On Sunday, Jim (I didn't get his last name) Sensei taught all three classes .
First class was bokken weapons class. Learned about shift balance of bokken to pivot just behind the right hand, I always have practice with bokken with the center above my right hand. The goal is the make the tip of bokken fast and flexible to create a cut and not a slash (if the weapon was a live blade). We also practiced the 1st and 2nd Kumotaschi.
For Jim's second class, we worked on fundemental techniques of kosadori iriminage, kosadori shionage, and kokyunages.
The final class that Jim taught was he started a while ago, a class that focused on randori for the entire hour. The class started with any first time students to be attacked by for 3 minutes by the rest of the class. Nage can only tenkan or irimi movement and all of the ukes can use any shomen, yokomeni, or tsuki strikes. I was the only first timer, and I quickly realized how out of shape I was after seven other people started attacking me once. At the minute mark, I had already been attacked multiple times with was quickly running out of steam from the consistent motion. At two minutes, there was a momement where I felt I would puke right on the mat but I plowed through and kept moving. After my three minutes (a long, long, three minutes) Sensei mentioned the movement should be move left, move right, or straight and irimi tenkan. I also need to breath.
Jim started the second randori with the class breaking up into 2 groups of four each. Each person could only do irimi and tenkan movements.
The third randori we mixed up the groups and then did full-contact randori at half-speed. After my randori, I was directed to throw uke towards the center of the mat. I didn't even realize I was throwing ukes towards the edge, funny that I was unconsciously trying to establish a center sphere around myself.
The forth randori we mixed up the groups again and increased the speed. Jim Sensei told me to not use my arms! All I could do was tenkan and irimi without any arms techniques. I usually extend my hands and arms as a way to control uke and forcing me to use my body to get out of the way helped me move my center more through the mat and the multiple attacks.
The fifth randori was were nage closes his or her eyes for the time period. I found this practice the easiest because I didn't anticipate the attacks and just responded to the various grabs. Some of the other students were caught on the ground and ended up wrestling for control, I was able to keep on me feet despite grabs from front and the back until the very end when I rolled backward to breakup a back grab and right shoulder grab as I was doing so, my randori time was up.
During the classes, Jim talked a lot about physiology and how doing randori shifts your body's energy production from quick, anaerobic to aerobic extercise. I really enjoyed all three of Jim Sensei's classes and I look forward to the challenge of passing his randori class (a 15 minute randori with at least 4 attackers, just thinking of the maximum 3 minutes of randori bursts during the class will force me to improve my conditioning on and off the mat)
One of the great joys of Aikido is meeting new people and finding connections you have through shared Aikido instructors or dojos. For all three classes, I practiced with a shodon from Austin named Tom. Tom is CS master's student at CU and he praticed Aikido with Jo Bridsong Sensei, one of the original students at my first dojo, Central Illinois Aikikai. I have taken a couple of classes with Jo and so Tom and I had similar USAF Midwest/East reference points.
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