Aikido for 10/05/2009

Practiced started with just Heather and I. We went through the warm-up, practiced our ukemi, and then we spent some extra time on the tenkan and irimi exercises while Mike warmed up for class. We practiced the following techniques:

yokomenuchi ikkyo omote and ura

yokomenuchi iriminage, two variations. The first variation might be considered ura because nage does the irimi movement behind uke. The second variation I have heard other instructors call an kokyu-nage and other irimnage, regardless, nage sweeps uke's attacking arm to the front, breaking uke's balance before the throw.

Mutual yokomen attack exercise, both uke and nage attack yokomen and move the same way. This was an exercise to help all of us with maai of yokomenuchi family of techniques

We all did a 2 minute randori with uke just attacking with the yokomen attack. This randori was to (hopefully) bring some of the techniques we practiced earlier in class into a more dynamic and reactive environment of the randori.