Aikido for 09/09/2009

Aikido class on Wednesday night ended up being just Mike and I. He arrived late, so before I reviewed both Edger's jo exercises and the basic movement we focused on in last Sunday's weapons class at Boulder Aikikai.

After a quick warm-up, we practiced the following techniques:

yokomenuchi shihonage omote and ura

katatedori shihonage omote and ura

kosadori shihonage omote and ura. I also worked with the different openings, what I feel is my basic technique I learned at Central Illinois Aikikai and the variation Edger showed for the 6th kyu test.

shomenuchi iriminage two variations

At the end of class, I used Jim's randori variation of eyes closed, modified for just Mike and I. Mike went first and while he got stuck a couple of times, it seemed to be a good learning experience for him. When it was my turn, I just did shihonage so that I could work on anticipating uke's direction of attack following Jim's advice on Sunday. Good class and I'll be teaching an Aikido class this Saturday at the Gunnison Community Center at 2:00 pm. The class is free and open to anyone but you'll have to pay admission to the faculty. I'm planning on swimming at the new pool for the first time.