Aikido for 10/01/2011

Today for the open class, Garry continued from last Saturday's focus on uke's ukemi and in particular, the follow-through intention by uke when first grabbing nage's outstretched hand. We started right away with the static solid grab by uke to train nage's movement. As Garry kept mentioning, in a more realistic attack, uke is not going to come and just grab the wrist and try to hold nage as this is strategically unsound by uke because nage has free use of the other hand from a counter-strike. We worked on the following techniques with that intention and ukemi training by uke.

• katatetori kokyunage tenkan
• katatetori kokyunage irimi
• katatetori shihonage ura with uke pushing through with the nage's outstretched hand
• katatetori kokyunage when uke pulls and away from nage, nage follows the movement through and steps for a kokyunage throw more by body position
• katateroi hijinage where uke pulls and nage swings around to the outside and around uke's wrist to elbow or shoulder for the take-down
• We then did two free-style (jiawaza) katatetoris where uke first either pushes or pulls with the first grab and nage responds accordingly, the second added a third attack where uke tries to keep nage solid and static like we practice with opening techniques.
• We finished class with kokyu tanden-ho