I claim the first dojo injury

It was bound to happen sooner or later....you go to a martial art class long enough and eventually, as the man says, "the bar eats you". Tonight for our session we had both Beleek and Beau (the aforementioned absent class mate) down in the dojo for some judo. John had us go over a new judo throw, deashi harai, we all did a few reps of that. Then we moved on to ground work. John went over the mount and guard positions and ways to manuever our of being scisored. Then we went on to some simple sparring where the idea was to simply roll around and try to gain position but it escilated. I got a knee to the mouth. I still gots mah teeth, but i have three holes in my upper lip now. Bitting down on a sock with ice in it to stop the bleeding, John snaged a pic of it so im sure it'll be up on the net tomorrow.

Let's try something different.

Last night's workout was a lot of fun. We started out by doing a quick go over of ko soto gari, i wanted to make sure i still had the basics of the throw from the other night. I still remember how the throw goes, woo!

Next we went through tegatana, nothing especially new there this time around. We forgot Pat's jumpy jelly leg syndrome exercise but we're going back to the dojo tonight and that's one of the things we'll work on.

Next John wanted to work on a judo throw who's name escapes me at the moment. I'm sure he'll be describing it in his next post.

After i had gotten off the mat several times we moved on to the first five of Ni ju san:

1. Shomen ate
2. Aigame ate
3. Gyaku gamae ate
4. Gedan ate
5. Ushiro ate

These first five are all striking techniques and i had been noodling over the idea for the last few days of changing the exercise up a bit from the way we normally do it just for a change of pace from the established way and...well...mainly just to see what would happen. Instead of uke making a straight armed forward attack from mai as usual, after checking mai and tori dropping his hand (signaling he's ready for the attack) uke brings his hand straight back to his shoulder then pushes it back out as he steps forward. Not quite a punch granted but the fact the arm, and especially a hand, visually seems to be "coming at you" was a load of fun to avoid during ni ju san.

Our mantra of "getting the hell out of the way" was a quicker and more automatic response with a different simulated attack thrown into the mix. Another thing we both noticed was that the initial off balance became a more "final" maneuver if uke was totally committed to the attack (which an attacker may or may not have a recover step in their game plan when they're trying to kick your ass and i'm wondering how different your body's natural recover step will react vs. a deliberate attempt to right one's self) and the technique often ended there if we were devoted enough into dropping the attacking arm into the hole between their feet. When the techniques DID continue they often produced spectacular results. We did tweak a few things every now and then, making sure tori stayed close to uke and aigame ate works better if you wait for it instead of just stiff arming your buddy in the head whenever, but over all pretty kewl beans.

After that John wanted to work on some ideas he had about being attacked in the guard and from the guard. He's been thinking on different ground work ideas he's come up with while watching UFC and other MMA shows where the opponent on the ground generally gets pounded instead of tying up the arms or simply shrimping side to side to avoid the attack entirely. Now this is not generally the case but i've seen it happen alot on TV (which is always a great meter stick to judge your ideas). I strapped on some gloves to be the uke on this one, and while i'll let John describe the whole thing in his words when he posts on it i will say i was pretty amazed at the ease someone can simply shrimp out of the way of an attack. The guy in the mount has to change his posture if he wants to attack someone in the guard which facilitates an easy block or evasion. It's a weird point where aikido and judo get close to the same thing in relation to being attacked.

I'm going to TRY and get some pictures up for some stuff soon. I think our dojo would definitely fall under a Dojo Rat heading. Nothing beats having an automatic door rise up as you approach your inner sanctum.

The difference between 1 and 1

John and i got some practice in the other night. We warmed up and went through tegatana (the walking kata we practice that teaches the basic evasions) a couple of times, the first runthrough as a warm up then the second go round we emphasised the idea of keeping our feet under our rears. It was interesting to see how different we each did the first attempt. I suppose it shows what we've each gotten used to and how we comfortably interpret the motions when we're not shaking things up.

Next we went straight to nijusan (the 23 main forms as it's called, all dealing with the forward attack of a single uke) and after clearing up the misunderstanding of which technique John wanted to work on we did several reps of both shomenate and the initial offbalance that proceeds the techniques throught the rest of the kata. John's interest was focused on where our initial step off the line places us when doing the shomen ate and how the second foot ends up (John may have to correct me on this):

1) Uke attacks; tori side steps off the line avoiding the attack at the same time as uke's forward foot lands with the second foot coming up underneath then face uke's center and a push forward,

OR

2) Uke attacks; tori's sidestep ends with him already in postition to shomenate uke and he pushes forward.

As i typed this i realized that the same number of foot movements occured in both versions we tried. John's shomen ate leaned more towards the first, while mine favored the second idea but we came to the conclusion that both worked.

I'm going to have to start asking Pat for his long distance training tip of the week.

Solo Training is still training.

In the absense of a training partner (John's pretty busy) i've reverted back to my can't-go-to-McComb method of training. This time around though i get to add some ukemi practice to my routine thanks to the mats we have in our makeshift dojo in the garage downstairs. So on top of the triangle rolls i'm doing straight off the mat (both backward and forward) in the half hour or so before i get prepared for work i'm also doing"

• Toothbrush tegatana (One of Pat's super secret training techniques)
• Wall brush offs (these still get odd looks at work, i don't know why)
• The easy floor push offs for getting off the ground without so much strain on the knees (making a bridge with your legs and pushing off the ground up and over the gap between them, it's great for stocking shelves on the bottom and then getting right back up) = this one i'm repeating over and over so i can make it a more automatic idea then pushing up with my knees after a breakfall

One of the things i've noticed as of late that i thought was (maybe) worth a mention was moving your weight onto the balls of your feel during the day, especially if you're standing around or walking on them all day. It really helps with sore feet and it gives me the opportunity to take a step or two from tegatana. As you've stretched up on both feet, you can pick a hip to disengage for a overexagerated example of the evasion movements we practice.

(P.S. Didnt realize my link to Aikithoughts wasn't working. It's fixed now so go check it out if you havent already! Check out the one on blending he did recently. Sorry aikithoughts dude!)