Aikido for 10/14/2009

For Wednesday's class, Tim, Mike, and I warmed up and then practiced forward and backward ukemi before we practiced the following techniques:

katatori sankyo omote and ura

katatori kokyunage, ikkyo style

katatori iriminage

We finished class with kokyu-ho exercise. While I was demonstrating the katatori sankyo ura with Tim, his strength and flexibility made it more of a challenge to actually bring him to the mat without using too much strength. When I resort to using muscle to accomplish a take-down, it usually means that I am not doing the technique correctly. I was demonstrating a variation of ura when I should have stuck with the most basic form of the ura, because I had no problems and little strength to take Tim to the mat when I went back to the most basic form of ura. This also allowed me to talk and demonstrate the need to be flexible and adaptable when working with different uke.

Sometimes in practice, we get so focused on doing the technique that we end up resorting to muscle and forcing the technique even when the technique isn't working with this particular uke. Practice quickly devolves to the cycle of escalation as uke resists and nage applies more strength and pressure until brawling between the two might begin. I wanted to try to deescalate the aggression by not getting locked into a technique, nage needs to respond to what uke is providing even if that means nage does a different technique from the one being practiced in class. Next Aikido class will be on 2:00 pm on Sunday at the Gunnison Community Recreation Center.