Kaze Uta Budo Kai Forum Archive

Interesting way to throw a punch, explains why Fedor has had so many hand injuries.

I've played around with that punch on the heavy bag from time to time. Obviously Fedor has a lot of success with it, and it is interesting, but uke has a window to land a jab (mirror hand) during delivery... or shomen ate. The guy in the video talks about guarding his chin with the leading shoulder, but it doesn't change the fact that he is leading his punch with his head, and even a light jab would be pretty disruptive.

Oh, and looking at the video again, I realized that tori is fighting left handed, but uke is fighting right handed, so this looks a little more appropriate b/c tori is throwing the casting punch w/ his left, and uke doesn't have much of an opening to land a jab with his leading hand, however a straight right or right hook would basically blow up tori.

Windsong's videos need more electric guitar, that's what I learned.

Maybe we'll hire a band to play while we demo

nick lowry wrote:Maybe we'll hire a band to play while we demo

how about a mariachi band?

p

Speaking of music... There's an aikido dojo from Israel I follow on FB that has a special class once a week where they turn down the lights or get candles, play music and just move and do some aikido. I've always wondered what that would be like, for judo, too. What kind of music would you play? Jazz for aikido? Rock for judo? Hmmm...

there was a time a few years back that i would been horrified byt the idea of doing aikido to musical accompaniment. I am still scandalized by the idea though i think it would be cool.

This sort of brings to mind the topic of how much time do we spend learning aikido and how much time do we spend actually doing aikido?

I think typically we tend to spend almost 100% of our time actively engaged in learning trying to get better. we don't play much. it'd be kinda nice to just do some aikido for a change.

in other art forms you don't see as much of people forever practicing and honing without performing. you don't see painters that start out every painting session by making 100 of each type of brush stroke they know how to do. students of painting might do an exercise like that but eventually they leave that sort of exercise behind and they just paint.


how often do you just aiki?

nick lowry wrote:Maybe we'll hire a band to play while we demo

If we hire a band, it needs to be The Books. Something so off the wall people are just like.....well just watch the video.

Patrick Parker wrote:

how often do you just aiki?

Not quite sure what you mean by just aiki, but if you mean just randori at a faster than normal pace where nobody cares what happens/knows whats gonna happen and just 'plays'....for me probably a couple times a month.

Patrick Parker wrote:in other art forms you don't see as much of people forever practicing and honing without performing.

You should try Iaido.... 😂

Seriously, what do you want? Shiai? Find the worst neighborhood, walk into a biker bar and tell them their momma voted for Obama? Every instant of your practice should be doing aiki with every fibre of your being. That's why Ueshiba was so impressive, and why he was so rough when his students were rough, and why they all came away with different pieces of the elephant. In modern Aikido, like Iaido or marksmanship, the performing is in the form of public demonstrations. That is an opportunity to show what you are doing, under pressure, without analyzing, studying, improving. One shot, one life.

no, i'm not talking about wanting shiai. and i see what you mean about living aiki, but certainly most of us don't get that far into the art.

what i'm talking about "learning aikido" vs. "doing aiki" is what sort of mode we're in. i dont know about y'all, but in my classes the vast, vast majority of it is doing a handful of reps of some drill or technique and discussing and honing and rewinding and analyzing and reworking and rethinking and taking a video and playing it back over and over and... That's not doing aiki. that is learning aikido - trying to figure out what aiki is and how to do it.

you are right about in modern aikido, most performance is in the context of public demo, and that is a context that we get minimal exposure to.

I've never met an aikidoka that I could discern was doing aikido during every minute of practice with all of their being in the moment, etc...


maybe an adequate analogy would be Bible study. I try to study the Bible but when I use a study bible with footnotes and critical essays and etc... I find it is way too easy to get off track and get to reading about the bible without really reading the bible itself. for that reason i got a plain-ole bible with no footnotes or essays, etc... to distract me from actually studying the text.

in the same way, in most aikido classes we do a little meta-aikido for a couple of minutes, then we analyze what just happened, make a plan, and do some more meta-aikido. we are learning about aikido (or about our system of teaching aikido) without ever just doing.

Patrick Parker wrote:I've never met an aikidoka that I could discern was doing aikido during every minute of practice with all of their being in the moment, etc...

me neither, this speaker included! we just get little glimpses of losing ourselves

Patrick Parker wrote:I try to study the Bible but when I use a study bible with footnotes and critical essays and etc... I find it is way too easy to get off track and get to reading about the bible without really reading the bible itself. for that reason i got a plain-ole bible with no footnotes or essays, etc... to distract me from actually studying the text.

one of my favourite quotes: "Always preach the gospel... and sometimes use words."

Patrick Parker wrote:there was a time a few years back that i would been horrified byt the idea of doing aikido to musical accompaniment. I am still scandalized by the idea though i think it would be cool.

This sort of brings to mind the topic of how much time do we spend learning aikido and how much time do we spend actually doing aikido?

I think typically we tend to spend almost 100% of our time actively engaged in learning trying to get better. we don't play much. it'd be kinda nice to just do some aikido for a change.

in other art forms you don't see as much of people forever practicing and honing without performing. you don't see painters that start out every painting session by making 100 of each type of brush stroke they know how to do. students of painting might do an exercise like that but eventually they leave that sort of exercise behind and they just paint.


how often do you just aiki?

This is an interesting question.

Allow me to shift arts. How much time do I spend learning guitar versus actually playing guitar?

Sure, there are scales and different chords and such. You learn and learn and learn, and then, as if miraculously, one day you just play. It comes out of you effortlessly.

Now, when I'm playing with friends we always warm up, just to get the fingers loosened up a bit -- arthritis does that ya know 😉 But, once we're actually in the groove, strumming along, it's all easy.

Learning to change from a C-chord to an F-chord takes a lot of practice. But, once you've put the practice in it becomes automatic. I'm working on learning a new Alice In Chains song, and they play some chords I'm not used to. So, I'm stuck in practice/learning mode until I actually have it. I can pull the main song out with no problem, but once they go into the chorus they are playing chords I'm not used to, and haven't practiced as much, so it isn't as smooth or as fast as it needs to be.

So, I guess you practice until you play. Then you play until you discover you need to practice.

Kyle Sloan wrote:I guess you practice until you play. Then you play until you discover you need to practice.

Genius.

Kyle Sloan wrote:So, I guess you practice until you play. Then you play until you discover you need to practice.

That is outstanding...