New location!!
I'm happy to announce that we will return to training this Monday, December 1 at Gold's gym on Airport road in Roanoke.  If you're familiar with the Roanoke area it's in the building on top of the hill behind the DMV at Crossroads mall.  Classes are free when you join Gold's gym so you get access to the gym and aikido for about the same price as tuition at the old dojo.  Classes are Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 7:30-9:00 pm and on Sunday from 4:00-5:30pm.  As always, I'll be teaching the Sunday classes and picking up classes as needed during the week.  I feel that moving to Gold's will be a boon to the school as it will give us more access to the public that may, otherwise, never realize that Nihon Goshin Aikido even exists, let alone how dynamic it is.  If you're a current student of the school I look forward to seeing you again.  If you're not a student but are interested in joining then I hope to see you on the mat soon.

Leaves in the stream

 

     As we train in aikido we are constantly reminded to “go with the flow” or “just feel the energy and go with it”.  These admonishments should follow us into our daily lives.  Resisting can often be futile and wasteful of precious energy.  It can often make you miss opportunities that arise.  You must be a leaf in the stream as the saying goes.  This is what we’re doing here at the Roanoke Valley Aikido school.  Our path has led us away from the building that we’ve used for over a half decade.  We’re closing our doors for the month of November to give folks time to recover from nagging injuries, spend time with family during the holiday and recommit themselves to this path of life we’ve all chosen.  When we re-open it will be in a new location and we are hoping that the new location will introduce us to a whole new group of students  to join in with us and bring new energy to the dojo.  Stay tuned to the web site and this blog for updates on how the transition is going!  We hope to see you all at our new location.

 

Jeff

Keep on movin’!

 

     The single most important part of any martial art is that group of techniques/theories known as the basics.  As part of our warm up at the beginning of every class includes many of the basics.  We do our wrist stretches which double as a way to program your hands to grip another persons hand for a technique.  We do basic falls and rolls as well.  One of the other basics that needs to be worked every time you work technique is blending.  The concept of blending is to meet your attacker half way in his movement to you, match his speed and accept his energy and then take control of that energy to redirect it in the way that you want to take it for technique.  Waiting until the attack has been launched is too late.  Moving too soon gives your attacker time to adjust their attack. Finding the balance between too late and too early is the true trick to working blending drills.  It can be done it just takes, like everything else in aikido, plenty of time and work.

Staying on your feet, going to the ground and dirty tricks:

This past Sunday saw the Roanoke Valley Aikido School class looking somewhat like a Brazilian jiu-jitsu class.  With the advent of MMA on television, much like the ninja boom of the eighties and the karate boom before that, many folks become convinced that they can perform the techniques they see on television by simply soaking up what they see from the sofa.  What this translates to for those in the martial sciences is the need to defend against yet another style of aggressor… the wanna be grappler.  Sunday was the day for working on take down defense, using aikido technique once on the ground, applying aikido theory to ground fighting and dirty tricks once there.  Self defense isn’t a “fight”.  A “fight” implies that there are a set of rules and some one gets their hand raised at the end.  Self defense is combat, pure and simple.  It’s an entirely different mindset.  There are no rules.  There is no honor system.  If you find yourself pinned to the ground with someone on top of you trying to take your life there is nothing in the world stopping you from gouging his/her eyes out…except your own preconceived notions about self defense.  The criminal is counting on your civility to allow him to do as he wants with/to you.  Treat him to a surprise.  Let him know, once he has refused to be dissuaded from attacking, that you understand the difference between a fight and combat.

 

Jeff

Sharing the art.

 

     A couple of times each year our dojo makes a trip to a local college to share our art with the colleges’ karate students.  The karate students are part of a one semester course as part of their elective credit requirement.  We’ve always had a great time with these folks.  This past Wednesday was the trip for this semester.  It was a good turn out with about ten students from our dojo available to help the karate students through their paces.  As always the class was run much like a beginner’s class at our dojo.  We started with basic ukemi (falls and rolls) and moved on to a few white belt techniques from both the classic and the application format.  McCraw Sensei demonstrated quite a few techniques with Erica so that the college students could have an idea of some of the more dynamic techniques in Nihon Goshin Aikido.  We look forward to our next trip to the college to share our art with others

Have you hugged your uke today?

Have you hugged your uke today?

Cute bumper sticker… and one of the core philosophies of aikido technique.  Proper distance is important in all martial arts.  Those styles that rely on the punch or kick need a certain amount of distance in which to deliver the strike. Aikido is an up close and personal art form.  The idea is that you are using your center to dominate or impose your will upon an attacker.  To do this you must be “cheek by jowl” for many techniques in aikido to be properly executed.  The leg sweep, for example, requires that your rib cage and uke’s rib cage be touching during the rotation for the technique to work most efficiently.  Other techniques will be dictated by the distance between nage and uke during the blend.  The Pivot Take Down (shiho-nage) is designed to be used when the blend takes you in very close to uke.  If the energy of the technique puts just a few more inches between nage and uke then it’s a simple transition to the Peel Off technique.  The body movements are the same for both techniques.  It’s the distance between parties which will determine the technique.  There is a huge laundry list of things that need to be taken into consideration when doing any technique and these things will, with time and practice, come instinctively and distance is just one of the things on that list.  The next time you’re working a technique and it just doesn’t feel quite right slow down the pace and check out the distance between yourself and uke.  Who doesn’t like a hug?! :P

Potty Training!

Yes, potty training...in the dojo.  We were discussing your most vulnerable moments in the world where self defense could become a factor.  Inevitably the subject of using a public restroom came up.  The first drill we worked was standing about a foot from the wall, head down, hands at our crotch.  For the guys it was the obvious urinal position.  For the ladies it was the rinsing a contact lens position.  The attacker woud pin you to the wall with one hand and reach for your hip to take your wallet with the other or simpy pin you and start flailing at you.  Interesting drill.  Kind of a good wake-up call to those that go through life with their head down. 

The second drill was sitting in a chair as if you were on the seat of a public toilet...no hovering, ladies.  The rule was that if one of your feet moved they both had to move.  Why?  'Cause your pants would be tieing up your ankles.  The attacker would simulate kicking in your stall door and then either attempt to punch you in the face or reach for you to drag you out.   We only broke one chair during the drill so I'll call it a success.

Jeff

The importance of "being"

I've had a long run of either being the instructor or being the senior student in class and finding myself in more of a teaching role than that of student.  I love it.  I learn a great deal from teaching that I don't think would click from doing the technique on my own.  These past two or three classes, though, we've been lucky enough to have several of our yudansha be able to attend.  This has put me in the position of being just another student in the mix.  I had forgotten just how free-ing it is to not have the pressure of teaching on you while you're in the dojo.  I could just relax and "be" a student.  My movement felt smoother, my technique wasn't forced, my speed matched uke's better.  They were the most fun classes I can remember having in awhile.  Last Sunday was my day to teach again.  As class ended, I realized that I'd really had a lot of fun there as well.  I hadn't had stray thoughts running through my head.  I found my self grinning when one of my students got a technique right or made an improvement over their last try.  There I was just "being" an instructor.  I thought about this at work this past week.  How much more enjoyable is life when we can just "be" in the moment?  I am endeavoring to just "be" in what ever situation I find myself now.  That's not always the easiest thing to do when there are a thousand things a day to think about.  Little by little, my friends.  I challenge each of you that reads this to attempt to just "be" in the moment and let me know if it doesn't bring so much more into clarity for you.  I wish you all the best of luck in this as I know that this revelation has added a depth of joy to my life that I'd been missing.

Jeff

First and foremost I want to welcome our two newest members to the school.  Marcus and Brian joined us tonight.  I have to say that both of these guys really seemed to pick up on falls and rolls a lot quicker than you’d expect from folks that had never studied aikido before.  As is customary when we have a new student we spent the first half of class after the warm up working on basic rolls and falls from various heights.  It helps to start from your knees when learning to do the falls and rolls so that you don’t have so far to fall.  From the knees to a squatting position and then on to the full standing start.  I’ve been at this for right at 5 years and still enjoy doing this type of class.  It really allows me to see where I may have a bit of a rough spot.  From basic falls and rolls we moved on to the other absolute basic component of aikido…blending.  From blending on to First Wrist Technique (a form of a sankyo lock) in it’s classic form.  Once we’d had a chance to get the hang of how the lock worked we moved to a bit of slow application for the technique.  A great class all around.

 

Jeff

The past week has seen flowing, blending, and details, details, details.  Getting in close with an attacker and still being able to flow instead of allowing the altercation to become “dirty boxing” is something that takes a great deal of work.  Wednesday saw us training from the clench and working on flowing with that tight energy that you’ll find from that distance.

 

Saturday was our monthly advanced class for I-kyu and the yodansha.  This month we concentrated on the minutia of classic technique.  Classic for us would equate closely to kata in a karate curriculum.  Two hours of work for seven techniques allows for a great number of repetitions and plenty of  “ah-ha” moments of the very small details of these techniques.

 

Sunday was our monthly street clothes training.  It’s a very different feeling when you try to move in shoes than barefoot.  This month we worked on the uppercut to the bread basket utilizing a very blending version of shiho-nage and it’s more staccato variant.  We also dealt with the jab and how to defend against it.

 

Monday night was about relaxing during technique and allowing the energy to flow rather than getting so tense and muscling technique.  It’s easier said than done, even in the dojo with a partner you trust.  This shows the importance of “pressure” testing technique or running attack lines to the point of exhaustion.  When you are physically spent you must react in a relaxed fashion because your muscles have already packed up and gone home for the night. J