Another class I took - part 4

There was a training plan. There were two parts of the training([A],[B]) . Could I finish with what I had planned? Keep reading to find out :).

The Training - part C

The final 15 minutes was about techniques with the use of weapons. We started with ikkyo. Uke was asked to prevent tori from drawing the sword (tucked underneath the belt) in an aihanmi katatedori like position. Tori was supposed to step out of the line, draw the sword and cut ikkyo-style. I could do this exercise at home with Heni but I had difficulties with demonstrating it in the class as uke's hand got twisted in an unusual way in the beginning and when I tried next he kept rolling away (maybe he feared the wooden sword too much :)). Nevertheless, as we often talk about imagining having a sword in our hands when do techniques, I think this was a good experiment to do. The second technique in katemi waza, nikyo, was much easier to do: you draw a circle with the sword in your belt first, cut down with the handle so uke goes down, and then draw the sword and finish the technique. There was not much time left at this point so I quickly showed a jo exercise which we practiced for about 2 minutes and then if people wanted to think about it at home, they at least had seen it.

To see more, watch Connor's club's recent demonstration, weapons starting at about 1 min:

The jo exercise was the following. All tori had to do is draw and expanding circle (spiral, to be more exact) by doing the following: uke is approaching and wants to grab the end of the jo with both hands. Then tori moves the jo just in front of the hands of uke, drawing him a bit closer and, possibly, off balance a bit. By drawing a circle, tori moves back towards the head of uke (but no contact, that would be rather painfull) which further unbalances uke as he has to move his head backwards because his head is threathened. Then tori continues the circle and sweeps uke's legs from behind who then does a simple, close-to-Matrix, breakfall. For obvious time-management reasons, I didn't have time to explain all these in words so in case you were there and you want to know more about this exercise, this paragraph is about it. Why I showed this particular exercise? For two reasons, I'm starting with the most recent one: I have been thinking about aikido techniques, circles and weapons recently and the idea of this particular circle (spiral) seemed the most interesting. The second reason: this particular exercise had been in mind for a long time, since the very beginning of my aikido studies, because there is one Steven Seagal movie (I don't remember which one) in which he does exactly this technique and I wanted to figure out how he did it, how the technique worked, and what aikido principles (imbalancing and the circle) were behind it.

We finished the class with traditional haishi undo (lifting each other and stretching the back of the lifted person), as usual.

The class wasn't perfect but I really enjoyed it, and it was a very good feeling to be able to (and be allowed to!) show what had been in my mind for a while. So thanks for letting me take the class, thanks for participating and practicing there, and thanks for reading this blog post!