Mat abuser are gone!

Before I forgot what we did in week of April 22-27, I want to run a quick recap here.

First breaking news, after putting up new yellow signs on the mats, our mats stay intact each time when we came in, we didn't catch the mat abusers, but it seems that the new signs scared them away, hopefully it will keep this way.

Tuesday night class, we have both Morgan sensei and Branch sensei. After warm up, we did several round of tasabaki drill. Then followed by a lot of kuzushi waza practice. At the end of the class, we did self kuzushi practice, what it means is that we pretend being attacked by a invisible tori, so we have to show all the kuzushi and fall ourselves in each technique, it was a funny scene that all of us act like zombie. :-)

Thursday night class, we have Branch sensei. More kuzushi  waza and tasabaki practice, and again we practiced the self kuzushi uke, it is fun and it is kind of reminder of all principle of the techniques. Then on the extension of that practice, we added with tori, the goal is that the kuzushi made by the tori should match with those as if the uke does the self kuzushi, that way you can easily tell whether tori is doing a good job or not, uke can teach tori by telling him whether he has the right kuzushi or not.

Saturday morning practice, we did quite a few things, mainly focus on suwari waza, cross hand grab junanahon and mirror hand grab junanahon. Branch sensei stopped by, and gave up some advices on suwari waza.

1. In general, meet uke before he raised the hand, meet early, use that connection for kuzushi.

2. On 1,3,5 and 7, don't forget to do the full shikko step so you end up close to uke when he falls, get the knee up and pull on to it.

3. On 2 and 8, body torso should turn 180 degree 

4. Last but not the least, use live toes the whole time.

Found a interesting site where those pictures display actions and kuzhushi very very clearly and precisely, http://www.shodokan.narod.ru/sports.htm. They have old but clear pictures of the techniques performed by Nariyama sensei. Below pictures are from there. I guess that is where the source of those animated pictures I found earilier.

Noticed in pictures marked 2, in both pictures, uke was twisted by the kuzhushi.
I am going to try to practice for that kind of effect

Not a good week for our Aikido club

Let me start with something good this week. On Tuesday night, we had a randori focus class, Morgan sensei led us doing drill after dirll, primarily working on moving the feet and keeping the ma-ai. The requirement was to block attack and be gone instantaneously. The other requirement was to block attack with corner taisabaki, establish ma-ai behind uke, at the same time uke turned around, immediately attack with Shomen-ate. I think this drill is a very helpful randori practice, it teaches a lot of principle and setup some chain reaction in the mind. To me, if the system is not in the mind, the body will never be able to do it.

Other not so merry thing includes I missed Thursday's class, since I thought no one will show up, but turned out two did show up. Our tatami mats have been used by unknown person in the gym for the third time in a row, they stacked the mats in the wrong ways, which makes mats very dirty, and most importantly they don't know how to handle them right, it will definitely shorten the life of our expensive mats. We have found  three occurrence of which all happens on Friday, this week, it happened on Wednesday. Today we took turn to patrol in the gym to find out, but somehow we haven't found anything yet, maybe this week, those people changed schedules. It is very frustrating, and sad to think of our mats were abused.

I hope we can catch those group of people soon.

At the mean time, below is another excellent demonstration of all 6 of kuzushi waza performed by Kobayashi sensei and Charlie back in 2009 in Waseda university shortly after the international tournament.




Terminology:

Maai	Proper distance 間合
Irimi	Entering 入身

Mirror hand grab Junanahon is still the weakest link

Thursday night's practice was led by Branch sensei. After the warm up and routine exercise, sensei decided to tackle our weakest form of junanahon, the mirror hand grab, which is also called gyakugamae katatedori. We start backward from the last technique to the first. After each waza, we paused, sensei would point out the common mistakes that he saw, then we did the waza again with the instruction. After we have finished all 5 waza, there was only 15 minutes left, which were spent on randori practice. It is the same the tegatana attack from the uke, tori will attempt to do same technique 5 times, then switch tori and uke. I liked the repetition idea, that you get 5 times to make technique better.

Takeaways from mirror hand grab junanahon.

1. Tenkai kotegaeshi: use free hand to "pat the kitty", the purpose of it is to make sure uke's elbow doesn't bend. While turning, don't need to extend uke's arm to the sky, which I found some of my partners tend to do it, my arm almost felt like pulled out of socket.

2. Hikiotoshi: free hand should come up as gyakutedori, thumb pointing to the uke's palm.

3. Tenkai kotehineri: hineri needs to be there the whole time, especially true when you change the locking hand, one trick the sensei showed was you can try to do atemi while exchanging the hands.

4. Kotehineri: hineri needs to be established at the beginning, only when you get a hold of the hineri, then the uke will be able to turn in any direction that you want him to. I asked a question at that time because I felt my uke was bending forward from initial kuzushi, he bent so much that I felt like I had to use my power to fight against his weight in order to get him backward for the rest of technique. Sensei immediately asked where is the hineri, then I realized i should have a good establishment of the hineri kuzushi, then uke would retract back automatically.

5.Wakigatame: sensei emphasized that the grip should be about at the tegatana, that is best place to turn the hand over, which is even more true for small hand person like me.

6. Aigamaeate: keep both hand in center, tori should not step in a parallel-to-uke position, but rather hip facing uke, a more diagonal position.


Terminology:

Dori	Grab 捕,取
Katate	One hand 片手
Gyakugamae katate dori	Cross single-hand Grab
Aigamae katate dori	Mirror single-hand Grab
Junte dori	Normal Grab 順手捕
Gyakute dori	Reverse Grab 逆手捕
Atemi	Strik 手击

116 falls + 116 throws = Very Sore Butt

Tuesday night was one of the few nights that we have both sensei in the class. Having both Morgan and Branch sensei means we get to work with them individually more. Now I do have a love and hate emotion towards working with sensei individually. I love the fact that they are better uke and much more knowledgeable on techniques, they can always point out the problematic areas. One the other hand, sometimes problematic areas became overwhelming , it makes me feel everything I do is kinda wrong, even raising a arm was wrong. I begin to feel nervous, afraid of doing technique freely because of afraid of making another stupid mistake. While busy absorbing the all the points, it tends to make me less focus on doing next techniques, thus more mistakes :(.  I even feel that I did worse with sensei than working with peers. Well, I probably did it wrong the same way, but the peer might not point out as much as sensei do.

Let me get back to what we did in the class. Right after warm up, we did shikko (knee walking) and rolls. Then we did routine exercises two of which Morgan sensei gave corrections on. Now the busy night officially began, we started with 6 direction drills in repetition of taisabaki, return, kuzushi, throws, left side and right side, right there was 12 falls and 12 throws already. Then we did the tegatana version of tanto junanahon no kata, basically uke attacks with tegatana instead of the tanto. Shortly after that we did the mirror hand grab and cross hand grab of all 17 junanahon techniques, both left and right hand. Whoever worked with sensei always turned out to be the fastest pair, not surprisingly! So if we do the math again, 17x2x3=104, plus the 12 before, we certainly have raised the bar this time.

Two points from routine exercise.

1. Shotei awase: means tension exercise. Keep arm straight and fully extended, the arm should really be at the shoulder level given no height difference. Below is a picture from JAA, you can see that most of them has the arm leveled with shoulder, the taller person might lower the arm a bit to compensate the height difference.


2. Tegatana awase: means hand blade exercise, this is a sensitivity drill, arm again should be on the same level of shoulder, square up the shoulder, straight arm should be connected to your own center. The goal is to be able to synchronize with your partner. I still find a lot trouble doing this exercise, most of the time, just catching up with partner, sensitivity is hard !

Morgan sensei demo the taisabaki of all 17 techniques after we finished the tanto randori kihon waza w/o tanto. I wished I have camera to capture those. I recalled a few of them being called out specifically.

1. Ushiro ate: taisabaki start with both hands, one tegatana blocks the arm, the other aims at elbow, feet could be cross and coiled, ready to move to the back of the uke.



2. Udegaeshi: I didn't realize this until I saw sensei demo it, it should start the same way as Oshitaoshi, uke should then try to recoil the elbow, then I should do the rest of the technique. I completely skipped the first part.



3. Hikitaoshi: I personally think this one is harder, since tori needs to be able to get a hold of the uke's wrist, sometimes I missed. Now a second thought came to my mind, it wasn't meant for me to catch uke's hand. With the right taisabaki, I should be able to block uke then grasp the kote. What was I thinking ?!




4. Tenkai kotegaeshi: taisabaki start with both hands, too. Butterfly your hands so that you get the twist later.

Last but not the least, I found those really cool animated pictures that are very similar to our practice of  tegatana junanahon with the ski, from there you can see the taisabaki very clearly, Nariyama sensei's technique are so precise. All the awesome pictures are from The Trinidad and Tobago Aikido Club (Shodokan Trinidad).
Atemi Waza are HERE
Hiji Waza are HERE
Tekubi Waza are HERE
Uki Waza are HERE


Terminology:

Kote	Wrist also called Tekubi
Kote-Hineri	Wrist throw – Wrist twist
Kote-Gaeshi	Outer wrist throw – Wrist fold
Idoryoku	locomotive power; the power of movement

Hiji Mochi no Tsukuri - Demo Video

Hiji Mochi no Tsukuri is one of my next exam material, I came across this clip today at YouTube, courtesy of Paul Herbert from UK.

His YouTube channel is HERE, looks like a lot nice video there.

Valentino: from Petale to Rockstud to Girello

It is probably since 2009 Valentino started the handbags with the Rosette on front design. The Petale Dome bag made of nappa leather in a feminine floral design, it was a big eye opener and pricey, even back then it retailed at Nordstrom for $2495.

There were also less sophisticated design with much smaller rosette on front, like this small black one.

Around 2012, Valentino's new pops are the Rockstud collections, stud on bags, shoes, clothes and everywhere else. Well, I personally think that the Rockstud shoes are better looking than the bags.  

 

However the bags that really made me gosh are 'Girello' Embroidered Nappa Shoulder Bag. I could hardly believe the beauty of mixing lace and leather when seeing them in person in Nordstrom, retails at $2595. The laser-cut floral flap rests atop a lace lattice backdrop. I really love it in Fuxia color,  it is so romantic! It seems that the lace pattern are different depending on which bag, notice that latter two lace patterns are different, but I prefer the original one, which is shown in beige color, could not find one picture with Fuxia color.

Fuxia color

Red Color