Springfield Class - 4/18/2006

It was another beautiful evening and as usual before class I worked on ukemi, tobi and kamae. I also stretched! I don't stretch as often as I should and I'll make it a point to do so going forward.

Brian was back which was nice. Class began with the usual ukemi practice only this time we were on a slight hill and that changes things slightly. You can generate a lot of momentum rolling downhill and I like to do some sort of tobi, usually koho tobi, to bleed the energy off and slow down gracefully. Next we did basic sword evasion using ukemi again. A couple of things to keep in mind when doing this exercise. First, keep an eye on whomever is a threat. Second, don't immediately stand up after a roll. Assess the situation before performing your next move. Third, ukemi is sometimes used to create distance. For this exercise I feel it for both evading and creating distance. Choose the appropriate kaiten to create a safe distance between you and your opponent even if you're closing the distance to attack.

We covered a lot of material, most of it henka, and I'll try to recall everything.

Uke: Lapel grab, punch to face.
Tori: Using the same side arm move to the inside of the attack creating space by just putting your arm up in the way of the punch. This isn't a strike or anything, just an obstacle for your uke. The legs move kinda like hira no kamae or ichimonji no kamae. Hold onto the hand that has your lapel and drive the uke's arm down with the other hand. Attack the inside of the elbow and rotate your body taking the uke's balance to the outside of their forward foot. That's the nice way. The not-so-nice way simply adds a shuto ken, fudo ken, or shikan ken to the inside elbow. That hurts more, flows nicely, and I just like dakentaijutsu.

Uke: Scissor choke from behind.
Tori: Turn your head in the direction of where the space is. Lower your hips, hold onto your uke's arm and do a basic hip throw. Pretty straight forward.

Uke: Scissor choke from behind.
Tori: Turn your head in the direction of where the space is, place your hand in that space and anchor the uke's arm to you. Turn in that same direction as you go down to one knee. Be sure to take the uke's space.

The rest of the night we did henka off of a shinden fudo ryu kata. The base technique we started with was kinda like a combination of gekkan and maybe unjaku. I'll have to double check unjaku. Anyway, the uke was the same for all of them.

Uke: Punch to face or stomach.

Move to the inside with a bobi no kamae or kosei no kamae like movement, strike to the face with fudo ken or just place your hand up there. Sokuyaku geri to the stomach or groin and place your extended hand on the uke's shoulder. Your other hand should be holding the wrist your uke gave you. As you place your foot down bring the uke's shoulder down. This is very much like gekkan.

Next, move to the inside and boshi ken to the stomach. Next strike upwards either to the chin or under the upper arm. At the same time raise the extended arm up. These actions should give you space to move in. Holding onto the wrist move under the arm spinning around. There are two directions to take the uke from here. The preferred way is to align the arm with the shoulders and take the uke down with an armbar. The other way is if you're more behind the uke taking them straight back with an armbar. I believe this is less effective and should be used if you're going to make the uke fall onto this arm. The way you'd do that is by trapping their forward foot and pull them off balance.

The next one we did was my henka which was basically nichi geki.

Then we did basically the same movements from a punch to the stomach except this time you let the punch make contact.

Another variation was instead of taking the armbar and moving back behind the uke or out to the side of the uke you take the shoulder and move forward.

Another was when you spin around beneath the arm throw a sokugyaku geri to the stomach or inside hip/pelvis area and then apply the armbar with your knee.

I think that was pretty much it. I was exhausted after class and I'm not sure if it was because I didn't eat dinner beforehand or if I was just tired from the weekend and staying up late the night before. I don't know and it doesn't matter. Gambatte!