The Dojo of Nashville

Just paying a video tribute to Steve Matthews Sensei. He was a mentor to many on the aikido community and a good friend to me and to everyone in the dojo. Sure miss training with this guy. RIP

I’ve posted this some time back but I think it’s worth revisiting. It’s a longer video than usually post but shows how learning one thing leads to learning more things. We start off by understanding the principles of aikiage from a simple hand grab and expand that idea to punches. Note that this is not a “if he does this you can do this” video. This is a study in principle and integrating your body into any response you choose.

Aikido has its traditional methods of practicing technique. Most popular are the grabs we normally see. Can we glean any information from our grabbing technique and transfer that to punches? The answer is yes. Once we learn to integrate our bodies into technique honed from grabbing, we can now do the same but against punches. Here is a flow drill, henka waza, against strikes.

Understanding one principle leads to applications to another principle. At this point in the video I was getting tired and had a difficult time explaining how to get to kaiten-nage. Nage begins with six directions and aiki age. At contact, kuzushi is attained as we pull center (not the arm) and create a rolling affect with dan tien. Some may also call this macrocosmic orbit. This creates a downward motion in uke. And from there we can apply kaiten-nage. Note that I was starting and moving thru an awkward position in order to exaggerated my explanation for the video. We started practice from uke grabbing uchi te but you can see how the same principle transitions when uke punches. “To know one thing is to know ten thousand” - Musashi Miyamoto: Go Rin No Sho.

Still working on body integration .,, pulling within myself to create an aiki body. The hand movement is not a push but an un-bowing. And the same with the legs and the back. The combination of pulling and un-bowing creates an unbalancing force in uke. Note that nage’s hands can become a punch anytime in the technique. Also note that at the end of the video the uke called this “tori fune” which is the rowing exercise we do in aikido.

Let’s review a throw, katate dori uchi mawari. From contact you must attain kuzushi and keep it the entire time. Kuzushi also prevents the other hand from striking. Enter with an integrated body. Pull six directions as we create aiki age. Tenkan to create a void and allow uke to fall into the void.

This is an exercise on maintaining kuzushi. Keep touching your partner. This contact is feather light but can feel heavy on the receiving end.