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It had to happen sooner or later, so I guess my third class was going to be it. The instructor, after the class was doing shomenuchi iriminage, said that we were going to do the technique again with different partners, but tori should try to not clobber uke’s throat with his arm on the takedown: aikido is about harmony and blending with uke, and who would want to go to class if they were going to get clobbered every time? She was looking vaguely in my direction when saying all this.

On the plus side, she complimented me after class on how well I was following lead when she was demonstrating technique for me or my partner. I apparently move fairly lightly. She still wants my rolls to be different though: for their forward rolls, the arm is more rounded, with the hand pointed back towards yourself instead of out in the direction of the roll, palm flat on the mat. The shoulder/torso is also twisted into the direction of the roll somewhat. I’m told this will work better for the higher energy throws. They must think our rolls are as horrible and clunky as we think the judo ones look, with the judoka’s lower leg pounding into the mat. Of course, I haven’t been injured with our ukemi, and the big judo throws seem to have more energy than the aikido techniques I’ve seen.

I generally recognize all the techniques I’ve seen (though I haven’t seen their more advanced classes), though there’s a lot more circularity and taking uke along for a ride along these circles compared to jujitsu. For example, their tenkan is done with the leg describing a fairly wide circle, instead of an almost linear movement to switch to the other hanmi and power the hip turn. Tsuki kotegaeshi also has tori spinning around a point (with uke moving in a much larger circle), as opposed to the fairly-linear-yet-adorned-with-small-circles movement we do for the same technique (uke also doesn’t need to breakfall out of the kotegaeshi since he’s allowed to follow in such a way as to almost slide into the fall when the lock is applied, at least in the version they’re showing). Arms are also held relatively high, over the head in many cases, with shihonage and the various entries against shomenuchi. We also did katana-nage, but tori was more static on the throw, and wasn’t shown to be moving body weight through uke to force an awkward roll (tori was recommened to be on his heels, in fact, though no one really corrected me for the katana-nage I was doing).

Uke’s movements on the techniques are also more prescribed. It’s not just a cross-hand wrist grab: it’s the wrist grab followed by an attempt by uke to get around tori’s back and grab the other wrist from behind. Or it’s the wrist grab followed by an attempt to get around tori and get a mug/choke. Or the first grab is followed by an attempt to grab the second wrist while tori is turning. A lot of these techniques seem to be based on uke moving in particular ways, where the movement is used to supply energy for the throw. I suppose a lot of this is to try to illustrate blending to the beginners — uke moves this way, so tori does this to match the movement — but I got a bit confused by this, since we tend not to do the second phase of the attack because we can’t assume what will happen next, and uke doesn’t really get a chance to once the technique starts.

One of the initial problems I’m having is to know what are aikido techniques and what are aiki-style jujitsu techniques. In my first class, at the end, we were paired up to do a few minutes of back and forth straight punches (“New Student, how fast should I go with my attack?” “Whatever.” Surprised/skeptical look.), and for the most part I did what I saw in the class. Towards the end, however, I did a technique I didn’t see, but was what I thought was an aiki technique (Hitch in along the punch, inside hand on the crook of uke’s elbow, snap the hips and drop. This was in fact similar to a technique that was demonstrated earlier, but tori does the full tenkan turn before pulling uke into that same off-balance point and dropping.), and the black belt I was working with was very surprised, saying “That’s not aikido. It worked, but that’s not aikido.” I know I’m not supposed to, say, do a judo throw on uke’s shomenuchi (though they do a version of o-goshi, although I’m not clear on how uke is moved to get to the point of doing o goshi) or go in for, say, shime-waza (which may be too horrifying for words, given the lecture after the first round of iriminage), but which of jujitsu techniques are allowed? They have nikkyo for lapel grab, but nikkyo seems to be applied tori gets uke moving in circles for a bit, as opposed to a relatively direct application. At what point does one put on the lock?

Interestingly, they’re doing a bunch of tests next Saturday. This should be good to watch. I’m under the impression that the senseis will call out a technique — the technique names describe what both uke and tori are doing — and that’s the technique. There might be more freedom in the higher belt tests, where just the attack seemed to be called. At the end of last night’s class, sensei had two of the test takers demonstrate as if for a test. One was more or less a raw white belt testing for, I guess, rokyu. The other wore a hakama with a brown belt underneath, possibly testing for nikyu since she started off with suwariwaza before the standup techniques. The one with the hakama also had to do a pretty relaxed two-man randori: after each takedown, she had time to lock up uke, with the other uke waiting around for her to finish instead of trying to whack her on the back of the head. There were a number of other techniques, or sets of techniques, though I don’t remember that well. I actually got called up to uke for this, since the sensei thought my ukemi was perfectly fine for this even though it was my first class with her as instructor (“Uh, just follow what the other guy does.”). It was some sort of lapel grab (kata dori?), ending in a projection after running around tori for a bit. Whee!

Update: I forgot to mention that the head instructor was perceptively amusing. After I mentioned that I had just moved to Cleveland after three-and-a-half years of jujitsu in New York, he thought about it for a moment and said, So we’re your second choice because you couldn’t find jujitsu here?

Posted on Thursday, September 16th, 2004 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Martial Arts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.