Something interesting today

It has been a rather eventful week before and it looks as if this week will be more "eventful". Training goes on as usual. C took the class tonight and just before class started he was sharing with me something he learnt about executing a yokomenuchi attack. He asked me to execute a yokomenuchi. As I move forward with my tegatana C proceeded to raise his arm straight at me with a fist. I was taken aback and could not finish my attack as I was contrained to block the punch. Hmmmm. So C explained to me why there would be no point in him receive my yokomenuchi. It is the same for katatedori and morotedori. I was in his direct line of attack. That was a good reminder. We explored on this a little bit more after class and N pitched in and we discussed about whether it would make a difference if we it was static compared to irimi-tenkan. It was a good discussion and I realized that we seemed to be doing it abit more after we became yudansha. Truly, this is where we begin to learn about aikido.

Taking C's class is always interesting. He makes the effort to put some life into training (otherwise it is usually very serious and...well serious). I am not saying that he plays around during training but its a different perspective. We paired up for our ukemi and kaiten ukemi practice (which is usually done solo) and that gives us a feel of taking ukemi with a partner. Doing ukemi on your own is good but I feel that at some stage you will need to "feel" the taking of ukemi. 

We first trained generally with our kyu partners on shomenuchi dai nikkyo. J was a little stiff which makes him more prone to kuzushi than others. I am probably not articulating this properly but i hope you get what I mean. As for S, he was abit tense which made it difficult for him to taken ukemi in urawaza. He seemed to be in great fear of the arm lock as it would end up being very very stiff. I would ask him to relax him arm and let fall as if it was asleep. I never imagined me telling others to relax because I used to get that alot from most senseis. Hahaha.

We did some techniques with dual attacks. Firstly katatedori with shomenuchi and secondly katadori with shomenuchi. Moving from dealing with just one attack to two made me a little unsure and haphazard. It is new to me so I have to make sure we practice practice and practice. As I practice I realized that I can now better relate to blending and kuzushi. The need to recover your balance is indeed very important (it is an interactive endeavour after all). Sometimes I wonder at what point is it that you submit to the technique? Do you keep coming back up until there is absolutely no way to or do you discern for yourself whether it is practical for you to do so?

Maybe we will discuss that at our next training session. 

It was a good tiring session and I am off to bed once I get some nom nom to satisfy my wailing stomach. Good night!