same way Jordan could show you some basketball fundamentals, and then turn around and win by doing things he wasn't teaching and couldn't explain. It was like going to learn from Jordan, playing 1 on 1 with him for five minutes, and when asked how he was doing it, he tries to explain it with stories of golf, gambling, and making underwear commercials.

I think that Shishida-Sensei's article is a good one to google. Its called,  " Counter techniques against Judo: the process of forming Aikido in 1930s Fumiaki Shishida."  It differentiates from Ueshiba's real game, his real ability, and what he liked to teach and drill.  Ueshiba did something entirely different than what he taught.  And impressed folks with things that he didn't explicitly transmit.  The main idea of the article is that a lot of Ueshiba's Aikido was based on  preventing judo grips from happening in the first place. That it wasn't a good thing to be gripped at all.

The idea wasn't transmitted well.  Here is some dude in a skirt vs a judo player.  You notice that the judo player defends against grips, and when he does he tries to counter grip up to improve his situation, either to deny the aikido guy freedom to move, or to break his posture.  The aikido guy just tries to fight grips, and doesnt seek a counter control, or atemi. He just allows the judo guy to grip up and waits to feel the Ki or something.

Here is some pretty simple advice from a female BJJ teacher, Emily Kwock.  Eventually, she will talk about hand circling or wax on wax off.  



It's my point to say that this grip denial, or working from an state of inferiority, either pre-control or control.  When the grip is on the way, or is just being made is the point of aikido, especially Tomiki Aikido.  It's been been obscured, by time and wishful thinking, and randori models that in no way reflect any fundamentals.

If you look at the earliest Tomiki Film, the big foot video.  You will see the grip fighting fundamentals there in plain sight.  First off is the often debated Tomiki Stiff Arm, where Ohba Shuffles in with finger tips extended.  That represents a gripping attempt pre-control, or incoming.  And you can clearly see Tomiki hand circling into offbalance and a technique.  And late in the video there is a section where Tomiki and Ohba go full speed, and preventing control and breaking balance at the same time is exactly what is taking place.  Almost as if this is the living proof of Shishida's article on counter judo.


The problem with Aikido is the understanding of fluid motion.  It seemed that Tomiki broke fluid motion into parts, and drilled the parts.  However, these parts never came together in fluid randori practice.  Because Aikido is essentially understanding the boundaries of Judo, the good manners of judo practice, and cheating and being a horrible judo partner.  Basically, someone who is asked not to come back.


The Tomiki Aikido basics:

The tegatana kata:  these are hand movement that represent off balancing, following movements, hand circles, and transitions  and maintaining the freedom of the hips. The lesson here is breaking balance while breaking a grip and either applying atemi, or getting a counter grip at the wrist. The first position that you do in BJJ is the closed guard, you have a guy that has clamped his legs around your hips and you can't use them until you escape by using leverage.  So hip movement, freeing your hips,  in conjuction to the handblade movements and foot work is the key lesson.  The katana work obscures the nature of the exercise.

Kihon:  striking(atemi) into a throw, leading/following(elbow) into a throw, twisting(wrist) into a throw, transitioning into a throw(floating).  These are taught out of relation to the basic  hand  and feet movements, out of the break a grip, and/or atemi/ get a grip function.  The lesson being is an extended arm leads to an offbalanced structure, and that circling an incoming grip into an offbalance, or counter-gripping is required to make these techniques work.

Nage no kata omote/ura or (what I call the kuzushi releases)   It is never a good thing to allow your self to be grabbed. The impression it leaves in kata form is that letting a guy hang on is a good thing.  And folks that wear hakamas like to talk about connection and stickyness and all sorts.  It confuses the issue, and leads to issues that are in the judo vs aikido video.  The lesson is when you break a grip you must insure that the balance is broken, other wise the attacker can follow up with an attack.  On the other side when you counter grip you should break balance to the point to where the attempt to break the counter grip leads into a technique.  The Ura sections suggest the real starting points for Tomiki Aikido once the grip has been broken and a counter grip insuring an offbalance is applied.  




In Competitive Aikido, There are virutally none of these ideas at work.  Its because one person can not grip at all, and therefore the entering with intent to control is removed. That's when all Aikido ideas collapse.



Aikido is not an ancient martial art.  One can argue that it isnt a martial art at all, with out being informed by what a Judo player will do.  What it becomes away from its counter Judo roots is just a martial form of dance.  If you study the history of judo, you will see that Kano altered the rules because too many times a person could just sit out of a throw, or pull guard.  There was a period of time where newaza, or ground work dominated.  To make the sport more crowd friendly, and hopefully make it an Olympic Sport, he made it where you couldn't just sit down out of things, and get to the nitty gritty on the ground, the way BJJ does.  He felt, like many folks nowadays, that submission wrestling wasnt all that interesting to watch.( look at how the UFC changed the rules to eliminate the possibilty of paying good money to watch fifty minutes of two intertwined humans barely moving.) Tomiki had the problem of developing a randori with a group of folks that already knew how to take folks down with Judo, which to be honest has more solutions than Aikido.   So he found ways to remove the judo from the randori, but in the process obscured Aikido's counter judo roots.














Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Win, or maybe lose. It just doesn't matter.

The best advice I can give a martial arts student is to find small incremental ways to make their selves a little bit tougher than they were five years ago. Its starts with the physical, then the mental, then the spiritual. It usually has to deal with sweat, and losing, and trying/wanting/working to win every once in a while. If you dont try to win, then you never experiment, and by that you really don't experience anything.  


         
    I am pretty convinced that there is no better fundamentals to the martial arts than what are found in Judo, or BJJ.   They both start with the notion of that there are two undisputed laws of the universe.  That there is solid ground underneath your body, and that living beings have to make an effort to keep from falling on it.  BJJ expands the picture in that when you accept those two laws then every part of the body seems to matter.

They both have a system of  relatively safe competition that hurts just enough to respect it. That allows you to dumbass your way into  kinetic enlightenment.  That allows you to lose to the strong, and see the strong lose.  It allows you to find out what works for you, and what for sure the hell doesnt.

I started doing Aikido "wrong" a couple of years ago.   I realized that Tomiki Aikido was the barebones basics, and that it was meant to start in dumbass mode.  The wrist wrasslin' that I did made my body stronger.  Taking atemi shots made me resilient.  I did the solo exercises "poorly" with speed.

 I stopped trying to move like Marsha Brady, (or maybe it was Jan), in that episode where they walked around with a book on their head.

Eventually I could do somethings better than Division I football players.  I'm not saying that I could kick their ass, I'm just saying that I could do a couple of things that they couldnt, and it stumped them.

BJJ has been pretty good to me so far.I get my ass kicked repeatedly in a good way. It makes me laugh how many ways it can kick your ass. In fact I laugh everytime I tap and call uncle.  Its so ridiculously simple. I

ts starting to tighten up the muscles that I didnt know I had.  It also has taught me some things about that over used word kuzushi.  The closer to the ground you are the more ways you can be jacked with.

I'm pretty convinced that all that kuzushi/aiki stuff relies on some fool on the other end not knowing what the hell is happening  to him.  It's like trying to recall what your wife told you to pick up at the store, in the middle of a hail storm, while two maladjusted chimps all over your body arm pitting  your face.

That whole budo is love thing is not about being " that guy."  The guy who everybody knows can kick ass.  Its all about cultivating that, " I didn't know he had it in him." persona.  Its more Rodney Dangerfield than Royce Gracie.

If you follow the peace and love routine you'll never get a chance to settle the score with the Judge Smails of the world.  Winning is important, but its more important on who you choose to win against.

Saturday, September 13, 2014




   Recently, I saw one of those not so easy to watch videos where this guy got jumped in a subway or something by what appeared to be a gang of a dozen or so attackers, maybe less, I didn't count.  The guy got swarmed and pummeled, and kicked, and thrown down.  He had his girl with him, and she got it too, trying to step in and save him, but not like the guy who was the primary target.

There was no amount of judo, BJJ, Aikido, whatever, that would have helped the guy.  It was one of those wrong place, wrong time things.

It got me thinking about some old school stuff, about what if the guy had a sword?  A four foot razor blade strapped to his side.  A distance weapon with fries, and a coke.  The guy wouldn't have been jumped at all.

Then I started thinking about the modern martial arts.

I started taking a BJJ class, and the class is pretty much all mat time.  Rolling, they call it.  Randori.

I read up on whatever I'm studying, which means I read something over and over about a hundred times.  I read how Jigoro Kano, the Judo founder came up with randori methods or training.  How taking out the dangerous techniques, and setting up a system where techniques could be practiced against full resistance, the safer techniques, actually produced better fighters.  Folks that could handle them selves pretty darn good.

I think that BJJ, or just Jiu-Jitsu, takes that safe technique angle, and brings things right to the mat.  Not a whole lot of break falls, just submission wrestling from day one.   A lot of things that I have heard in Aikido, are also said in Jiu-jitsu.  So some  intangible things I can absorb, but fundamentally I dont know up from down.  I have learned to tap out a lot.

I got this book by a guy named Saulo Ribeiro.  And in it he talks about teaching beginners how to survive. How to close off holes where they can be attacked.  To prevent being taken out by submission.  The reason he does this is so that they can last longer against the upper belts, so that the upper belts get pushed a little harder to find a technique.

Kinda a reverse, backasswards way of teaching, but it works.  Here is what I'm trying to do to you, this is what you do to keep it from happening.

I got thinking about Tomiki Aikido.  Tanto randori.  I think that my disillusionment with the Karl Geis line is over the omission of tanto randori. I understand why folks can take it or leave it.  Not a whole lot goes on, and when it does it looks pretty sloppy.  My philosophy is that that is pretty much life in general.  You can be a perfection hound, and only do things that look sweet to impress the chicks, then you get over it. or not.  Slowing it down, thus slowing down who ever is getting grabby on you,  Doesnt do it for me any more.

I guess I'm okay with sloppy.

The thing that makes tanto randori such a slop fest, is that the beginner has a much easier time learning to survive.  Aikido is basically about jumping on over extension, Tomiki knew it, and that is where all that stiff arm uke stuff comes from.  To survive in Aikido, all you do is not over extend.  Don't attack all in, set your feet, put up your paws, and go into sparring mode.  Not a lot will happen.  Some body grabs your wrist, just tighten up, bring it to your body.

The thing about randori is that somebody will get tired, somebody will get something.  It may not look like a college girl running on the beach in a bikini, It may not be hakamatastic, it may not address kuzushi, or musubi, or whatever the japanese word of the week is.  But somebody is going to give it up.

Going back to that incident, the guy getting jumped, if pulled a sword what is the things the idiots could have done to survive?  How easy is it to teach someone how to survive against a swinging sword?   Not too damn easy.  Thats why spears and guns and arrows were invented.

A lot of randori, tanto randori that is, is about grabbing the extension, and preventing it from coming back at you.  It can go this way and that way, but there are really 4 or 5 techniques that keep popping up.  That tend to work within the framework of the match rules and space.

The Tanto player is a all in player, the rules only allow him to do a one thing, and a couple of others if an if and or but is answered first.  Then time runs out.  The fact that there is a timer, dictates how things go.  The fact that both guys take turns with the tanto, dictates things.  Going first, or second tend to dictate things.  A whole lot more goes on than just two guys trying to do 17 techniques on each other.  The conditions to get those techniques are restricted by mat space, time, rules, conditioning, and who does what first.  There are a lot of non-technical things that help someone survive, and prevent a technique.





Saturday, September 6, 2014

The Okie-Do List of Principles


All these are subject to change

1.  The Principle of the Mat:

     The guy who has the best relationship with the mat is going to win.  If you aint afraid of falling down you have one up on the other guy.  If you know what to do when you get there then that is just a bowl of cherries for you.

2.  Ukemi principle

    Receiving end education, or the school of hopefully not so hard knocks.   Every technique needs to be be felt in from begininng to end.  So a guy has to ask how much training up does it actually take to actually learn something.  BJJ has a little ukemi and a whole lot of rolling around.  Thats why those guys get very good very soon if they show up to class, because its all mat time.  And most techniques can be felt on the first day in the door.  Judo has a lot of learning how to fall, and I cant actually say how long it takes before you can be tossed all over to be educated, but I would assume its a little while.  Aikido has the longest train up to it, the longest ukemi maturation process because you are getting thrown by the joints.  Thats why I have been really hard on Aikido on this blog, especially geriatric aikido, that should have gone Tai Chi 20 years ago.

3.  The Anti-fragile principle;
          Little knocks and bumps and bruises make you stronger.  The human immune system is made to absorb small problems and become better.   A joint lock here, a shomenate 17 style there.  A misfit on gyukugamate that bumps your snout and makes you tear up just a little.  Everything done in a controlled way with a mat, under the agreement of everybody gets a turn.  So if you do it to me, then I do it to you.


4.  Slowing Down is seeing, but not living principle
           You slow down so your hands and body can feel what is going on, so your Intuition can "see."  But speed and variation in timing is what  has always killed the cat, not so much curiosity. At least on the Interstate.  Slowing down is not a permanent state, and expecting everyone to slow down so things work is  cloud kookooland thinking.


5.  Bullshizznit detection principle

    Beware of hero worshiping, and name dropping to justify things.   And avoid the I'm awesome because I learned it in Japan or from an actual Japanese guy.  Going to the horses mouth is usually the best policy, but going to any horses mouth and trying to pass them off as Secretariat, or Seabiscuit  is the same as being a fudging liar.  Also, beware of the folks who dont want to post videos because its way too secret.  Nobody cares.  And odds are some teenage MMA fan will troll it anyway.  Thats a fact of life.  ( I would really like to see all of Karl Geis videos put out there on the Youtube.  The world deserves it, its a unique take on things.  And if 15 people dig it then its worth it, but it will be more than 15.  Otherwise, nobody is going to know, and nobody is going to care.)

6.   Anti-certification principle/Anti-obi wan kenobi principle

      Think of years on the mat instead of Dan rank.    And also pay attention to how fat they are. If they can't muster up the spiritual power to say no to a second helping, then evaulate authenticity  from there. Their wife may be an amazing cook, so give them a pass. If they are fat and still believe in punching the guy then listen, they are a realist.  But they are fat and like to talk about ki, and connection, and internal power, effortless power, or other nonsense then ask them how effortless was their last trip to the bathroom?  If they can still pee over a tall fence, and take a dump two or three times a day, then they may have truly found some sort of internal power secret.  Give them ten percent of your paycheck and move into their garage and become their man servant.

7.  Technical History principle

  If you are teaching Tomiki Aikido then there are no mysteries.  This guy named his techniques push down, pull down, and arm turn, not dragon breathing fire, or horse whips tail.  Know how one things relates to another because your student can look up it up on Youtube. New sacred scrolls dating way back to 1962 get unearthed all the time.

8.  Ignore the Third Rate principle

     Never put up with a guy who is trying to be a third rate Morty Youshiba, Karl Geis, or Tomiki.  Don't hang around someone trying to cook mexican food who has never ate mexican food.  A guy who gets pissed when you call his burrito an enchilada, and you know darn good an well its a enchilada.

9.  Kata aint practice principle
 
 Kata is a method to preserve historic techniques from another country.  If you practice kata then you can call your self a martial artist, but dont try to sell me on anything..  You do things for the look and the feel, and the presentation. You may like dressing up in a dress and this is the only socially acceptable way to get away with it. I can't speak for you.   But at the end of a the day you might as well be ballet dancing.  Longterm kata training helps you improvise when the shizznit hits the fan, but most folks that swear by kata like improvising as much as Rainman liked  missing the  "Peoples Court".    And any white mans kata is automatically bullshizznit in my book.  And doing kata over and over and over is like preparing for a day that never comes if you think they have some sort of combative, self defense benefit.   Best just do em cause you like em and leave it at that.

10.  If you keep making that face it will freeze that way principle

   Just because you teach something and people actually repeat the movement doesnt make it real, or effective.  The more you say things out loud over and over and over the more they become real.  Remember it all works if people are trained to make it work.  This why randori must have rules, and a way to "win".  A Tomiki Tanto Randori player may be as much of a badass as a badmitton player, but the guy is going to know when he gets better, and what works over time.  Same or Judo, or BJJ.   A structured randori system is the best thing you can have, and the worst thing thing you can have.  But it has to be allowed to go that way person by person.


Monday, September 1, 2014

principle


There was a lot of talk about Principle when I first started my Aikido study.  Same hand, same foot.  Unbendable arm.  Keep your hand in the center, blah, de boring blah.    The principle based argument is that you can go into a pool cue and broken bottle problem and solve it like a nerd with a calculator.  Just because you are aware of "principle",  and can apply it.  On this I will have to pull the Bullshizznit card.

Principle only enters into the picture when you cast aside all the ifs, ands, or buts.  Take Judo for instance.  I have been thrown around by Judo folks, and a good judo player can make you pay for every step you take.  My only solution to a judo player is to hit the guy first, probably in the nuts, or knees, or some other dirty play that you wouldnt do on a dojo mat.

Because the Judo guy trained in an environment where he didnt have to worry about getting his nuts caved in, he is free to get sensitive in a way that he can feel a weight transfer going on. He was given the luxury of not getting slapped in the face or across the ear hole every time he came to grips.  Because he didnt have to deal with that sort of thing he became good at that sensitive thing that judo guys are good at.  He started identifying triggers, and bad situations, and potentials.

I suppose, if the judo guy was facing Cleetus in the trailer park who isnt a trained puncher, yet wants to punch, and chooses punch poorly, the judo guy could probably have an easy go at it.  But line the 2 day a week for six years judo player against Mike Tyson in some sort of road rage fender bender event, then the Judo guy would probably take whatever lady luck would throw at him.

The principles would fail him once he recieved a blow that felt like the impact of a white rhino.  

So when the principles fail, you look for another principle.  And you cast aside all the ifs, ands, or buts that go along with it.  Because principles can get contaminated pretty easy.  Clear water muddies up the best.

What if a guy swings at you, what if a guy pulls a knife, you cant do that against a judo player( as if everyone you ever will meet will be a judo player), that would never work in an MMA match,  what if he uses his elbow,  but if you do this then the guy might do that.  

Recently,  I have started doing some BJJ.  It got me thinking about where is the best place to start learning all this martial arts crap.   I asked a guy who has been doing it for a couple of years what he would do here, and here, and here, what if I did this, or this, or this.  And on the ground he had a lot of immediately provable, understandable answers.  Offbalance is an immediate effect on the ground, putting too much pressure on a guy has an immediate effect, getting handsy has an immediate effect.

It got me thinking about BJJ, about how it was a pretty complex interaction yet pretty darn simple.  I started thinking that all the things that happen on the ground, principle wise, would probably transfer to the stand up game, and if they didnt, then you needed to think along another principle line.  Because on the ground it is pretty clear cut who knows what to do, and who doesn't.   And that BJJ is pretty much all mat time, from day one, everyone can get after it and start looking at things and proving whether something will work or not.

Judo is probably the next best, but there is a lot of time taken to learn how to fall safely in order to absorb a technique and understand the function and effect of a technique.  It becomes uke driven.  I cant honestly say whether BJJ is an Uke driven art.  Anyone can lay on the ground and rassle around.  I can say that it is dumbass driven, because once you commit an error in judgement and another guy knows it and knows what to do about it, then you are toast.

So I think I have identified probably a overreaching principle in the martial arts.  That is the Recognition of Error Principle, and the, What to do about it Principle.

Like I said, I'm working off of the idea that BJJ is probably the best martial art to access these two principles. Judo functions off of a guy trying to keep his balance, keep standing, so its probably the second best.  A guy will have to learn how to fall down safely to explore the neighborhood.  I assume it takes a good while maybe a couple of years to get the feel for standing ukemi.

Aikido is probably about the worst to route to explore principle.  How long does it take to get comfortable being stiff armed in the face, or fall over a twisted wrist.  And from two guys squaring off, separated, how much can you recognize an error, and what in the helll can you do about it.

Tomiki put the atemi waza in as the underpinning of his Aikido.  Because they function much like karate.  A guy drops his guard and you hit him.  Only to score a competive point you have make the guy fall down.  I have always had a problem with my Karl Geis Ryu brethren on this point.  If you are practicing a non-competitive form of aikido then why arent the atemi waza percussive?

 I dont know how many times I have been at a clinic, or get together and some one wants to show yet another take on Gedan Ate and I get paired up with a guy that is way to fat to put a gedan ate on.  He is never going to generate the energy to throw a gedan ate.  The obvious solution is elbow the guy in his obvious bread basket and work from there.  And really I think, that the Atemi waza suck in the KG-ryu because no one wants to take the ukemi for them.  The 23 kata lets a guy circle out of them.  It kind of takes the teeth out of the entire system.

So the first error recognition is when a guy drops his guard.  Just like karate, you hit him.  You dont stick your arms out and feel for it like you can in Judo, or feel for it holistically on the ground in BJJ.   Otherwise you have to be in reactive mode, dodge at the very barest margin, hoping for a catastrophic miss.










Sunday, August 24, 2014

Martial Arts, Well Being, and Sweat.




The only reason I do Martial Arts is because I need a reason to get off my butt and get out the house and move around.  Unlike Jogging or going to the gym and lifting heavy stuff and running on a complicated electronic hamster wheel, it comes with some pleasant problem solving and frustrations that keep you wanting to come back.  But for me its the relaxed feeling I get for a couple of days, the good hangover.  I noticed especially when my boy was small and liked to be picked up every five minutes that the day after a good a Aikido work over( as opposed to a work out) that he was lighter.

Taking the tension out of your muscles makes them stronger, who would have thought?

I  have started doing Brazillian Jujitsu because of that feeling.  Not that I dig MMA, but because it maybe the best martial art that gives you that relaxed feel good.  I'm not doing it to shore up weaknesses in my game,   or because I find Aikido lacking  It just delivers the goods.

Because I always saw the martial arts as a way to exercise I tend to avoid and ignore the common hassles and personality conflicts, and  pyschological needful things that people look for in the martial arts.  I have been around folks who really wish they were born Japanese, as if that were going to make them better. I think Zen is okay, but the more you want a calm mind the more it aint gonna happen for you.  I like that whole shinto there is a spirit in every rock and tree thing.  But I think its a laughable thing that turning Japanese will get you manly respect and more chicks.  It will probably do the opposite.

I have also tended to ignore the self defense side of things.  Rory Miller said it best when he said that folks expect Martial Arts teachers to be experts on violence.  And this is not the case.  Self defense wise, I think that martial arts helps in self  in an indirect way.  Being used to contact and folks being in your bubble,and understanding how the body bends and reacts here and there is a useful thing.  It gives you a 1up, but it doesnt make you an expert.

I don't know how many times I have heard an aikido guy explain to me how to handle a puncher or a kicker, and they have never been punched or kicked in their life.  Head shots you tend to see stars, body shots hurt like hell and make you want to take a step or two back, where you get the head shot. It is an endless deep shizznit cycle from which there is no easy technical solution, except do it to the other guy first.

I also lament the misunderstanding and omission of Tanto Randori in the Geis line Tomiki Aikido.  Karl Geis made a decision for everyone when he decided he wasnt into it.  While technicaly it isnt pretty, it provides an avenue for sweat and struggle.  I think that he had concerns that it wasnt effective way to teach self-defense because it didnt address the cutting function of the blade.  But its always been my opinion that any knife  self defense "expert" is full of crap.

 The knife keeps cropping up over the last several thousand years because it is a hard thing to defend against. Before law and justice, packing a knife was a pretty good  idea.   And at most any one who survives a knife, especially a martial arts person, is probably aligned with the 80/20 principle.  The reason why you get out of a hairy situation is because of 20 percent training and 80 percent dumb luck.

Tanto randori is the fun strength and conditioning tool.  You get stronger by doing it.  Folks tend to forget that Morty Youshiba was a fitness fanatic before people even had a need for fitness.  He liked farm labor, and did Aikido as a "break" between bouts of farm labor.  How much of his "aiki" was that he was a natural athlete that was in incredible shape?  If he truly was as good as folks say, you may be looking at Micheal Jordan type.  A one in ten million type of guy that comes around every 20 years or so.

And because we dont do it, the randori as strength and conditioning, us Geis-ryu folks, I have to get it through BJJ.  Its going to be a fun ride, hopefully.    

Folks tend to forget the place of physical education, physical activity had on society.  To keep people out of trouble you needed some sort of avenue for them to get energy out of their system.  Kano, if I recall it right, was influenced by western educational ideas as was Tomiki.  Randori is a western idea.  Take your kid to soccer practice, or basketball practice. How much of it is drill and skill, and how much is some sort of smaller game that relates to the game?

You never see an athletic team doing a kata to get better at anything.  Kata was a way to supply that 20 percent in the old days. Life, especially in hard times, tends to be 80 percent dumb luck. Kata is a method for preserving a set of techniques and movement principles. Its the slow road to building skill. But it provided a jumping off point for folks to improvise their way out of trouble because they had numerous models of interaction socked away.

But nowadays, people tend to get frozen in kata.  They think that the kata speaks directly to a situation like a recipe for making biscuits.  All a kata provides is the motion of making biscuits in a straight line.  Walk two steps forward, grab imaginary bag of flour, pour it into the imaginary bowl.  In two man kata, the linear situations are the imaginary.  People tend to move all over the damn place in real situations.  And you can also confuse a making the biscuits kata movement with a "knife defense" kata.

Most of Tomiki's weapon kata spoke more to timing than actual make the biscuits application.  Folks who try to fix san kata, especially the tanto parts, run the risk of making a situation worse.  Putting a realistic response to a silly looking attack.  Where the silly looking attack was just a creature of timing and not an actual attack. Its like the kata is saying, " you know that timing is important don't you?"  over and over and over.

I have had folks say that the koryu kata are not neccessary because they were a product of Hideo Ohba.  And they tend to get on me about studying books and film so much, but if they bothered to crack a book and look at these films over and over they would understand that the Tomiki parts of their Aikido besides San Kata are the drills and methodologies that train up to Randori.  Obha was actually the more classical thinker of the two.  Tomiki was of the sweat it out school of thinking.  That making Aikido into a sport would give more folks an avenue to get better at getting along, and going along.

The one thing about BJJ, I dont think there are any kata to slow things down. Not two many points to argue about, justify, explain, or ponder on.  Just shut up and wrestle with a guy for two minutes, and then wrestle with another guy for two minutes.

The physical activity has been replaced with distraction.  Instead of focusing a persons energies on doing, there are numerous ways nowadays for people to get distracted by looking.  I have told young folks that there isnt much difference between cigarette smoking and smartphones.  And if everybody would go back to smoking cigarettes we would get a lot more done, and I wouldnt be afraid to walk accross the parking lot at walmart.  and I really dont know which is worse.

Fast food is killing us. Millions of Cow farts may be the death of us.  Folks try to blame obesity on the lack of willpower.  But you can't blame a fish for swimming in polluted water.  There are less reasons to move, and more reasons to stand still, eat, and look at something.  This is why I get kind of irritated at the folks who think they can master things by moving slow.  Moving slow for an hour is great as long as someone doesnt want to stop and talk about it.

 Moving at a good pace helps you sweat out the crap, and also gives you a reason to want to slow down and talk about it.  The rest is the best part of the hard work. A cold drink and good conversation.  Not I'm going to talk about it to justify it or avoid doing it.

The guys that appear to move slow, and complete techniques with out a lot of hassle are also the ones who have probably done it longer than anyone else.  Its another bone I got to pick with the Geis Methodology.  Its a noble effort to try to teach soft from the get go.  But there is a difference between faking soft and becoming soft.  You become soft by learning the hard way.  Thousands of hours.  Dozens of lesson learned.  hundreds of asskickings.

There are plenty of upper dan's out there who have never even tried to go at it.  They weren't allowed.  So instead of getting a sense of been there and  done that confidence, they look for answers  from stupid human trick peddlers.  Who try to sell the no sweat, move less, approach which goes counter to what Kano or Tomiki wanted.  A wrung out society that wanted to sit down with a cold drink and visit, instead of complain or argue, or look for a a reason to get their feelings tromped on.  

Next time you are about to get into an argument in the 12 items or less line, think about how things would go if both parties were physically wrung out from some good sweat.  Not exhausted, just wrung out real good.  How less of hurry you would be in, how the little things dont matter.  why in the hell do i care if this guy has 14 things in his basket?  That is the lesson of slow and easy.  A stressed out person can't become soft by just rule and philosophy alone.  People become soft, and easy and agreeable.  You can't fake it. Or replace it with distraction.  Its something you get from sweat.  

Thursday, August 7, 2014

The Okie-Do Take on Judo Taiso Era Tomiki Aikido








I have been doing technical archeology of Geis -Ryu Tomiki for a couple of years now.  I have always said that a real Okie has to tell a couple of stories before he gets to the point.  Well, this blog was the couple of stories. And this post is the point. If I offended folks, especially Geis-ryu folks, I want to apologize here.  When somebody tries to digest something new to their system they usually fart a lot.  And there was a lot of verbal farting going on in this blog.  Sorry for cropdusting your room.

I have always enjoyed Aikido.  What I have had a problem with is the Judo model to explain the motions.  This isnt because I don't respect judo, in fact I would rather be thrown with Judo than talk about it.  Getting thrown down tends to be enlightening and sometimes fun.  The simple reason to why I watch birds on most Geis-ryu Aikido analysis is that I don't do Judo.  I think that I have learned somethings by osmosis, but still at the end of the day I am not a Judo player.  As a school teacher, I recognized that all the Judo talk was an attempt to supply common knowledge and a point to where things can be explained and further expanded on.  When two farmers get together they talk about farming.  Judo players tend to talk about Judo.  In the early days of Tomiki, every student was a Judo player.

Judo motion, however, doesn't explain aikido motion.  There are points of convergence, and Geis-ryu players are masters of this convergence zone, with the caveat that a lot of prior Judo knowledge must be present to master this convergence zone.  I recognized that I was never going to be able to access this prior knowledge.    So I had to do some digging..

The walking kata, the way Senta Yamada performs it, supplies a method of installing a prior knowledge through motion.  It supplies the motions to be discussed and labeled, and then practiced. It should supply the reference point of connection: "It's like in the walking kata  when you...."

I am becoming set in my opinions in that I think that the Judo Taiso Era Tomiki, the Miyake/Yamada era was probably the Golden Age of Tomiki Aikido.  It is the best model to supply and understanding to what that crazy wizard Morty Youshiba was up to.  I am of the opinion that the system rapidly jumped the shark once competive Tanto Randori was seen as the primary point of emphasis.

Geis-ryu folks also jumped their own sharks, when they reduced motion on the basis of Judo analysis and confined motion to a set of principles that were more instructional talking points than actual principle.  The shark jumping on their part had nothing to with their Randori model which can be seen in other systems like Tai chi, wing chun, and other chinese arts that have pushhands/sticky hand exercises.  Although I don't think the explicit intention was to make randori into a Chinese Exercise, that is essentially what happened.  It was a moment of serendipity.


I think that the Judo Taiso era aikido is composed of these elements:  The walking kata,  the 8 releases,  the 15 kata, proto-san kata ideas, and proto-yon kata ideas.   Also, I think that the system revolves around the principle of hando-no-kuzushi: resistance of one technique leads to an opening on another technique.

The walking kata

Instead of doing a blow by blow analysis I'm just going to broad brush it here.

A)The unsoku teach tsugi ashi.  It also teaches foot work to  drive an offbalance, to position to employ hiprotation as an offbalance, and to use body turn as a method of offbalance.  I think that the omission of the forward tsugi ashi/backward tsugi ashi is a terrible decision by the Geis_ryu folks, but the inclusion of the diagonal step is a master stroke.  I don't believe that it was a change made by Geis, it think it was always there as an obvious reality especially in the application of Oshi taoshi.  

B)The walking kata links to the 15 kata, not the 17 kata.   The 3 attacks appear to hold a strong relation to the first three hand blade movements.  Shomenate/ gyukugamae ate/ aigamae ate.  The key to seeing this is that on the handblade movements(the circles) yamada starts with his hand palm up( the initial touch in shomenate.  The second motion is palm down.  Both ideas circle into their technique.  Aigamae ate can be explained when you perform it in yon kata style as a counter to the first release movement.  but it happens to be represented in both the 15 and yon kata with the same motion and offbalance position.

C) The second and forth release  motion appear to be the primary idea of offbalance in the walking kata  If you play with the motions starting from palm down or palm up, and reverse motions you will see it.

D) Also hipswitching positions can be seen by simply taking a stepforward from same hand same foot postures.

E)The first three motions describe 15 kata" attacks".  And when combined with forward chalice stepping they describe what you see going on in Yon kata the way that the rest of the tomiki world does it, not in the Geis-ryu interpretation.  The first sweep/second sweep is an aigamae movement where you chalice step forward and perform a high second release.  In gyukugamae it is a chalice step combined with a high fourth release.  You can always drop to your knee.

F)  The turns or the pet the dragon/deliver the pizza motions are multipurpose.  They represent an Aigamae ate relationship.  They also represent a tactical turn when an uke has recovered from a second/forth release and attempts to reorient his center on yours per yon kata.  The missing peice on these motions are that they describe the wrist techniques when you combine them with a hipswitch.  Both mawashis/ both kote gaeshis  are in the 15 kata but not the 17.  If you watch Tomiki on his Aikido Kyogi go through the wrist techniques you can see suggestions of this idea.

G)The hipswitch alone also aligns to the two shihonage movements but that is an easy connection to make. The senata yamada 180 turns in his walking kata address the amount of carry/ or energy added by the uke to perform shihonage.  They are two of the underarm release motions.  


15 kata

This kata has been described by many as Tomiki's rough draft, or just a stage in his evolution of the 17 kata.  I tend to disagree,  This is the basic kata of Tomiki.  Shodokan Aikido still teaches the grips even though some of them are not in the 17.  Once Tomiki started playing with his ideas to develop a randori method I suppose these are the ideas he started with.  But as he was watching the kids play he saw a lot of Judo being thrown around, so that is where the tanto idea came in.  My speculation is that once folks started playing with a tanto he started seeing a lot of the things that eventually found thier way into the 17.  Tomiki had labels for all the new things that turned up and put them into the new kata, and took out the things that didn't work or were dangerous. ( remember the old film shows him playing with kote mawashi in a backfall)   My educated guess comes from watching Tanto Randori matches on Youtube.  The things he added tend to be the only things that you see happen, besides some sort of shomenate.  This just isnt a hairy coincidence.


Randori

It gets obscured a lot in Geis-ryu because of the repurposing of 17 kata movements to fit the softer randori model, but both katas the 15/17 are not organized only bodypart, but by the principle of hando-no-kuzushi.  That if it doesnt work one way because of resistance turn it the other way, and if that doesnt work then hit the guy.  Geis-ryu wants to achieve light touch sensitivity much in the way tai chi push hands works.  But since they don't play with Randori in a resistant mode this connection is lost, but eventually found through other means.  Things start in small circles of input/output until someone commits an error in movement then the circles widen into techniques and throws.  

Another point missed is that the 17 kata is also organized to address backward and forward linear movement by the tanto player, especially in the case of Atemi waza.  Since the forward/ and back tsugi ashi movement has been omitted from the walking kata.  The butterfly movements are also a product of tanto randori because with a tanto involved techniques need the reinforcing factor of two hands.  This two hand reinforcement is not present so much in the 15 kata.  Hiki taoshi is often performed one handed, and no butterfly like movements are involved.

In my view there are two models of randori.  The softer randori to teach fine mechanics and sensitivity( I have made the observation that Geis-ryu folks seem to be very good at free-styling wrist techniques which I think fits the 15 model better than the 17 model)  The hando-no-kuzushi randori should be a more hardheaded randori.  There are just some techniques that need a wider range of movement that simply isnt there in soft randori, and once you start practicing hando-no -kuzushi randori the linkages in the kata start to appear very obvious.


The release actions

These can be soft function ideas, but I believe they are an extension of hando-no-kuzushi ideas.  what doesnt work one way will work the other way, and if works one way real good then it can go back the other way real easy.   A critical insight into the nature or releases can be made when watching Senta Yamada explain actions in a circle.  And really working release movements in a circle with either the second or fourth release explains the nature of aikido movement.   It explains everything you see in Yon kata, Geis's release chains, and his 23 kata.   I have had trouble with both the chains and the 23 because they often pass up a couple of ideas on the way to execution and sometimes contain redundancies.  Since I follow the hando-no kuzushi model,  I already see the releases and the 17 kata in circular form.  It chains naturally and doesn't need much labeling.  But if softer forms of randori study are your goal I can see great benefit in chaining and the 23 kata.


The nature of Judo and Aikido

Judo starts from an idea that both players are equal.  But with the right Judo guy equal don't last long.  Aikido begins with the idea of constantly keeping things non equal.  There is no matching timing ideas in Aikido.   Tori seeks to speed up the uke, or to turn recieved speed into more speed.  And that is nature of Aikido offbalance.  Every interaction is predicated on non-equality.  My Geis-ryu associates have derided tanto randori sometimes as a whole lot of nothing going on.  But it contains a central point of Aikido.  The tanto player keeps things unequal.  The tanto player is the Aikido player.  He can keep things from going equal.  The rules restrict his range of movement to linear and he can only counter under a set of slim finely defined curcumstances.  But look at how much he gets the other guy to jump, hop, and twist and turn. Now image if the Tanto guy said enough of this crap, dropped the foam tanto and applied a 17 technique.  This is how Aikido is meant to function.  You always have to set yourself up to keep things unequal, by forcibly controlling maai with movement and atemi.  Once you try to control maai in a reactive mode all Aikido ceases to function.

Anyway,  I figured out the what is what in my Branch of Tomiki Aikido.  Now all I need is about 10 years worth of good mat time with good people.  Then I may be qualified to teach it if the accident wills.