Aikido for 2/25/2009

Jake and I were the only two who showed up for last night's class. We warmed up and then did the connect and move exercise Julie did in her class last week. Jake and I then worked on the following techniques:

• Katatedori iriminage (6 variations)
  
• Katatedori ikkyo (5 variations)
• Katatedori sankyo (4 variations)

The next Aikido class will be on Saturday at 2 p.m. at Gunnison Community Center.

Aikido for 02/23/2009

Last night Andrea, Darren, and Joe Bob attended class. This was Joe Bob's first class and Darren's second. After warming up and spending about twenty minutes practicing forward and backward ukemi, we paired up and practiced tenkan and irimi exercises. We also traded partners just to give everyone a different person to work with on these exercises. I then introduced and has us practice katatedori kotegashi. We then switched partners to practice the same kotegashi technique. We finished up with kokyu-ho exercise and finished class. A good class and I will be curious to see how many attends class on Wednesday.

Aikido for 2/21/2009

I went to Saturday's class knowing that Jake would be out of town but various people from Santos Sensei's class had expressed interest so I was curious about who, if anyone, would show up at the Gunnison Community Center. I dressed out and a few minutes after 2, Darren, a person I met at Julie's lecture on Friday. After warming-up, we spent about fifteen minutes total working on forward and backward ukemi.

We then practiced the following techniques:

• katatedori tenkan exercise
• katatedori irimi exercise
• katatedori sumio-toshi
  
• katatedori ikkyo omote
• katatedori shiho-nage omote

After finishing with kokyu-ho exercise and pin, we did a back stretch and bowed out of class.

I took this photograph of the Last Chance Bar on my walk today. The weather was clear but cold.

Julie Poitras Santos Aikido Class

Last night Julie Poitras Santos Sensei taught an open Aikido class to the Gunnison community that was held at the Wrestling Gym at Western State College. The attendance was larger than I was expecting, with ten of us total. Joey attended but Jake and Andrea could not come because of other commitments. Santos Sensei started class with a long warm-up that included introducing some back ukemi practice. As this was the first Aikido class most of these students have ever taken, Julie did a great job showing and having the students practice basic tenkan and irimi movements as the basis for many Aikido principles and techniques.

We also did this new connecting and movement exercise where uki and nage move as a unit up and down the mat with the intention of both partners maintaining the same distance and connection. My partner was a women in her twenties who had physical limitations and difficulties with spoken communication. I worked with her for most of the class and I found the entire experience to be illuminating about myself and Aikido. I have never practiced Aikido with an individual who I had to communicate in such a clear and simple manner. I really felt I had to strip the technique of the night's Aikido into their simpler components. Santos Sensei was always able to explain or show the technique to me and my partner at just the right moment, helping both of us when we continued through practicing the various techniques. Practicing with this woman, who's strength I felt when we trade off being uke and nage, has expanded my conception of what ability-level is necessary to practice Aikido. I would guess my reflective answer to the question, "Who can practice Aikido?" would likely be, "most people", but I had never explicitly thought about those physical and communication boundaries until last night. Given my recent post about Platonic Aikido, the more variation I experience in Aikido, the more people who experience and participate, a communal understanding of this martial art develops that benefits us all.

Julie Poitras Santos Sensei visit really increased Aikido's visibility in Gunnison and I also enjoyed getting to know her and after tonight' lecture, I found it interesting how her Aikido influences her art. I am happy that everything worked out and I have to thank Ivy for helping arrange everything. Her class was a success and I look forward to summer camp, now that I am getting to know more people.

Aikido for 02/18/2009

Last night Jake, Andrea, and I practiced the following techniques after warm-up and ukemi practice:

• Tsuki irminage
• Tsuki ikkyo omote

With the three of us practicing round-robin, the techniques took more time but I wanted to focus on a different attack with two basic Aikido techniques. Tonight is Santos Sensei special class from 7:30 to 9:00 at Western State College's Wrestling Gym. Here is a photo of the flyer that is around campus:


I don't know how many people will show up so I am printing out 20 release forms I adopted from Denver Aikikai and a formal photograph of O'Sensei for the makeshift shrine I am setting up for tonight's class. I am looking forward to this class although I did spend over an hour working out this morning for my HAPLab training schedule. My student trainer, Aaron, will be sending me a list of exercises we did this week and as soon as I have them, I'll post them to this blog. I am also supposed to log all of my food intake for three days. I plan on starting tomorrow, tracking Saturday and Monday.

Snowboarding at Monarch, Ice Fishing at Blue Mesa Reservoir

My brother Jarrett drove up from Grand Junction on Friday night. We got up early on Saturday, purchased our tickets at City Market, and drove to Monarch. We spent the entire day snowboarding, I actually was enjoyed myself, I didn't fall very much and the mountain was large and there was a lot of trails. After returned back to Gunnison, we ate dinner at Pizza Hut but we didn't go out as we had originally planned.

This morning Jarrett and I drove to Blue Mesa Reservoir where I took these photos as we set up the tent and fished for most of the morning. I only bite or two but Jarrett caught a nice rainbow trout.

Aikido for 02/11/2009 and HAPLab

Last night Jake, Andrea, and I started class after warming-up and ukemi practice. We then practiced the following three techniques:

• katatedori irminage ai-hanmi
• morotedori shiho-nage omote
• suwazi morotedori shiho-nage omote, this technique was a challenge for me when I practiced with Andrea because I had to go very low almost on the ground, to keep her hands in the right position. I was able to finish the technique. I am not sure I have ever practiced this shiho-nage variation before, I need to spend more time practicing from hanmi-hantachi or suwaza.

This morning I went to the HAPLab and finished the physical stress, strength, and flexibility testing. I walked/ran in three minute intervals on the treadmill, with each interval increasing in speed and incline. Since I am currently taking a beta-blocker for high blood pressure,so my resting heartbeat is lower than the normal person. My heart rate cannot be used as the marker for when I approach my maximum reported exertion rate (or something like that). This is a self reported measure on a 6-20 scale, where 6 is sleeping and 20 is maximum exertion. By forth interval I self-reported a 15 but I felt I could go longer at that pace. Using this scale, I would estimate I reach 18-19 during various points when I am at an Aikido seminar. I rarely reach that level during normal Aikido classes maybe 16 or 17 at the most. I only was able to do 17 push-ups, but my flexibiliy test was very good and I was close to the norm for the sit-up test. Next week I'll be meeting Aaron at 8:00 at the Escalante Fitness Center.

Aikido for 02/09/2009

Tonight at Aikido we had two new students as well as Jake and Joey. After going though an shortened warm-up, Jake taught forward and backward ukemi. He teaches beginners how to roll quicker and better than I and I have learned more about ukemi from listening how Jake explains especially the back roll. He is getting a lot of practice due to the consistent number of beginning students.

After ukemi practice and after doing tenkan exercise, I introduced katatetori sumotoshi throw. After all of us practiced the technique for a few minutes and as the end of the class, Jake and I did a demo for the new students for about three minutes. We ended up doing a kokyu-ho exercise and finished class.

Aikido for 02/07/2009, Platonic Aikido, and Open Simulator

Today at the Gunnison Community Center Jake, Shay, and I started practice at 2:00 p.m. with a warm-up and then after dedicating a larger portion of class on forward and backward ukemi. After katatetori tenkan and irmi exercises, we practiced the following techniques:

• katatedori shiho-nage (omote and ura)
• shomenuchi irminage (gyaku-hanmi)
• shomenuchi irminage (ai-hanmi)

We then did a three-person exercise where two uke grab with both hands on the respective arms of nage and try to pull nage apart. Nage needs to step back and then I showed them how to do an omote shiho-nage that throws both ukes.

The final part of class was a three minute randori with both Shay and Jake attacking me with katatedori or shomenuchi. I had a couple of distracting moments and lost my focus where Jake almost did a reverse sankkyo, I also had to slow down when throwing Shay because she is still learning her rolls. After kokyu-ho exercise, we finished up at 3:15.

I recently finished one of the best books, Anathem, by one of my favorite authors, Neal Stephenson. I am still mentally digesting this monograph and I will write more blog posts dedicated to the novel. Anyway, a major theme of the book is about Platonic idealism and while I consider myself more of an Aristotelian, I was thinking about the ideal Aikido forms. In my own practice, I rarely think about anyone other than the other people on and off the mat. My Aikido practice is changing now that I am teaching three times a week and preparing for my shodan test. A common answer to the question of what are the ideal Aikido forms and a defensible answer would be the Aikido of the founder, Morihei Ueshiba.
O'Sensei's Aikido, to me, was the beginning of all of us moving towards realizing the ideal forms that each of us conceptualizes. All of the instructors I have practiced with, have had their own variation of main themes of movement and interpretation of their ideal Aikido forms. I have had the great honor to attend classes taught by direct students of O'Sensei, including Aikira Tohei Sensei, Yamanda Sensei, Saotome Sensei, and more recently, I believe both Doran Sensei and Tissier Sensei practiced in Japan with O'Sensei. When teaching, I am forced to refer my own beliefs of the ideal form at that moment. Later in the class, I may have a very different conception of the same technique. The perfect form may be many instances but as I realized and told Shay in class today, you can feel when you are not doing the technique right. Reality is self-enforcing, adapting our techniques as we practice into something we are groping towards.

The start of the Aristotelian response, is to describe all of the fundamental and basic techniques in a manner that we can describe the basic physics and physiology of uke and nage. We record and use technology like videos, books, and photographs but this weekend I started working on a Second Life based open-technology called Open Simulator. My first project (whenever I learn a new technology, I like building a project based on something I am interested in) is building a virtual Aikido dojo OpenSim server. Here are some of the uses I believe we build using OpenSim:

• Record the basic techniques in YouTube compatible video using scripted action of two human avatars.
• Build "games" where students can create a beginner avatar and practice through the techniques as uke and nage. These games could be customized to specific dojos and sensei and be included as a learning tool and training log tool for students of the dojo.
• Record variations of techniques and provide a teaching log for instructors. These teaching logs could easily be turned into YouTube video and as a level in the game. These teaching logs could also be used as a reference tool for other students. As Linden Labs has already built an economy, monetizing these instructor teaching logs could be a source of income for instructors and dojos.
  
• Run massive parallel simulations of various uke and nage avatar preforming scripted (with limited random variation, basically Monte Carlo simulations) combinations of techniques. I believe these simulations will show new specific ways and movements that may not be always apparent. Of course the real test will be moving and testing these simulations on the practice mat. Aikido OpenSim will not replace Aikido Practice.
• And finally, we can build a full simulation of previous Aikido video from such past events as seminars and demonstrations. Such conversations would contribute the ecology and economy of the Aikido OpenSim community.

Cool stuff and to bring everything back to the starting point of this blog post, if you haven't read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, do it and the you'll see why I am really excited by the Aikido OpenSim project.

Aikido for 02/04/2009

Jake and I were the only people to show up so we had a more advanced class. After warm-up we practiced the following tachi-waza techniques:

• Shomenuchi (5 techniques, uke choice)
• Ushiro Ryokatatori (5 techniques, uke choice)
• Munetori (both hands grabbing label) (5 techniques, uke choice)
• Tsuki (5 techniques, uke choice)

We then practiced the following with paired bokkens:

• 1st kata
• 2nd kata
• 3rd kata

My father and brother Jarrett are coming to visit me this weekend to go ice fishing. I told Jake I would try to make to class but that might not happen depending on Saturday plans. I will give Jake a call to let him know if I won't be there.

Aikido for 02/02/2009

Last night, Jake, Joey, and Shay attended class. After warming up and practicing forward and backward ukemi, I introduced shikkyo (knee-walking) to Shay. After working on our tenkan and irimi exercises, we switched partners.

We then practiced the following technique:

• katatori kotegaeshi ura with a standing pin

Next, we lined up and everyone practiced doing a tenkan or an irimi movement from uke doing a shomen cut with a bokken. This was more of a focusing exercise and clearly showed why we do certain movements in Aikido. After class, Jake and I briefly practiced the third bokken kata that we practiced on Saturday.

25 Random Things about Me

There is a meme going around Facebook where people I knew in the past list 25 random things about themselves. I may or may not respond through the Facebook interface, I was just sent such a message from a woman I knew high school this morning. (Does that make any sense?) Here is my list:

25 Random Things about me.

1. Third generation Coloradan.
   
   

2. Born in Pueblo Colorado
   
   
3. Father, brother, and Grandmother born in Cheyenne Wells, Colorado
   

4. The oldest of seven, his brothers and sisters in order are Jake, Jill, Jesse, Judd, Jarrett, and Angie. There are 19 years between Angie and Jeremy.

5. Has four nieces and one nephew.

6. Divorced for ten years, no children.

7. Is related to John Hancock through his great-grandmother Mary Hancock Nelson.

8. Was raised as a Jehovah Witness, although never baptized in the religion.

9. Currently identifies himself as a non-theistic Quaker.

10. Confirmed as a member of Salt Lake Religious Society of Friends in 2005.

11. Has been practicing Aikido since 1997.

12. Will be testing for his Aikido shodan (black-belt) under Ikeda Sensei of Boulder Aikikai.

13. Tested for his 5^th kyu rank under Akira Tohei Shihan in 1998 at Central Illinois Aikikai in Urbana, Illinois.

14. Remembers building his first web site in 1995, recently designed and built a new web site for Western State College's Library in 2008.

15. Preferred programming language since 2001 is Python.

16. Now thinks XML should be used as an interface and not as a data structure for web applications.

17. Learning to write well was the second best career skill he learned at Knox College.

18. Thinking critically was the best career skill.

19. A fan of University of Illinois football and basketball teams.

20. A Denver Broncos fan through both their Super Bowl highs and lows under John Elway.
    
    

21. Has lived as adult in Galesburg Illinois, Elk Grove Village Illinois, Champaign Illinois, Salt Lake City Utah prior to living in Gunnison.
    
    
22. Has caught a lot more trout after moving to Gunnison in 2006.
    
    
23. Loves ice fishing in the Winter, fly fishing year-round, and lake fishing in the Spring, Summer, and the Fall.
    
    
24. Became a librarian through a happy accident
    
    
25. Believes randomness is what makes life interesting