So yeah, it`s been awhile. Sorry folks, life has been rocky. And painful. Speaking of pain, we have been practicing at the Myojo dojo the past few months while the Obata dojo is under construction.
Those names may not mean much to you, but it signifies a big difference for us. The Obata dojo had very soft mats, really great for aikido. The Myojo dojo has really hard mats. Cold, unforgiving. Every time someone does a jump-roll like tobiukemi, we can hear them wince and gasp in pain.
If the waza is done properly, it is not painful. The slightest error is brought to your attention quickly. After practice last Saturday, I realized that the hard mats forced me to focus on the minor errors I was making in my rolls. Not tucking in my legs correctly, wrong angle, etc. The brutal mats serve to point out our mistakes in a way that not even the sensei can catch. Like sensors, we can see every point in the process quite clearly. One fellow suggested we should practice on hardwood floors. His rationale being that one shattered ankle bone would teach us how to roll properly. Easier said than done ne?
So to wrap this up, I thought I'd throw in a couple of pics of a 10-year old kid throwing my girlfriend around the room. Hope you enjoy, I did.
1 comment:
Hi Steve,
A thing which you definitely shouldn't do when doing ukemi on such mats is loose yourself in the moment. In othere words, you have to 'keep going', both physically and mentally. Only then the force of the fall is stretched out over your whole body and over time, and does not concentrate on a single (pain-)point. As soon as you start concentrating on the pain points, you loose your protective cage.
In the past we have been doing mae-ukemi on wood. Although probably I can do it, I never tried to do tobeukemi on wood, too afraid that I will make a mistake and that my anklebone will scatter. But once sensei has taken a few of our dojo (not me) to do a demonstration at a wedding. They did tobeukemi on stage, probably on a wooden floor (you can ask them).
If you want to see how tobe-ukemi should be done you should study Ishitani-san, Nishi-san or the children. You can also study Ian, because he is working very hard to do a very good ukemi (following sensei's words), and in that you can easily understand the ideas of ukemi. If you are doing a reasoble ukemi already, the next step is to increase the active part created by your waste muscles (as opposed to the passive part created by the throw). The bigger the active part, the more freedom you have to land and to fight back.
Hans
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