Springfield Class - 8/8/2006

Tim picked me up and then we picked up Lauren and headed to Jong's. Jong and Gino were there. The weather has been nice lately. The mosquitoes were not though. We started with the usual ukemi: zempo, koho, and yoko nagare. Jong had us doing koho kaiten alittle bit differently. Usually when I do koho kaiten when the roll is complete to get into gedan ichimonji I swing the free leg around to the front. Jong had us come up already in that kamae. It was a bit awkward because usually when I roll the forward leg becomes the rear knee that is planted and to get into kamae without moving my other foot I have to move that knee. To do that type of roll you have to extend your foot out and shift your body onto that rear knee as you come up.

After the ukemi we did a round of sanshin no kata and then worked on some kihon happo. First we did regular omote gyaku. Then we did it without using our hands. This was really just an exercise on taking the uke's balance. Musha dori was next. That was it for straight kihon happo.

We did a few of moves from a lapel grab with a punch. For each of these you moved into ichimonji as if applying an uke nagashi to the inside of the incoming punch. First was using your forearm/elbow to deflect the incoming punch and using your hand in their face to take their balance while applying omote gyaku. Second was doing the same thing with your forearm but using omote gyaku to pull the uke closer to you and with your free arm applying musha dori to the uke's free arm. Third was the same move with the forearm except rotate back towards the uke as if doing the gyokko ryu omote gyaku and then using your other hand move the uke's elbow up like musha dori and rotate back to your originial position. Takeori is good here. The fourth and final move was the same with the forearm except this time you went straight in with an urate shuto to the collar area to take the balance.

After that Lauren showed a koto ryu thing we've done before at her place. The uke and tori are walking towards each other. Once you're in range do an omote shuto to the arm or neck, move across in front of the victim, apply another omote shuto, then koho tobi. I can see this being done to a sword carrying samurai. The first strike would be to disable their arm from drawing the sword and on the second strike you could draw their sword with your free hand as you leap away. Or not. Who knows.

Good times.