The end of the year is such a fun place at my home dojo, Bay Marin Aikido. Today was the last day of regular training before the Christmas Holiday, and Goto Sensei seemed to have a twinkle in his eye.
I asked him to look at some footwork I'd been practicing with Happo Giri, the eight-direction sword strike form. He nodded encouragingly and then grabbed a jo and came out on the mat. Quicker than I could register what he was doing, he executed a full 360 degree turn while striking. Throughout the movement he maintained perfect footwork. I blinked, and sort of blurted, "what was that!?" He gave an impish smile and did it again just as gracefully. I tried it: klunk. Then it was time to bow in for class.
I'd forgotten that we were doing techniques to get out of grabs by lots of people. To me most of these are just torture. I don't have a clue how to do most of them, and I just end up trying to use force. But against two-to-four strong men the use of force ends up pathetically badly, every time. This was no different.
We started with two attackers and then right away, before I was at all comfortable dealing with two of them, Sensei had us defend against three attackers: one on each arm and the other grabbing the shoulders from behind. Sensei even showed it with four attackers, whirling out to safety via some sort of seam between the bodies that only he saw. That's him doing it in a blur in the photo above. They all fell down, and he beamed his mischievious smile.
Finally Sensei asked us to throw four people, two of whom have grabbed each arm. The throw, using a familiar kokyuho technique, involves sinking, turning, capturing, and throwing them two at a time. That's me below trying it out. Grabbing me were, left to right, Steve, Bob, Paul (obscured), and Kevin. I think they ended up winning that round.
At the end of class there was a lot of laughing and joking around, mostly out of relief that we were finally finished with the closest thing Aikido has to "Monkey in the Middle." It was a good reminder at year's end that no matter how good you might fancy you are at this, Sensei will find something you're absolutely abominable at, and make you do it for a whole week at the end of the year.
"find a partner" or if he pairs you up, then he'll look for the best mtechas available. So if you're 5'8 and there's a 6'5 guy, chances are you won't go with him. And in self-defence courses like Krav Maga or just any random self-defence course there are no belt rankings, the only way you'll get paired with a 40 year old dude with a black belt is if he has a black belt in Taekwondo or something and you're his sparring partner, but he won't be bringing any Taekwondo to self-defence cause he's there exclusively for SD, not TDK.
Posted by: malek | April 25, 2012 at 10:41 AM