Visit to Low sensei's class

From left to right, Low sensei, Andrew, Richard, Hui, Tong, Bryan and myself


With Low sensei, President/Chief Instructor of MAA at its HQ dojo at Jalan Scotts. Sensei is also part of MAA's National Teaching & Technical Commitee

After a week of being aikido class-less it was good to be in class again. My first session was at UKAY aikido dojo which was conducted jointly by Hafiz and Zizi sensei. Having fun I visited Low sensei on Monday night at the MAA HQ dojo in Jalan Scotts. Low sensei started with kokyu exercises, tai sabaki and tai no henko. Sensei placed emphasis on ukemi and refreshed my memory of the ukemi that he taught at Sugani Shihan's seminar in July this year. Taking ukemi in the traditional manner could eventually be hard to do as an aikidoka advence in age and sensei showed us how ukemi can be done to reduce impact to the body. We practiced taking ukemi with nage using a jo and uke would attempt to grab the nage's jo by the other end. The first time nage will move before the jo is grabbed and uke takes the ukemi. The second time around the uke grabs the jo and the nage moves with the jo for the uke to take a yoko ushiro kaiten ukemi. I had a very big problem doing it so its back to more training. Come to think of it my ukemi does need alot more work.

We moved on to kihonwaza thereafter and started with shomenuchi dai ikkyo. What struck me as different in this class is the way the nage takes the shomen from the uke. In this class the nage practices to have a hard shomen to "receive" the uke's shomen. We were told not to grab the uke's shomen by the wrist. The kamae taken is gyaku hanmi and initially it caused some confusion on my part. Luckily my aite were patient with me. I also got a tip on how to bend the uke's arm for nikkyo ura. As someone who's gotten comfortable in a certain way of learning it was a good change for me. I am always reminded to empty my glass for every class that I go to and I hopefully I can take back something I learnt back home with me to share with others.

I enjoyed the practice and company and hope to make more trips back to the dojo.

PS: to know more about the japanese terms that I used in this blog please go here.