Mokuren Dojo Aikido and Judo in Southwest Mississippi

Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Visitors Out: Total Visitors Out: 1 0 52 52

The Gramby
2008-05-15 18:00:08
Even with all my nice talk about "knowledge is not power - knowledge shared is power..." This clip is so good that it hurts me to share this. This is a video clip of some awesome wrestling, and if you back off a touch, what you see is a good offensive application for ukemi skills in judo or even aikido. Check out these guys' great ground mobility. If you want to begin playing this stuff in judo or aikido, uke had better be rolling and blending compliantly or he's going to eat a lot of energy and break corners off of his body. ...

He said...
2008-05-15 13:10:56
Ok, perhaps I’ll turn this blog into a medical drama. I've previously posted on my brush with death last year...This past week I’ve had a little rash under my arms because I had a reaction to a deodorant a few days ago. Well, I’ve done the hygiene thing and kept it dry and trusted in the body’s amazing recuperative properties. And it spread. And spread…I decided that I’d gotten a mild case of pickly heat. Pretty common and pretty innocuous. The pattern and the circumstances supported that diagnosis. But it continued to spread. And hurt…I was useless at aikido Tuesday and the past couple of days I’ve lay spread-eagled under a fan waiting for those amazing recuperative properties to kick in. And I itched and burned and had the pinprick sensations, etc… Fortunately prickly heat is not contagious. Unfortunately, I was considering modifying my diagnosis to something like Hidradenitis suppurativa. Boy, could I use Dr. House at this point!Well, the last couple of nights I’ ...

She said...
2008-05-15 13:09:12
Okay, Elise here, a.k.a. Shug (only to Pat) and The Boss to everyone else. Let me tell my version of Pat’s pit problem. Last week, Pat ran out of deodorant. He claims he told me several times that he was out, meaning I had to buy him some more. Now, Pat’s a big boy, right? He has a debit card in his wallet, what’s stopping him from going to the store and buying his own darn deodorant, one may ask. Well, I homeschool our children, as well as organize and conduct classes for the children of 7 other families. I am mom, teacher, principal, secretary, librarian, janitor, and school nurse from 8-2:30 Monday through Thursday, and half-day on Friday. Going to the store for anything (finding the time, organizing someone to keep the kids, etc) is a strategic event that takes days to plan. Again I ask, what was stopping him from getting his own deodorant? It would take him 10 minutes, me 10 days! Twice he used my deo. Perhaps I should preface Pat’s particular pit problem by explaining tha ...

Aiki training log for tonight
2008-05-14 05:50:42
Aikido with Patrick M., Kel, and RickROM & UkemiHanasu #1-8 with emphasis on releasing #1 and #2 into ukemi and emphasis on #6 and #8 as pieces of shihonageshomenate, aigamaeate, and gyakugamaeatechain #1 with emphasis on taking the steps between the steps in order to stay synchronized. We also emphasized having uke constantly moving to diffuse tori's technique.Cool techniques of the night: Koryu dai ni first two techniques - R4→katagatame and R3→2HG→gyakugamaeate ...

Longitudinal and cross-sectional progress
2008-05-13 08:47:01
Someone suggested on one of my videos on YouTube a while back that it would be great if we could make a video of the two people on that video a year later doing the same stuff so we could see progress. I think that’s a great idea, though I can’t do it in that particular case because one of the students has now returned home to Ukraine.But that brings up a teaching topic I thought I’d write on today. There are two types of progress that you want to see in a martial art – longitudinal and cross-sectional progress. In longitudinal progress, you follow a particular individual over time, measuring skill in some way, and you should be able to see progress in that individual's skill. So, Bob should be more skilled at green belt than he was at white belt, and he should be more skilled at black belt than he was at green belt, and so on.The other type of progress, cross-sectional, is where you look at a class full of people at one particular time and try to figure out if the black bel ...

Wrestling vs. boxing
2008-05-13 04:01:50
So, who would win? A wrestler or a boxer? If you forgive, at least for the sake of argument, the incredible stupidity of this question, you might find the following video clip interesting. ...

The steps between the steps
2008-05-12 15:13:23
Here is another Musashi quote for us to think about – again, from his Wind book. This one is on walking methods. In aikido we define two walking methods – ayumiashi (normal walking) and tsugiashi (a dropping/sliding motion without crossing the feet). There are benefits to both, and for the most part, we walk using ayumiashi whenever we are outside of ma-ai, instantly switching to safer, more conservative tsugiashi as we cross into ma-ai. Here’s what Mushshi had to say about walking methods…Use of the Feet in Other SchoolsThere are various methods of using the feet: floating foot, jumping foot, springing foot, treading foot, crow's foot, and such nimble walking methods. From the point of view of my strategy, these are all unsatisfactory.I dislike floating foot because the feet always tend to float during the fight. The Way must be trod firmly.Neither do I like jumping foot, because it encourages the habit of jumping, and a jumpy spirit. However much you jump, there is no real ju ...

Bram Frank & Rob Belote
2008-05-11 08:10:00
We're famous (again). This teaser for http://www.budointernational.com/ with grandmaster Bram Frank includes my student, Rob Belote, in the second-to-last segment starting at about 2:30. I'm glad to see that Bram is starting to get some of his stuff out there on YouTube. I've tried to search for his name, or for CSSD every so often and this is the first time that I've found any extended clips to speak of. In the brief time that I got to train with him I was very impressed with his knife material - it was very aiki. I'm looking forward to seeing him again at the end of the month for a short vacation in San Antonio. ...

Getting in synch and flowing around obstacles
2008-05-11 06:49:34
Aiki with Patrick M., Kel, and RickToday we discussed getting in rhythm with uke, like Musashi was talking about in the passage I posted a few days ago...Tegatana with emphasis on shortening steps to keep in synch with an external pace.Hanasu with emphasis on shortening or stretching steps to get in synch during releases #1 and #3. From there we played with brushing off and disengaging. #2 turns into a particularly fabulous brushoff if tori stays light on the feet, times uke's near footfall and brushes himself off of uke.Koryu dai ichi section B with emphasis on staying light on the feet and flowing around obstacles. ...

Ranai – Chaos into order
2008-05-10 23:24:41
So, we saw in class today that once two vibrating objects (uke & tori) are coupled together, they may either amplify each others’ motions or they may damp each others’ motions out depending on how they are synchronized and how they are coupled. Here’s the cool physical example of this principle that I mentioned in class. And here it is done with three metronomes… and with five metronomes. So, who all out there can say they've seen this type of phenomenon happen between two people in a martial arts setting? ...

We're famous!
2008-05-10 02:13:17
Our recent crop of yellow belts made the Enterprise Journal today, so I figure we might get some hits for folks interested in kids' judo, so here's the scoop: I teach kids' judo classes..Judo is a Japanese martial art that emphasizes throwing and grappling. Kids love judo because most all kids love to roll around on the ground and wrestle. Look here for some great video of some kids having a blast in our class. Judo is also a competitive sport and you will be seeing some great Olympic judo this summer. As both a traditional martial art and sport, judo offers a great opportunity for fun, fitness, discipline, and defense..At our training hall, we're running it as a seasonal sport in which we take the hottest months of the summer off, so the season lasts from September to April. We have classes once a week and club tournaments once a month. I am in a fairly unique position in the martial arts world, so that I can offer high-quality instruction in a family-friendly atmosphere for very low ...

Ukemi is a kind of intelligent blending
2008-05-10 02:11:32
Cool aikido, iaido, and jodo demo, including the multiple opponents aikido randori that I was talking about with Rick last night. Notice in the randori that the tori does not engage in a fight with every single opponnent. In fact, he doesn't really engage any of them. He evades and brushes them off, moving on the the next attacker. Most of the attackers blend well with tori's redirection and brushoffs, ending up in simple forward rolls, but a time or two you can see an uke that hangs on an instant too long, applies force the wrong way at the wrong time, or is slightly out-of-synch with tori, and that uke eats a lot more energy in a bigger fall.In situations like this you can see that skillful blending is a part of uke's role too - and I don't mean jumping for tori. I mean really attacking, then responding by blending intelligently to remain viable. Ukemi is a kind of intelligent blending. The falling is a natural extension of the act of blending with the relationship between tor ...

Working the envelope
2008-05-08 13:26:25
AM judo with Robwarmup with the ground mobility cyclekosotogari→(kesa↔mune)→(wakigatame↔udegarame)near leg (bent) armbar, far leg (straight) armbar, and elbow crank from kesagatametop shoulder choke and step-over choke from kesagatamestraitjacket holds from kamishiho, tateshiho, and munegatame ...

Musashi and Canadian Brass on speed
2008-05-07 19:21:31
Last night, as we practiced aigamaeate, Kel and Rick commented on the difference between what I was doing and what they were doing. They were pulling uke around in a circle and it was making tori have to go faster to compensate for lack of offbalance and for the centrifugal effect. I was floating uke into offbalance, slipping aside at the proper time, doing less, moving slower, and getting greater effect.This brings me back to Musashi’s Wind book, which I was quoting the other day: Speed in Other SchoolsSpeed is not part of the true Way of strategy. Speed implies that things seem fast or slow, according to whether or not they are in rhythm. Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast. Some people can walk as fast as a hundred or a hundred and twenty miles in a day, but this does not mean that they run continuously from morning till night. Unpracticed runners may seem to have been running all day, but their performance is poor. In the Way of dance, accomplished perfo ...

L.O.C.K.U.P. police combatives method
2008-05-07 08:13:01
Here's a really interesting police combatives system that appears to have a lot in common with the aikido and judo that we do. Notice the things I found most ingteresting included:The adjectives and descriptors that Lt. Col. Grossman (the first guy on the film) used to describe the system: "more than just combatives, the spirit, the soul of the warrior. Teachable in a lecture framework to executives... powerful...funny...dynamic...style and substance..." How many instructors can claim that kind of teaching skill?Reality based training, or as they refer to it, environmental training. Recreating the physiological responses and environment that occur in combat. I would really like to implement this. Anyone out there in Southwest Mississippi want to practice aikido or judo at night under a sprinkler with a strobe light? Let me know and we can play that one... That might just be something to play at the next ABG!"We discuss everything that would be important to that officer right from legal ...

Great rolling exercise
2008-05-06 17:17:35
When we begin training beginners to roll, we put them kneeling and have them roll forward into a proper landing position. Then we reverse that and have them roll backward from either a landing position or a seated position into a kneeling position. It usually doesn’t take too long to get to feeling fairly proficient with these two exercises, and here’s why: momentum covers mistakes..Take a bicycle wheel as an example. Stand it up on its edge and it falls over. Stand it up and start it rolling and it takes much longer to fall over. Because of conservation of angular momentum, a rotating object resists a change in its axis. So the wheel does not fall over and it is fairly easy to roll forward and backward with momentum..But what if as you gain proficiency you begin to slow down your kneeling rolls. Your momentum is reduced and the roll again becomes a challenge. As you slow down the rolls the muscles in your abdomen and torso have to adapt and become more coordinated at balancing you ...

Boxing and aikido
2008-05-06 04:48:10
Nathan at TDA Training has a lot of good info on boxing, including articles on boxing for self-defense, boxing combinations, and such… One of his more popular articles describes 3 C’s of boxing defense and 3 C’s of boxing offense – good rules of thumb that make things a lot better better during sparring. In this article, Nathan says that for defense, you should Circle, Cover, and Counter and that for offense, you should Close, Cover, and Clear. Read his article for details.I’d say this is all mighty good advice but just as a thought exercise what if we change a thing or two ….The line between offense and defense is blurry at best most times, so, what if we combined the two groups into one?Cover appears twice. Maybe it is twice as important, but what if we replaced one Cover with a Clinch. ....all of a sudden it becomes a general strategy that looks like this:.Cover – Keep your hands up between you and the opponent. Try to keep your hands on the plane between your centerli ...

The meaning of your communication is the response you get
2008-05-05 21:56:04
It doesn’t do anyone any good for an instructor to assume that their students are knuckleheads who can’t follow instructions. A better way is to assume good faith on their part – that is, assume that the students are really trying to do what they think you are telling them. So, if you don’t get the response you want from your students, you can assume that you are not communicating what you think you are communicating. Change how you are saying it to them.Be careful how you say what you say because different people have different connotations for any given word. Colin Wee gave a good example in a comment a few days ago. If you tell the student, “step over here,” then they might understand step any old way. They might step as in normal walking (ayumiashi) when what you intended was slide over here (tsugiashi) or even bring your feet together under you then slide over here (tsuriashi). A better way is to explain the difference between these 2-3 types of walking and give them t ...

How to learn jodo without an uke
2008-05-03 22:40:03
Jodo has grown on me like a fungus. When I first tried it out I found it quite esoteric and unpleasant and non-fun. In college I played with it off and on - more off than on. I think most of the folks that were in the college club with me were of the same opinion, so my instructor, Usher-san, wound up without a consistent, reliable set of training partners for jodo..Usher-san kept up his own solo kihon and kata practice though, and practiced with real live people when he could. Some years later I had the pleasure of watching Usher-san demonstrate in Houston for his Sandan and he wowed the examiners and the observers. I overheard one very highly-ranked examiner say that Usher was one of the few jodo or aikido folks he'd ever seen who actually looked comfortable and competent holding a sword. Everyone was doubly amazed because Usher-san had, for the most part, taught himself when he was between partners. When folks would ask him how he did it he'd shrug and say, "solo kihon and kata pra ...

Ironman
2008-05-03 06:06:35
Dave at Formosa Neijia posted an Ironman trailer that had some scenes I hadnt' seen. We're also super-excited about this movie. We're going to see it tomorrow afternoon. Can't wait. Here's a cool Ironman video to whet our collective appetites... ...

AM training
2008-05-02 03:53:36
AM aiki with RobKoryu Dai Ichi - Sections B (variations on release #1 and oshitaoshi) and C (variations on YK#1 and shihonage). We talked a little about the positive influence that jodo has had on my aikido - particularly in the last year or so.PM aiki with RickWe spent a lot of time working on ukemi paying attention to muscle coordination - relax/contact and the appropriate times for each.Same lesson plan as the AM session - Ichikata sections B&C - worked great. Wonderful flow. ...

No education for me, thank you.
2008-05-01 08:00:01
After writing the previous post on gun safety, I got to looking for vids on YouTube on the subject, and found this travesty. This is one of those rare instances where everyone involved would have probably been better off not being educated. This was one of the scariest things I've seen in a long, long time.And what's more, the agent had the balls to sue the DEA (his own agency) for releasing the video and thus tarnishing his reputation. ...

Teaching gun safety
2008-05-01 00:08:35
I have to admit, I have an aversion to handguns that borders on phobia. In college, my roommate, a black belt in multiple arts and a wartime veteran, made me handle an unloaded pistol to make a point in a discussion we were having. I couldn’t tell you what the point was because I was so freaked out at just having to touch the thing. So far as I know this attitude was not a taught thing – just an innate and extreme distaste for that particular weapon. .Lately I have been considering buying one of the realistic simulation air pistols that fires BBs – so that I can face that phobia to some degree. But then this happened…Walthall County sheriff’s deputies are investigating the reported shooting death of a 2-year-old girl in the Darbun community. The shooting occurred about 11:20 a.m. Sunday. Deputies said the child was shot in the chest by an air gun being handled by another child. The girl was taken to Marion County Hospital, where she later died. The shooting is believed to be ...

A helpful handful – shihonage
2008-04-30 08:00:01
Shihonage (lit. ‘four-directions throw’ or more loosely, ‘all-directions throw’) is the first of the ‘Six Pillars of Aikido' (shihonage, iriminage, kaitennage, kokyunage, osaekomi, ushirowaza). This technique is very common across most martial arts. Here are a handful of hints I’ve found helpful in working on shihonage.Work your way through the name of the thing. Work on finding ways you can throw this thing in every direction.Do it part of the time with only one hand and part of the time with only the other hand – like #6 and #8 in Hanasu no Kata. Practicing this with only one hand makes you move your body thru the right arc or you lose it. Don’t cheat by learning shihonage with the illusion of control afforded by using both hands.If it goes bad toward the beginning, try flowing into maeotoshi or sumiotoshi. If it goes bad toward the end, try flowing into aikinage (A.K.A. iriminage) or ushiroate.We use a crash pad when we practice binding the arm and throwing forward ...

Koryu Dai Ichi
2008-04-30 04:09:42
Aiki with Patrick M. and KelROM and ukemi (including reps of 2 buddy falls)Hanasu with emphasis on moving forward on #3Chain #2 including R2→R1→oshitaoshi 2 variations of Ichikata ushirowaza kotegaeshi (ducking under the arm) and R1→R2→kotegaeshi.Nijusan kotegaeshi and oshitaoshi (step aside at the end of the line) ...

Y'all will be proud of me!
2008-04-30 03:37:38
I've finally mastered the secret to a beautiful, effortless deashibarai! All you have to do is find an uke that is 1/8 your size and all of a sudden you are a shoe-in for perfect form! ...

You get just as wet no matter where you jump in
2008-04-28 04:12:06
One of the cool things about aikido is that there are no prerequisites. There is no ‘most advanced skill.’ You can work the skills in any order and call that a ‘system’. A beginner may jump in with the whole class profitably practicing whatever happens to be on the lesson plan for that day. Sure there are safety considerations - you don't make newbies take big falls - but they can still practice the same techniques and principles as everyone else. I've heard it said that there are no advanced techniques or concepts in aikido - just skilled students practicing the fundamentals in a very advanced way..Many Aikikai schools (if I understand rightly) start with ikkyo (oshitaoshi) as the first teaching, while most Tomiki schools start with shomenate as the first teaching and only get to oshitaoshi (Aikikai’s ikkyo) as the sixth teaching after several hours of practice. Either is an okay way of teaching the thing, and after a few hours of practice, it probably doesn’t matter beca ...

How to tie your martial arts belt
2008-04-27 04:39:00
Alright, some of my Kids' Judo parents have asked me how they can help their kids learn to tie their own belts. Here is a very good video demonstration of the simplest method for learning to tie your belt. Some judo instructors make this a pre-requisite to starting judo - you have to be old enough to tie your own belt. I'm not a stickler for this, but I would really like the yellow belts to all be able to tie their own belts by the beginning of next judo season (this coming September). ...

Martial arts – They’re not just for kids anymore
2008-04-27 02:02:22
Demographers have been telling us for years about the baby boom generation. This is the group of people born between about 1946 and 1964. This is a worldwide phenomenon, but in the U.S. it represents a group of about 80 million people beginning to move into retirement age..Three trends that concern many older adults are health care (in 2004, boomers averaged $2700 per year in healthcare spending), finances (fixed incomes and rising cost of living), and personal safety (Things seem to move faster and violence seems harder to deal with). The perfect solution for these problems is my aikido class..If you are an older adult living in Southwest Mississippi and want an affordable way to get a little reasonable, moderate exercise and learn to protect yourself in an increasingly chaotic and violent world, come check out my aikido class..Fees are both reasonable and negotiable, and you can learn a martial art designed by older adults for older adults, taught by an adult, and proven effective in ...

Kote hineri practice tonight
2008-04-25 05:08:09
Aiki with Patrick M. and RickROM & ukemiTegatana emphasizing synching arms with rise-fall of body and movig the center and building a stance underneath it.hanasu #1-4 with emphasis on releasing as brush-off. The idea was to make #1 feel like #3 and the strong side to feel like the weak side.Nijusan kote hineriIchikata tachiwaza #3-4 (Release 5 into tenkai kote hineri and release 3 into mawashi oshitaoshi) ...