An honest attack changes everything

Do I really want to split sensei’s head in two with my bokken?  Or pierce his abdomen with my jo?  Of course not!  But, if I don’t attack him with the sincerity of intention to do those things, I literally pull my punches and there is not much reason for him to respond since he knows nothing will happen.  Without an honest attack, there is no aikido.  I’ve always known that, but putting it into practice is difficult.

One of the situations where it’s obvious I’m pulling my punches is in some of the bokken katas or sword forms.  In Kato sensei’s system, ikkyo #1 omote starts with me as uke raising my sword to do a shomen strike that would split sensei’s head.  For years I’ve done that while simultaneously stepping back diagonally to my right to avoid what I know is coming next, sensei doing a tsuki or sword thrust to fill the space between us.  If we are both acting honestly, I have no reason to step back before his tsuki. and he has no reason to tsuki unless I am coming forward to strike.  What I had been doing, raising my sword to strike and stepping back simultaneously, may have looked good as a fluid dance step, but it made no sense martially and didn’t create the incentive for any aikido to happen.

Once I got that logic into my thinking, my ukemi changed and my relationship with sensei as nage changed dramatically.  Instead pf performing a series of dance steps facing each other, we connected in a way I never had before and each move and strike made sense.  I raised to strike, sensei entered with a tsuki to keep me from coming forward with the strike.  I stepped back diagonally to get off the line and out of his reach, then raised and struck again.  He blended with my strike, pivoted and blended as I struck again, then pivoted and finished me off.   Each of those moves made sense martially, evoked a response from the other person, and maintained the connection between us.

I know that sensei is skilled enough that I am not going to injure him even if I attack full force, but what about a less skilled partner, especially a beginner?   It’s still possible to attack honestly, if more slowly, in a way that will generate the right feeling and create aikido between us without injuring my partner.  If I can bring that same honesty of attack to all my partners and to everything we do in the dojo, I may be able to move my aikido to a different place than I’ve been up to this point.

The importance of distance or getting in close

I recently watched some videos of krav maga experts demonstrating disarming gun wielding attackers – one of many videos is http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xkgi58_krav-maga-gun-disarm_lifestyle?start=12.  The techniques they used look very much like techniques for disarming knife wielding attackers we practice in aikido.  One important principle in both the krav maga and aikido techniques is to move in very close to the attacker, which turns out to be the safest place to be.  That may seem counter intuitive, but puts you behind the weapon, not in front, and leaves the attacker few openings.

In many aikido techniques, it’s important to move in very close to the attacker and even change directions so that you move with instead of against your attacker.  When I am too far from sensei, I have no leverage at all as nage and he just smiles at me, but if I move in close on irimi nage, or shiho nage, or even a basic ikkyo omote, I can take his center and move him.

Training with beginners

Training with beginners challenges me in ways I never expected.   Several of the senior people in our dojo have been out of town or out sick with various maladies recently, so we’ve had more beginners than black belts in class since the new year.  One of the attractions of aikido for me is that people of all skill levels can train together safely and all get something out of it.  I now have to make that work for real as over the last few weeks I’ve rarely had the opportunity to train with another black belt, but mostly partnered with people who have only been in the dojo for a few weeks to months.  In addition, although I’ve had a black belt for a couple of years, I still feel like a beginner myself, even more so with the new emphasis on moving from the hips that has caused me to go back to basics in every technique.  In effect, when I train with beginners now, it’s really two beginners training together, both of us struggling to learn.

One of the problems for me working with beginners is that they often don’t know the forms well either as uke or nage.  On a relatively easy form such as ikkyo omote, they may have learned the basics and can follow fairly well, but on a more complex form such as shihonage, they get lost in the changes in direction and coordination of arms, legs, and hips.  O Sensei rarely explained and his followers learned by taking ukemi from him over and over until their bodies just got it right, but that was in Japan in another era decades ago and may not translate to the current generation of American learners.  So how should I work with beginners who don’t even know the forms ?  Is there some way to do it so I can still learn something myself?

Figuring out how to train with beginners so we both make progress has become a big part of my learning.  One stumbling block for me is that I sometimes can’t envision what my training partners should be doing either as uke or nage.  I also get so caught up in my own movements, that I lose the connection to my partner and, as a result, they lose the form entirely.  Someone more senior would adjust and draw me back in, but a beginner can’t do that.  As a result, I find that I have to pay even more attention to connection when I train with beginners so they can feel my energy more clearly.  I also have to keep my awareness far out beyond myself so I can feel what they are doing and bring them in.  When I remember to include my partners that way, my aikido improves and so does theirs.