Aikido for 09/06/2009

Sunday morning I visited with Jill, Lance, and the girls before leaving for the 10:30 weapons class at Boulder Aikikai.

The first class was taught by a woman sensei, I have seen her at seminars but I still do not know her name. Her weapons class focused on the basic jo movements and exercises and I quickly realized that I need to work on my basic jo handling skills. I learned how to quickly gauge the correct hand positions on jo tsuki attack (your forward hand should not be further than the length of your forearm) Sometimes, especially with weapon work, I feel clumsy and definitely uncoordinated, all prompting me to spend more time on the mat working on my jo and bokken skills.

The second class was regular Aikido class and the instructor (a different sensei from the first class, and I don't know his name either although I have seen him at seminars) worked on katetdori and kosadori variations of hijinage, kokyunage, iriminage, and shionage. We worked on a particular interesting katatedori variation where uke grabs nage's back hand instead of the forward hand. This changes slightly the opening but the techniques are still present. This class was higher energy and I was able to practice with most of the students attending the second class.

The final class was Jim's randori class I had taken before. While there was only six students this time, we started off with 3 minute randori. I didn't feel like I was going to vomit this time, but by the end of the 3 minutes where I wasn't using my arms to tenkan or irimi, I was huffing and out of breath. Jim said that I need to relax and breath more naturally when doing randori, basic advice for almost any Aikido technique and yet is the first thing to go when under stress and something I always need to work on. We then broke out into two groups of three and continued with a two minute randori practice with nage's eyes closed and the ukes attacks were all grabs. While the two minutes went by quickly and I felt the variety and quality of my responses to the uke's attacks were solid, Jim told that I was too in "my head" and that I wasn't trusting my instincts when practicing. I would start to towards uke and then stop and wait for the attack. Jim said something very interesting in that I wasn't moving towards uke's ki. The final randori was again 2 minutes at a slower 3/4 speed pace of uke's attack and nage could respond with throws. I found this randori the easist, not because of the reduced time or number of ukes, but I took Jim's fundamental randori advice to throw uke into the center of the mat and into the other ukes. I was able to just do ikkyo and keep throwing uke back into the other attacker. I learned more about internal ki awareness and was reminded about basic randori techniques from Jim's class and I highly recommend this type of practice for improving the intensity and honesty of one's Aikido.