Aikido for 01/31/2009

Today at Aikido, Jake and I started off with some bokken tenkan and irmi exercises. We then worked on various bokken waza techniques starting with tenkan and including sankyo, kotegashi, ikkyo, and irminage. We played around the mai-hai or spacing while swiching to open-hand (tachi-waza) techniques. We then worked on two bokken kata #3. I have only practiced these katas a couple of times many years ago so we spent a lot of time breaking down the technique so I can understand the specific movement of both uke and nage in the kata. There were a lot of kids today so at the end of class we finished off with randori (freestyle) from shomenuchi and yokumenchi attacks by uke. I only lasted about three minutes after attacking Jake for about four minutes.