Stupid horses, Welding, and Calf Frys. (or Zen, Connection, and Confict)

  I realized a long time ago, I was never going to be the most interesting man in the room.  I also realized that I was never going to be the smartest either. My Aikido adventures have also ruled out the most skilled. I used to read Zen Mind ,Beginners Mind a lot. It has a story about four kinds of horses.  The first horse gets going when he sees the shadow of the whip.  The second horse gets going on the cracking sound of the whip.  The third horse needs a pop on the backside.  The fourth horse needs to be beat half to death before he moves on down the road. 

Fourth horses suffer a lot  from I dont trust you or the shit that your selling syndrome.  The less you talk to us the better. We like renshu(shut up and do it) and only trust in your keiko( talk about it, explain it.) if you have actually used it in a fight or used it to impress chicks.   But eventually if you give us enough renshu to where we lose 30 pounds and can get up off the floor without moaning we'll listen to some keiko.  .

   
The Tomiki system as we know it has basically 25 movements (8+17),  a walking kata, plus Randori.  Its a renshu model,  We don't complicate things with ura and omote, irimi and tenkan.  Those are issues to be figured out in randori.  When I do an Ikkyo(what I call #6 neighborhood) on a Morty-ryu guy, I get corrected alot because I go ura when its supposed to be omote.  It's probably because I've been trained to feel for resistance and head the other way. or I'm just stupid. 

The thing about our school is that we are more renshu than we give ourselves credit.  We have 25 movements.  25 movements can be separated and repeated pretty damn easy.  That's why I'm a fan of doing everything all the way through 3 or 4 times. (It's only 25 movements, folks.) Then back tracking and doing reps on some trouble spots.  With this type of training it doesnt take long to integrate something new.   This is why the koryu kata should be practiced, all of them.  The koryu show the morty ryu side of things, the basics are there to figure Morty out. 

A bitchy digression: Nobody seems to know why everyone just dropped the koryu kata.  I think everybody went to KooKoo for Tanto Randori in Japan, and Judo Guys with Bad Knees couldnt handle the seiza and Knee walking.  But where its left us is that people have to guess(real bad), make shit up(worse than bad), relate everything to judo(Thank God Tomiki was a Judo guy), or pray for ten years worth of good randori partners. 

Anyway, to get back to that zen and the stupidest horse thing.  The notion is that anything that finally sinks in stays in, and the fourth horse knows it better than anybody else.   It was beat into his bones.

I was having a discussion with Jack about how people throw around the word connection.  How a lot of Aikido types throw it around but they have no idea what the hell it means in concrete terms. I got the best lesson on connection from a morty-ryu beginner who was trying hard to be a first horse.  He told me not to allow my palm to separate from his wrist, so when he did his fourth release I was double bent trying to keep connected.  He tried to get me to choke up on his arm so I could stay connected better but I wanted to be a stubborn fourth horse and stay welded to his wrist and see where that took the situation. What he got out of it was double kuzushi points.  

Check out Crocodile Dundee doing the fourth release.  He talks about Ki, but the trick is really in the Fu Manchu dude keeping his palm welded, if Dundee curls his wrist and Fu keeps the weld on then his balance is broken.  If there is a pocket formed between Fu's palm and the Dundees hand then it doesn't corrupt the other guys posture so much. 

This is where we get our wrist curling ideas from.  Only we dont expect the Uke to stay welded.  I think we work on matching speed and blending to keep the weld. It may also explain why Daito Ryu hand work is more proactive than reactive. Its hunting the weld, and if the weld isnt formed they tend to clock the guy with something else.  Reminds me of those first two dumb moves in Yon Kata.      

I suspect now that this connection business starts out as UKE driven.  It's simply a matter of keeping your palm welded to the guy, and not allowing a space to develop.  Grab your own wrist and allow some space between your palm and the back of your hand. Now raise the back of your hand into your palm and perform a tegatana/daito movement.  When I randori with Jack I get the tori driven connection/welding.  I try to get away but I can't.   Hell, I dont' want to connect but I'm forced to stay welded to whatever is going on.  I suppose you can call it Ki if it makes your hakama fit better.

A thought experiment with this is applying atemi and maintaining tori generated connection.   Check out Aiki Guy here.  I was thinking that if you shomenate the guy and keep the connection with his other hand as he reflexively pulled back and away with it.  You could do # 3 release and the hand change in mid air and keep your maai a bit better, instead brushing your hand down, fitting in and  bowing in, you could shomenate, follow/weld to the the reactive gripping hand/change into Kote mawashi and back out or turn your whole body weight into it.

   As a side note, if the UKE had a knife in his off hand, then that would present some problems in the Calf Fry department for Aiki Guy.   

Anyway, In the 8 releases it may be instructive to do a rep or two where Uke welds his palm to Tori.  It makes the wrist actions make sense.  Then do a few reps where tori trys to maintain the weld, with hand action and footwork.

A tsukuri and a kuzushi walked into a bar....

"throughout history, the most famous exponents of arts such as karate and judo have typically employed set-ups(tsukuri)well matched to their own bodies, taking advantage of their particular physical characteristics."   --Shoji Nishio


I have been told that all successful techniques have three things going for them.  They have kuzushi, tsukuri, and kake.   I've been told they mean off balance, fit, and execution.

 Kuzushi is where you got a guy either mentally a step or two behind you.  He's trying to identify the source of his problems, and these problems tend to multiply quicker than he can identify and deal with them.  They usually have to do with  joint lock pain and that sloshing fish bowl feeling you get in your gut that tells you you are falling. Structurally it has to do with your hips and head getting jacked with to the point of where they seem to be working against each other.  The feet tend to feel around like a person lost in the dark. It's more of something to be exploited rather than something that is made.    The Sun Tzu  Art of War says something along the lines of, "victories can be known, they can't be made."   This is a fact about kuzushi. 

The 4 releases and their related 14 movements in Koryu Dai Yon kata are actually studies of tsukuri/ kuzushi/kake.  Especially if you take them out of the kata and play with them bit and piece and in connection with one another and apply them to the 17.   

T
he foward sheering offbalance (tejazushi) idea that I've bullshitted about is somewhere in the motions of Yon Kata especially crosshand grabs that cycle into an iriminage motion. It's been said that this forward sheer is related to a judo technique.  If we use Shoji Nishio's definition its not an kuzushi concept at all, but a Tsukuri concept.  In nishios words, it is a "set up."  

When you look at the schools of Morty Youshiba they teach their basic techniques in a joint restraint framework.  They have the ikkyo, nikyo, sankyo, yon kyo, gokyo format.   The tsukuri and kake are  emphasized.  The tsukuri is a matter of stepping offline and clearing a workspace where tori can exert a joint manipulation from a position of strength.  The Kake is the pin.  Techniques are often divided into an  omote/ura.

In my continuing quest to try to figure this shit out, I can tell you that I'm more impressed what Tomiki and Ohba actually put together for us.  Our   8 releases and 14 Yon represent kito-ryu/rise and fall points. Nick Lowry describes it as hanging a man on a wire. In Yon Kata the Kito points are marked by the rise and fall projections of the first 7, they are then "released"  from the same point in the second 7. They separate the Omote and Ura of other schools, because there is a Kito ryu pause that registers whether a technique is going one way or the other based off of feedback. 

Tomiki folks are omote and ura blind.  We understand the point in between and wait to see where its going.  We learn that through Randori. 

Imagine a Yon Kata overlay on these iwama ryu techniques.   These are the releases but they aint the releases if you get my drift.  They have some set ups/tsukuri, in that a workplace is cleared by using footwork.  If you can imagine a yon kata movement before a technique then you can see possible kuzushi points. 

I have often had the suspicion that Tomiki Aikido was about the midpoints.  Shoji Nishio said that all aikido techniques have five or six ways to down an opponent.  And Tomiki seems to have worked this concept in under the radar.  There are branching off points in aikido, and Tommy seems to have mapped those out for us.  If we pay attention to it. 

Slow is Fast

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.

  

Cross Pollination, Tegatana, the releases, and Koryu Dai Yon

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:

Aikido: A dialogue of movement. 

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.  

Heres two ways to do it. click it to see it.

click here to see the other.

 

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.

Now look at YON #10 here  

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:

Tegatana No Kata and the Forgotten 19 model.

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.










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