(no subject)
Lovely aikido again last night - Going there by bike is really working out for me. Actually, both sides of the journey, now that I'm a bit used to the effort of hauling my sorry carcass back home after training. (A beer waiting for me at home does provide some motivation.) And the route itself has some compensations, for sure, making for an extremely pleasant journey, despite the disruptions of road construction.
We started off with shiho nage or the "four-corner drop". I don't think I can actually count four corners in the technique, but its still pretty distinctive, gathering up the attacker's leading hand, stepping under the arm, then making a quick pivot... with the attacker's arm still trapped. And wrapped up, bent at the elbow, right round the ear and shoulder. A tiny step away from the attacker, drop the hands down (like one would do holding a sword, they keep repeating to me; I need that, too), and *boom*, onto the mat!
I like shino nage, but found my envelop definitely stretching yesterday. All to the good, of course, it's just unsettling to me right now, for whatever reason. We "Explored Shiho nage", first by working on variations of gathering up that first attack, later with more motion through out the technique, which made absolutely no sense to me until we were told to get out the bokken (wooden swords), and then, suddenly, the movement acquires a new frame of meaning: the attacker is trying to prevent you from striking with the sword, but you can still rotate your wrist, and (move one) try for a slice of the attacker's abdomen, then (move two) get the kidneys on the return swing, before "extending" the attacker as per the "original" shiho nage (my misnomer - the move I learn as a beginner is based on the sword play, and, earlier, on the rather more deadly situation of two fighters and steel...) then walking under the arm and pivoting, then cutting down, this time sword in hand, to the end of making the attacker fall to the mat.
(Hmmm, note to self - get over feeling silly, so you can pick up the bokken and review that and the other sword techniques from last night...)
Another exploration of shiho nage had the attacker trying to grab the sword hand, to prevent the drawing of the sword. That provided a bit more stretch, with the added challenge that I was working then with our newly minted 4th kyu, who I think is all of 11 years old. Except for a certain brashness that comes with the youth, he was actually very pleasant to work with, and he knew this technique cold - the hardest thing is to try and instruct someone who doesn't quite know what she's doing, in the opposite of what you're doing. Anyway, another "wheee!" kind of workout - which I hope I get to see again soon, because I've gotten vague on a few of the middle bits.
An aside: working with someone so much smaller? Also good, makes one concentrate on accuracy. (And so, too, does BIG, but for different reasons - you might have a larger target, but then the challenge is to find the right point in dealing with that much more mass...)
We did some non-sword techniques as well, like one that started out innocently enough, but then turns into another throw, by leading the attacker's arm into another fold, and the balance backwards. I worked with the second in command on that one, and he chided me, in a friendly way, about being afraid. Yup. He went on to show me (in controlled conditions) a few more varients on the technique, or rather, their original killer versions: free hand in the attacker's face (smashing the nose), then the controlling arm's elbow atop the fallen attacker's voice box, or (just above) the sternum. Ai! Not that I even think of using something like that, but seeing the sense of how it could be used sure reminds me to mind my aikido p's and q's, like watching out for my partner when doing this stuff, particularly that technique. Second-in-command listened to me blither about me trying to remain responsible, and not actually fall ont his neck when completing the move, I think he got the idea I had definitely understood.
Thanks for stoppin'.
We started off with shiho nage or the "four-corner drop". I don't think I can actually count four corners in the technique, but its still pretty distinctive, gathering up the attacker's leading hand, stepping under the arm, then making a quick pivot... with the attacker's arm still trapped. And wrapped up, bent at the elbow, right round the ear and shoulder. A tiny step away from the attacker, drop the hands down (like one would do holding a sword, they keep repeating to me; I need that, too), and *boom*, onto the mat!
I like shino nage, but found my envelop definitely stretching yesterday. All to the good, of course, it's just unsettling to me right now, for whatever reason. We "Explored Shiho nage", first by working on variations of gathering up that first attack, later with more motion through out the technique, which made absolutely no sense to me until we were told to get out the bokken (wooden swords), and then, suddenly, the movement acquires a new frame of meaning: the attacker is trying to prevent you from striking with the sword, but you can still rotate your wrist, and (move one) try for a slice of the attacker's abdomen, then (move two) get the kidneys on the return swing, before "extending" the attacker as per the "original" shiho nage (my misnomer - the move I learn as a beginner is based on the sword play, and, earlier, on the rather more deadly situation of two fighters and steel...) then walking under the arm and pivoting, then cutting down, this time sword in hand, to the end of making the attacker fall to the mat.
(Hmmm, note to self - get over feeling silly, so you can pick up the bokken and review that and the other sword techniques from last night...)
Another exploration of shiho nage had the attacker trying to grab the sword hand, to prevent the drawing of the sword. That provided a bit more stretch, with the added challenge that I was working then with our newly minted 4th kyu, who I think is all of 11 years old. Except for a certain brashness that comes with the youth, he was actually very pleasant to work with, and he knew this technique cold - the hardest thing is to try and instruct someone who doesn't quite know what she's doing, in the opposite of what you're doing. Anyway, another "wheee!" kind of workout - which I hope I get to see again soon, because I've gotten vague on a few of the middle bits.
An aside: working with someone so much smaller? Also good, makes one concentrate on accuracy. (And so, too, does BIG, but for different reasons - you might have a larger target, but then the challenge is to find the right point in dealing with that much more mass...)
We did some non-sword techniques as well, like one that started out innocently enough, but then turns into another throw, by leading the attacker's arm into another fold, and the balance backwards. I worked with the second in command on that one, and he chided me, in a friendly way, about being afraid. Yup. He went on to show me (in controlled conditions) a few more varients on the technique, or rather, their original killer versions: free hand in the attacker's face (smashing the nose), then the controlling arm's elbow atop the fallen attacker's voice box, or (just above) the sternum. Ai! Not that I even think of using something like that, but seeing the sense of how it could be used sure reminds me to mind my aikido p's and q's, like watching out for my partner when doing this stuff, particularly that technique. Second-in-command listened to me blither about me trying to remain responsible, and not actually fall ont his neck when completing the move, I think he got the idea I had definitely understood.
Thanks for stoppin'.