Kaze Uta Budo Kai Forum Archive

Deanna's teaching at Uptown Aikido often emphasizes the importance of hip rotation when stepping. Being mathematically oriented, I asked myself, "how much can we accomplish using JUST hip rotation -- no leg swing at all?" After about 6 months of walking around in a daze staring at my feet, here are two posts with some conclusions. Take a look, give it a try, let me know what you think!

walking with hip rotations

walking forward

(note -- The animations require Silverlight, which in turn requires a fairly recent version of either Internet Explorer or Safari.)

(*crickets chirping*)

OK gang, give it to me straight and tell me where you last saw my taillights before I disappeared into the forest ...

Too obvious? Too abstract? Doesn't seem relevant? Is Silverlight a dealbreaker?

I installed Silverlight on my PC this morning using Firefox. I can view the animations under Firefox. I need more brain power to look at it than what I had available this morning.

Hey, thanks Kyle! It's good to know that somebody at Microsoft (or Mozilla?) got around to implementing Firefox support, and I appreciate you sacrificing your computer as a guinea pig.

(I use Microsoft tools at work all week, so when the weekend comes around I can move a lot faster with the same thing than, say, trying to switch gears and remember how Flash works. But I have wondered if I should just take a screencast and publish that instead.)

These are some neat ideas you present Eric. I think Eric Pearson at KyuRyu AikiBudo in Austin had experimented with some hip turning actions in recent months as well.

I think it's interesting that you're looking at the opening/closing action in the hip as either a preparatory action, compared to a terminal action. The graphics, in my opinion, clearly demonstrate the ideas that you're working on. The opening/closing actions from the hips are a very powerful deal.

I tend to use a closing action of the advancing hip as a setup for my advancing osoto-gari, as well as many other places during Aikido & Judo class. The hip actions can be really sneaky during Aikido toshu-randori 😉