Leading you on

It has been a while. I'm busy!

This next video deals with the concept of Leading. Aikido is often described as a throwing art. But you must be able to lead the person, and there are a lot of ideas about what leading is and how to do it. In our experience, most of them will get you killed by a determined knife attacker. We use padded practice knives and really try to get each other. None of this half-assed attacks with wooden tanto. No matter how realistic you think your training is, if you are attacking each other with wooden tanto you simply cannot really try to kill each other since that is what you would likely do.

The leading in this video works off of perfectly natural human responses, as will be explained by John. First, some points about doing this in practice:

• This video does not present realistic attacks. John just wanted to show a few ways that Morihei Ueshiba used to lead. When the attacks speed up leading becomes much easier.
• These are only the ways we have seen Morihei leading, and to pick up on them you need to watch the old films and slow them down to at least half speed. Makes the Japanese music sound better, too.
• This method isn't foolproof. Nothing is. If someone tells you they have the ultimate foolproof magic martial art you should turn and run in the other direction. Certainly don't give them your money!

Enjoy.

Bye Bye, Structure

This next video deals with several ways of breaking your attacker's structure. This is key. Pay attention!

It is important that you screw up your opponent's structure. Once you achieve this and can maintain it, your opponent cannot counter and cannot resist. At this point you simply drop your center and they will fall. There are other neat method which we'll show later, but this is a good start.

The four ways shown here:

1. Twisted Uke
    Twist Uke's body around until you feel the structure break.

2. Hand Rotations
    It could be argued that this is a variations of Twisted Uke, and that is correct. Just another way of doing it using familiar Aikido hand movements.

3. Brush the Leg
    No, not with a hairbrush! That is kinky and belongs on a different blog altogether. This NOT a trip and NOT a foot sweep.

4. Bouncing
    Very light. Very soft.

Enjoy!

Our Typical Practice Method

This next video is on how we practice. Again, this is just demonstration, so we're not really trying to kill each other. In normal practice we are trying our damndest to stab, slice, and otherwise mutilate our partner with our vicious training knives. We wanted to do this video to show how we do what Aikido would call Kata.

In most Aikido schools, Uke attacks, Nage throws and maybe pins, and that's the end of it. Uke gets up and they rinse and repeat. But how realistic is that? Not very, we think.

In this scenario, Nage throws with Shihonage and retains the knife. This is our Tachi Waza or standing practice. Then Nage tries to stab poor Uke and we have our Hanmi-Handachi Waza, with one person standing and one person not standing. Uke then becomes Nage and throws. Then both are on the ground, bringing us to Suwari Waza. Another knife attack comes, and this one is parried and the attacker thrown.

Again, keep in mind that this is a demonstration. In class, we must give honest attacks and try and get the other person.

Enjoy!

Throwing in Aikido

For those of you who have read my blog before, I apologize for taking so long to get back to it. I have deleted all the stuff from before in order to have this blog go along with a series of videos my instructor, John Kilpatrick Sensei (Godan, Aikikai), and I are making. We are doing this for a few reasons.

First, as simply a chronicle of our Aiki experiments.

Second, we need to get some more victims...I mean students... in to experiment on...I mean with.

Third, we enjoy watching ourselves wearing pajamas and dancing around like graceful swans in our ultra-modern dojo. OK that was total bullshit.

But I can't just leave it at that, can I? Hell no! Along the way I will force you to endure my lengthy quasi-philosophical ramblings about what Aiki is, what O'Sensei meant in his lengthy quasi-philosophical ramblings, and what type of socks are best to wear in the dead of winter when the dojo/garage is freezing cold. All this and more. If you're lucky.

The first video is entitled "How Aikido Throws Work" and is a look at...um...you got it. We look at breaking your joints, breaking your balance, and breaking your structure. Enjoy.

Oh:  the only time we wear the Japanese costumes is when we make videos. Any other time we practice we are in sweat pants, shorts, t-shirts, whatever. I have no idea why we wear the gi when we make videos, other than John likes it that way.