Arlington Class - 7/1/2006

The weather was nice and we had a good number of people. Two of them were new guys. We did a lot of different things and I'll try to remember them all. We started with the usual ukemi but with a couple of twists. One was doing a back roll into the prone position. The idea being you had a firearm pointed at someone the entire time. The second was doing yoko nagare but instead of taking whichever foot you normally start with take the other, rotate it 90 degrees and step back with it then roll.

We then did some simple muto dori where you just move to either side of the sword and cover the hand. We then took this a step further with taking down the uke. Roger then showed a specific movement:

Uke: Diajodan shomen giri.
Tori: Shizen no kamae. Step forward to the outside and extend your forward arm to catch uke's arm. Rotate toward uke and take them down. You can bring both arms underneath uke's arms and clamp down on them like a praying mantis, take their balance then devour them.

We worked on a few different uke nagashi/ichimonji exercises. One was something we've done before where you initially move your foot back for ichimonji while keeping your body in shizen no kamae. You would be moving your foot before uke's attack. Then when the attack comes you simply shift back into ichimonji, do dojan uke, shift over your front leg, yoko aruki with the rear foot twisting your body and omoto shuto. Keeping the spin straight was stressed here. That means keeping your head facing forward at all times so when rotating your spine your head moves too.

Next we did uke nagashi with a whip-like motion of the arm. We also did it with more of a circular/90 degree step instead of the usual 45 degree step back. The last one we did was a regular uke nagashi but with a leaping omote shuto to the arm. We also did a three hit combo: uke nagashi, shifting punch with the other arm, then using the twisting/yoko aruki action we practiced earlier to deliver the omoto shuto.

That's all I can remember at the moment. Gambatte!