Rubbish Ukemi is Rubbish

In training I have a tendency to think that when I can't do a technique on a paticular partner, my aikido is rubbish. It must be, I can't perform the wrist lock! What gives?

Yet when I step back away from my own frustration I realize that I am standing behind my partner, having entered as they attack, focusing on trying to put a pin on his arm when he's stood there facing away from me.

Now from a martial perspective this is called rubbish ukemi. One should never, ever take ones eyes off one's partner for you never know what they will do. The moment you disconnect is the moment you have given up.

Standing behind someone who is not trying to turn and face you or hit you there is no need to do a technique, you walk away. Standing behind someone who knows better, they will come around as fast as they can to face you, you then take their body movement and go with it and a technique happens naturally.

Performing rubbish ukemi means you don't get stretched and worked out and you frustrate you partner if they don't know any better. Performing rubbish ukemi on the wrong person or worse still, out of habit in a proper fight, get's painful and dangerous. Someday you will meet a real dragon, and what then?

Always look at your partner.

Backwards Ukemi

Just back from the dojo - another night of the freezing toes at the wildpark.
I am currently vexed by the 'new' backwards ukemi - it feels terrible crashing in a heap on the ground and half arsedly slapping the mats. My head is knocked sideways, my hips hit the mats, I get up unsteadily! It's not fighting!

And yet, I watch Tom Helsby doing it and it looks like fighting, it looks right. I saw so many aikidoka at the weekend doing it properly (and so many not) that I am just going to have to get it down. I'm trying not to think about how many years I've spent so far trying to get forward rolls down!

I think after tonight's practice that I have an idea what I am doing wrong. Like in the forward and standard backwards rolls, there is a circle that needs to be made with the arms, like the rim of a wheel. I have this pretty much down with the flying version of this new ukemi, I need now to reduce that architecture down into the more compact version.

Keiko keiko keiko...

Sugawara Sensei, Edinburgh

Just back from Edinburgh and a two day course with Sugawara Sensei, a Hombu Shihan.
My thanks to Neil Blacknell of Azami Kai Aikido for organizing and translating.

Sugawara Sensei is amazing. Lovely to see him taking ukemi towards the end of the course, right up on the balls of his feet, bouncing around almost - reminded me very much of footage I've seen of Goza Shioda Sensei.

I found that whenever he came round to me it was my ukemi he was correcting. And there was me taking pride in my good ukemi! Always comes before the fall. Aside though from minor corrections in how I take ukemi the thing I noticed from the two days was the almost complete lack of forward rolls. The 'new' backwards ukemi seems to have replaced it almost entirely. And I must admit this saddens me to some extent as I do like to fly away from a strong technique and bounce back up. I believe that is the point though, the flying away from your partner is not fighting. Keeping contact all the way down through the eyes is martially better maybe?

Who knows? I'm thinking maybe the 7th dan Shihan from the weekend who teaches the Tokyo riot police knows a thing or two more than me so I'll shut up and listen and try to do better!

Another point I really liked about ukemi was uke keeps his focus aimed straight at his partner's centre as long as he can, every chance he can, turn, face tori's centre.

On the other side, techniques that is, he spent alot of time stressing the basics and, for me, revealing the stuff I've forgotten because it's so basic. One's hands should never move outside of this rather small locus from the top of the head down and out to either hips and never extended too far out from the body. Sensei's hands never left this space and every technique he did was fast, powerful, unstoppable and looked amazingly easy! The effortless power referred to so often in the martial arts.

Every entering move went straight for the jugular, so to speak. There is no consideration for the limb being swung towards you, just straight in for the centre of the person attacking and then move from there.

Looking forward to getting back on the mats and practicing what I or my body remembers from the weekend and passing it on.

Ukemi

The practice of Ukemi is, in my limited understanding, the most important part of Aikido practice. This is where you attack your partner and allow them to perform a technique. You lend your body to them if you like, generously and with a big spirit.

If the technique is performed in a fluid, more advanced way than you are literally sucked in and projected back out again. It's a fascinating feeling, sort of like accelerating to the crest of a steep hill before freewheeling down the other side. If the technique is performed staccato, when your partner is figuring out the technical movements, then you allow yourself to be lead, whilst always maintaining a good healthy posture, and a good all round awareness.

My teacher has been saying for some months now, look past your partner's fingers as you take ukemi. Follow the energy that is projecting from his/her fingertips. I feel like I finally got what he's been saying about this last night practicing one of the last techniques, Irimi Nage. You attack, allow yourself to be taken and then follow your partners fingers with your eyes. They sink, you sink, they raise up, you follow, they turn, you turn. Instead of following your partner and thinking, 'Oh what's happening now, this isn't the way the technique should be done, I'd do it othrewise... etc', you end up simply following the line of the fingers, the energy of your partner's movement and much less thought is involved. A flow happens.

The less thought is involved in Aikido practice, the better. It's much like music. You get the basic forms, practice and think about them alot, then you try to throw that away ('cut off your legs' as they say in Japan) and go for flow. Technique does indeed seem to be the last 5% of the action.

In the end it all comes down to the same thing - Ukemi, losing oneself. Opening yourself up to your partner, to life, to the flow, accepting whatever happens and not resisting. Apply it to whatever you want.