Kihon Shibu 01/29/2008

Welcome to the club Mark!

We're starting to incorporate more juunantaiso into the training because it is something everyone needs. After that we continued to warm up with various ukemi. After the usual zenpou and kouhou kaiten I introduced jun nagare and gyaku nagare. Along with the usual points I emphasized rolling in a straight line. I think one reason why people have a problem with this is a lack of flexibility in the hips, which is just further evidence of the importance and need for increased juunantaiso. I'm also starting to incorporate the follow-the-leader ukemi exercises where we each take turns performing a serious of ukemi and everyone has to replicate the series. Something new that I'm also starting to incorporate is a type of peer evaluation. The reason for this is you may have weaknesses in your taijutsu and not know it unless someone points it out. I hope both of these exercises will help to develop the "eyes" to see what exactly is happening and to obviously identify weaknesses. As a side effect hopefully people will train as if their instructor or whomever to they look to is always watching them and therefore they would try to practice their best. We'll see how things go.

After the ukemi we did a round of sanshin no kata. It had been a while since we practiced it and with Mark there it seemed like a perfect opportunity to revisit it. It was just an introduction to refresh our memories of what each kata is made up of and what they are called. I plan on weening off the ukemi and rolling the sanshin back in since there is only one more ukemi to formally introduce and a few more points to cover before all there is left to do but practice.

Next we practiced more of the kuzushi exercises that are just as much learning for me as it is everyone else. We started with just using the shoulders and incrementally added more control points. Next week I'll bring a training guide and we'll practice the exercises within it.

I then introduced omote gyaku for the first time. We practiced it in a very simple fashion that didn't require much more than just doing a couple of ichimonji no kamae steps. The difficult part seemed to be how to grasp the uke's hand to apply the wrist lock or freeing the uke's grasp on the lapel. This lead nicely into the different levels of being an uke. Using omote gyaku as a model we practiced each of the four levels of compliance/resistance. It was at the 4th level of resistance that the kuzushi exercises were clearly applicable. So, we worked on that for a few minutes. As usual, when the technique fails move on.

We closed class with some free response exercises from a simple jodan tsuki. The only parts that were fixed were the uke's attack, the initial receive on the inside and no dakkentaijutsu. The focus here was more applied kuzushi using a light touch.

Gambatte kudasai!