The H shape in Aikido

During the first years of my aikido studies I kept looking for aikido videos in the online world. I couldn't find many but there were a couple of them that made me think and wonder. One of these was a jujinage (I hope it's the correct name) I talked about before, and another one is to be discussed in this post.

The video I found something interesting in was interesting for a couple of reasons (before you ask where the video is, I can't find it anywhere now). Firstly, noone was wearing hakama so that alone started to be interesting - why? I still don't know that for sure, maybe it was because they wanted to show leg/foot movements clearly. But it's not so important for this post anyway.

The other interesting thing was that they moved in a 1-2-3 manner: step one, stop/check, step two, stop/check, and so on. I didn't like this at all because I wasn't used to this type of practicing, and being new to aikido it was very easy to think in the 'our way or the highway' way. We practiced differently, we called ourselves aikidoka so everything that didn't come from our master and that was not the same as what he showed was not aikido to us (see our posts on objectification for more about this topic). Now I know that there are several styles of aikido, several ways of teaching and several ways of practicing to arrive at the same finish, which is to do techniques in harmony as well as in control. So at the time of watching this video first, I was very much prejudiced, and I recejted anything that was different, that was out of my comfort zone, my 'circle of trust'. This resulted in rejecting whatever I saw in the mentioned video then.

Now that I know a bit more, I can try to see the positives in that video, and there is one particular thing that seems to make a lot more sense now: stepping in an H shape. When I rejected the contents of the video, I thought: "An H shape? Ehh... Aikido is about circles, isn't it? Or if it's not circles then it's lines (straight lines of attack, mostly; perhaps projections of circles which are straight lines)! How on Earth can you practice 'true' aikido by stepping on the edges of an H shape?" ...you get the point. But then, gradually, it started to become clear that the H shape might make sense, and in a recent training I suddenly realised that Karesz was stepping on the edges of an H although we had never practiced this way and I had never heardany of our senseis mentioning the H.

The H shape and some footprints

This is how I managed to resolve the H shape vs. circles and lines problem:

Although you step on the edges of the H you can still move in a circular manner because of your hips. Your feet are moving from one end of the shape to another but your actual body movement is circular and can indeed be harmonious. The attacker comes from the top of the H, in the middle, so when stepping on the left side of the H you step out of the line of attack one way (e.g. you end up at the inside of uke) and if you step out the other way, it might, for example, be a position where you can simply grab uke's neck with yahazu (shape defined by the index finger + thumb) and do an irimage direct version. Similarly, other simple steps can also be translated into the H shape and now I believe that the H can actually be very useful for teaching beginners. Advanced students should be able to adjust their movements and be allowed to deviate from the straight H form because they should know that every attack is different (even if all of them are supposed to come in a straight line), and every attacker is different (e.g. one might lose their balance much more easily so they can be thrown with less turning movements).

I'm sure there are people who know much more about the H shape. If you do please post a comment here or start discussing it in our forum.