Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Aiki weekend

So John came down this week and Pat Sensei let us do some judo and aikido friday and saturday. It was a pretty productive weekend in my book. Sparring with John made me notice for the first time just how much judo and aikido are related. It's one thing being told they are and another actually feeling the similarities. I was able to keep up with him standing but more or less lost it on the ground. The different arm bars and that kinda strategy isn't really firm in my head.

Still, doing judo again was fun. It's been many moons since the last time i got to practice it at all and to me it's kinda neat to look back and see just how much the aikido i've learned has helped. I used to be deathly afraid of being foot swept and now it's no big deal at all. Although i still think Vincent would put the fear of God in me were he to show up again.

As well as some sparring, John and i also did the basic throws of judo and played around with those some. Pat Sensei came in and we sorta moved back and forth from judo to aikido, and at some point Kary showed up and we did....something (here's where posting when i get back to town would be helpful). At some point that night Pat nailed me rather well with ALL of nijusan. Ouch!

Saturday we did a couple of reps of tegatana and hanasu. I helped refresh kary on them since he's only been to a few clases and has been absent a while. We did some ki bump exercises with oshitaoshi and the broke out the crash pad for some owaza. After class John had Pat and i demonstrate nijusan and all of the different technique chains so he'd have a video to compare things to while he's learning from Bryce. I was practically exhausted, which won't be hard to tell once the video John took makes it to the internet, so i'm sure it'll be an interesting thing for me to see from an outside perspective.

John and i got a chance to catch up on things, compare notes and whatnot. More on that in a different post. An interesting thing occurred to me on the way back home though. The way i've been absorbing aikido is a lot like tetris, the blocks fall down and every once in a while make a line that actually becomes something learned. That's why after the umpteenth time i'm told something i'll finally grasp it. I think i did pretty good this weekend. I definitely had fun.

2 comments:

Patrick Parker said...

Andy, you really did some great aiki this weekend. I really appreciate you letting me beat you up with nijusan that couple of times. I know that being uke is for that stuff is exhausting but you were really doing very good ukemi.

I was also impressed with your execution of the gurumas in owaza. Those things took me a very long time to get where I could begin to imitate the proper motion. And aikinage (owaza#5) the "20-year throw. I'm just recently getting to where that is a decent technique for me and y'all are already picking it up. in fact, at the aiki buddies gathering all my peers thought i was crazy when i wanted everyone to work on aikinage. they were sure that yellow belts couldn't replicate that movement - but we showed them, didn't we!

Good work, keep it up!

The Nerd-storian! said...

I just got through watching the video John took of this weekend. I saw a few good things, but i had my fair share of winces while watching my exausted bulk move around. Owaza is pretty cool, i can see why some people dig it but so far i still like nijusan more.