New Stuff

Occasionally there is a class where I don’t recognize a technique. I just took a class Thursday where I didn’t recognize any techniques. It was taught by Ernie L. One technique I remember distinctly was a kaitenage where the entrance was new to me. The entrance was for a shomenuchi. When the hand is coming down the nage goes to the ura side of the body, but the hand slips in between the head and arm of the attacker. The footwork the nage does is a slide forward to the outside and then a tenkan, which by the leverage brings uke down into kaitenage. Ernie then showed us the same move with a sword. Basically the nage would attack as uke raises the sword and uke gets beheaded as the sword comes down and nage moves out of the way.

The rest were fairly complicated. The most simple was when the attacker comes down with a shomenuchi and nage grabs thier fingers in sort of a reverse sankyo, which makes uke faceplant the mat. I’ve heard of Sugano Sensei doing that particular technique from yokomenuchi.

One entrance took me and my partner ten minutes to figure out. That was after the teacher came by twice to show us. We both felt really dumb. I’m okay with that though. It seems to happen frequently up here. The technique was some sort of direct nikkyo pin from shomenuchi. The whole technique felt backwards. There’s no way I can explain this one. All I can say is its hard because, in my mind, the elbow shouldn’t bend the way it does in this technique.

The last was a choke, again from shomenuchi. It was really cool because I didn’t think I was doing it right and then my partner said he almost passed out. It was more a sleepers hold than anything else.

It is very cold here in New York. I don’t want to go out much, even to get food. I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel. Y’all should send me a package of food. Good luck with the new dojo!

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Published:
1.17.09 / 3pm
Category:
Aikido