Friday, August 26, 2011

Seeing where we're at

Wednesday was something of an off day for class. It was a rainy afternoon, which seems to keep most of the students away. Even though the usual back up plan is to get under the large pavilion in the middle of the park it seemed to be overrun with people. I decided to wait and see if anyone would show up just in case and told Jesse we'd see if we couldn't get something accomplished despite everything else.

After wandering the park and finding a gazebo that would do the trick we had a small class. I'll be the first to admit that my head wasn't 100% in the game wednesday. Tegatana was done with a rocky start on my part and a few hiccups throughout but i have to say Jesse has caught on rather well and knows the kata.

Next we did hanasu. To test where Jesse is so far I decided we'd do 1-4 with me as uke to see how much he had learned. For 5 classes he's making progress. Things to work on include footwork and making sure to move diagonally as soon as uke breaks ma'ai.

The next few weeks i really want to focus on ma'ai. I think i've done a bad job of emphasising its importance to the whole shebang. Anyone have any cool and interesting ma'ai workouts?

The rest of the class was nothing but hanasu. Multiple reps of 1-4 and more introduction to 5-8. Our "cool down" was some aiki brush-off and shomen ate play.

Given the weather and the fact we had no light source class was only an hour this time but i think we got some good things accomplished.

3 comments:

Patrick Parker said...

Two of my favorite maai exercises...
Notice that a standard 51 inch Jo is very close to twice your arm length. This means that it is a perfect measuring stick for maai.
1... stick one end of the Jo in your belly button and the other end in your partner's bellybutton. Now walk around looking at each other, not stabbing each other and not letting the Jo drop
2... grab the Jo in the middle. Take a walk. Walk up to a tree till you think you're at maai, then measure with the stick. Select another tree or wall or lamp post, etc... and repeat

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