Charles Krause: Personal Snippets, News, Triva, and Thoughts

Well, if there’s anyone actually reading any of this, you might notice that there was no “Aikido Week #2″ post. That was mostly because week #2 was a wash-out. I went to the Aiki-Jo practice on the Tuesday, but for one reason, or another (mostly laziness and caving to muscle and joint pain), I didn’t go during the week, and because of the Canadian Victoria Day long weekend, the dojo was closed over the weekend. So Aikido Week #2 consisted of a single Aiki-jo class and nothing else.

However, I screwed up my resolution and threw myself into practice this week: I made it to the Tuesday Jo practice, the beginner’s classes (since I’m only one of two beginners in the dojo right now, they’re closer to be “Basics Technique Review” classes, but it is where the beginner’s tend to cluster) on Wednesday and Thursday. I sat out Friday’s class (which as it is a class that concentrates on Ukemi, I really should have made it too, but my knees really did hurt Friday), but today (Saturday) I managed to make it to both Bokken practice and my first “All Levels” class. It’s getting more and more addicting. I think that, at least for awhile, I’ll probably be going as often as my knees and muscles will allow me

I’m not going to run through lists of snippets I’ve managed to pick up, like I did last time. Yes, I’m still being bathed in a bewildering sea of techniques, with individual techniques coming up again and again, and yes, some of them are starting to stick in both mental and muscle memory (at last). However, the most educational thing about this week wasn’t physical so much as mental.

I’m finding that to learn effectively I’m having to learn to observe very carefully. Not only do I need to observe the techniques being shown to me and try and replicate them with and on a partner, I’m having to observe myself. I’m not particularly good at observing and replicating techniques, and I’m not sure I’m liking what I’m seeing in observing myself.

Firstly, there’s frustration. Aikido is very frustrating for me. I’m not particularly good at picking up even what is going on in a technique, much less how to do it. Sure I’m just beginning. Sure this is a skill that requires development, just like anything else. Sure I’ve gotten better at it even in the few weeks I’ve been observing. But ego rears its ugly head: “I should be picking this up faster!”, right? And I have to ask myself “why?”. I knew going in that I wasn’t particularly physically oriented. Getting frustrated just blocks my ability to actually learn; I spend more energy being pissed off at myself for not “getting it” than I am trying to “get” it. Stopping for a second to clear my head – and my ego – and get back to something productive sure helps, but I keep falling back into that trap.

If that wasn’t enough, everyone I’ve mentioned this to has come back with the same response: frustration never goes away. No one seems to ever be happy with their Aikido (at least not all the time). As you ability increases, your standards, and demands for exactness increase, and increase faster than your ability to expand to meet them. Hence, even a 6th Dan black belt is still striving, still annoyed that his body can’t quite reach the demands of his mind and ambition.

Secondly, there’s pain. Aikido hurts. I’m almost 40, I’m coming off a span of years where I was 70lbs heavier than I am now, and it has been over 20 years since I even tried a martial art. My body just isn’t used to this. And from what I’ve been able to glean from talking to other people at the dojo, Aikido never stops hurting. What hurts today won’t hurt in a couple of months, but by then I’ll have moved on to pushing different limits and envelopes, and a whole new vista of aches and pains will have opened up, and so on. What’s important is recognizing the different betweens aches and pains of stress and stretching and the sharp pain of chronic damage. The one you just suck up and move on, the other actually has to be stopped, taken care of, and dealt with. I’m learning to sort them out – or at least realize that I probably haven’t (yet) run into any of the second kind yet, so I should probably just shut up and work through, or with, or in spite of, the pain in joints and muscles.

There there’s the guilt. I’m new. I need more help than anyone else right now. In Aikido we’re partnered up to practice techniques – and we rotate partners with each technique. But because I’m new, and learning to observe, and slow, my partners end up devoting more time to teaching me the technique than getting to practice it. I don’t see a way out of this yet – but I do feel guilty about it. People are there to practice their own techniques, not mine. Still, I have to say that I have yet to run across anyone who seems to resent it at all. People keep saying to me “hey, I was a beginner once as well – I know what you’re going through”, and “it does help to stop and explain it to someone in basic detail – it helps highlight the mistakes I am making in my own technique as well”. I’m getting a fair amount of help, and I guess the only way for me to deal with it is to work hard at learning the techniques, and learning how to learn the techniques just from observing them; If I feel guilty about the extra effort being expended on me, then strive to get to a point where it doesn’t have to be expended on me any more.

It isn’t all doom and gloom though! Aikido is fun! And Aikido is satisfying. Despite the pain and the frustration, I’m actually having fun, there’s a sense of glee and lasting satisfaction when something works and you do something right. Like I said, it’s getting more and more addicting.

Aikido can be funny. Yes, I said funny. There have been a number of small events that I’ve found humorous – sometimes at my expense because I’m an awkward beginner, but not always, and never meant in an unkind fashion. humorous moments that stick in mind:

• (said to me) That would be a really impressive technique if you had been trying to do that on purpose
• (said to me) Well … that’s the beginning of the Ura (from behind) form of the technique, which isn’t what we’re doing, and we haven’t shown you it yet, but you’re doing it correctly so far. If you’re going to do the wrong technique at least you’re doing it well.
• Sensei Zimmermann stopped in the middle of a wrist lock technique demonstration to meticulously roll up the sleeve on the gi of his uke so we could see exactly what he was doing. He looked out at the class and said, perfetly deadpan, “this is not part of the technique”.
• Sensei Zimmermann demonstrating a particular throw, “and don’t do this (lifting back leg for balance as he throws his uke backwards) or you look like a flamingo”

I’ve gotten an awful lot of direct and very patient help directly from Sensei Zimmermann as well. Things that he’s said to me, and events that stick in mind.

• “Open hands, always open hands”
• As my practice partner is making a Shomenuchi cut with the bokken down towards the top of my head as last cut of the practice technique we’re learnng: “Don’t close your eyes, he’s making a beautiful cut, you don’t want to miss it!”
• just after partnering up with me for a wrist lock practice drill (we had an odd number of students that class, he partnered up with the odd student in rotation): “This is going to hurt a bit”, to which I responded, “I know”, he grinned and said, “You say that now …”
• “Relax, let the wrist stretch out”
• “Breath, or you’re going to turn green”
• “Bear down harder! I’m starting to feel something,”

When it’s all said and done, despite the pain, the frustration, the having to learn a new way to observe, and learn, and having to reprogram how I deal not only with physical situations, buy my own mental attitudes and responses, I’m really enjoying Aikido.

I think I’m extraordinarily fortunate in finding a really good teacher (with a slightly quirky sense of humor which suits me fine), and a great group of fellow students.

I’ll write more next time about weapons practice, which not only is a joy in and of itself, but is amazingly helpful in working out basic techniques and footwork for “regular” Aikido.

Well, it has been one week of Aikido. That is, 3 basic Aikido technique classes (moving the body) and one Aiki-ken (moving a sword) class. I still havn’t made it to the Aiki-jō class (moving a long staff), but that’s next Tuesday.

Apart from discovering aches and pains in muscles I didn’t even know I had, I’m having a great time. It is all pretty overwhelming. The general instruction strategy seems to be that they throw an entire block of technique at you at once. They don’t expect you to pick it up all at once though. They do seem to throw the same block of technique at you each and every class, and you pick up a little bit of it each time. Sensei Zimmermann keeps saying, “we’ll show you ten things; you’re doing well if you manage to remember one”. He also says, “it’s all actually getting stored away in there. Learning to retrieve it is harder”.

I’ve been very pleased with the groups general attitude toward beginners. I’ve met a number of very patient people. It helps that it seems to be a practice to attach newer people to a practice pair in rotation with the other two, rather than just pairing people off. That way the “new person” tends to get the technique explained to them twice, gets to practice (sometimes an abbreviated form of the technique), and the more experienced students still get “actual” practice on each other as well.

Things I’ve noted/jotted down this week:

General

• The style of Aikido taught by Toronto Aikikai is the Aikikai “style” as practiced and taught by Mitsunari Kanai. Thus Toronto Aikikai as associated with the Aikikai Foundation in Japan.
• “Slow down, go faster”. That isn’t some Japanese grand master martial artist, that’s my Father, but it seems to be especially apt in Aikido training.
• On the flip side, don’t let going slow let you stop either. Push as hard as you can, without letting the pushing mess up the results
• You can tell a whole lot about mistakes you’re making in technique by listening to, and looking at, your body the next day. “That bruise is because I didn’t roll on my arm properly during forward Ukemi (the art of falling down/being thrown and not getting injured in the process, and being able to roll back up quickly) and smacked my shoulder into the mat. My neck hurts because I’m not tucking my head far enough away from the forward roll. That hip pain is because you were stupid enough to try Ukemi on your own without warming up first!” etc.
• Learn to mirror the technique being presented to you by the teacher, not match it. Trying to match them head on gets the left and right backwards.
• Knowing all of this intellectually does not translate into being able to do it properly! But it does allow you to observe and critique your own techniques, correct mistakes, and try again. Hopefully.
• Having someone observe and correct your technique is valuable, but it it important to learn how to observe, critique, and correct your own technique as well.
• Learn to stretch, learn to bend, work on flexibility! A daily regime of stretching exercises is a good idea. Replicate the warm up exercises at home as much as possible.
• Ego really doesn’t have much place in a dojo. So what if you have to be shown something 5 times? Does it really matter if someone has to show you how to dress properly again (how to wear a Gi 101)? If you don’t know something, how about just being quiet and listen to someone teach it.
• Likewise, don’t be overly attached to quickly over attached to learning everything quickly to fill a perceived “knowledge gap”; I’m not trying to “catch up”, I’m trying to learn at my own pace. This doesn’t mean I can relax and take it easy; I think I should push as hard as I can without the effort starting to screw up the results, both in learning techniques and with my physical conditioning. But the only person against whom I should be gauging and judging progress against is myself.
• If I just can’t let go of the ego thing when I seem to be particularly dense picking up a movement, I have to remember that people have had that problem before, some of them are (or have been) in my own class. I am neither uniquely good, nor uniquely bad, at this. Relax.
• Seiza is a lot harder than it looks, but as it is the basis of basic dojo etiquette, learn to do it right. Seiza can be practiced easily enough at home; all it takes is 2-3 minutes practice every now and again, scattered liberally though one’s time at home. One writer about Iaido practice suggested getting into seiza for a few minutes at the beginning of each commercial break while watching television. I can’t do that as I don’t have a television, and the programs I watch through downloading them through the internet don’t have commercial breaks, but I’m sure I can adapt this idea.
• I’m very skeptical about how wise it is to have a beer after class, but it does seem to help with the muscle tension.
• Pain comes in many flavors: there’s a difference between your body saying “Ow that stings”, “I don’t want to do that because that muscle is stiff and/or sore”, and “Hey! Don’t do that, I don’t work that way!”. The first two you just suck up and move on anyways. The third you have to pay attention to.
• There is a natural tendency for me to pay more attention to things I understand, or find more interesting. For example, I’m drawn to the Aiki-ken techniques because they’re sword techniques, therefore I tend to concentrate a higher level of intensity of attention on those techniques, and therefore it seems easier for me to “grasp” aspects of it (even though it might not make it any easier to do them). I need to learn to bring the intensity of attention of all aspects of training up to match that shown to my “favorites”.
• Each of the senior students leading the warm ups seems to have their own favorite set up warm up exercises. That’s OK, just do the routine presented to you.

• I am a functional learner. This means that it is very hard for me to grasp something unless I know the why and the purpose of something. It is very hard for me to remember to do something by rote. “We step to the outside as you push your partner down because because this is just what we do at this point in the technique” doesn’t stick in my head very well. “We step to the outside as you push your partner down because it pulls them off balance so they can’t get their downside arm on the ground and keep themselves from going down” – now that I can understand. I know why we do it, and what is going on. Things make more sense to me as a functional flow. Perhaps I would benefit from studying descriptions and diagrams of techniques as well as learning to do them on the mat.

Aikido

• Ukemi is an absolutely critical part of Aikido. If you can’t fall down or be thrown safely, and then get back up again, you won’t be able to train without injuring yourself!
• Learn to visualize what you’re doing, and not “look at” what you’re doing. It is sometimes tempting to “look where you’re going” during Ukemi, but this isn’t they way you need to be holding your neck!
• A lot of Aikido is basic mechanical physics: Understanding leverage, inertia, and angular momentum goes a long way to understanding why something is done in a particular way.
• Aikido techniques seem to be based on movement around a pretty solidly placed “center of gravity”. Movements seem to pivot around this center. Hence they seem to be mostly driven (at least so far) by rotations of the hips, changing one’s angular momentum around that center, etc. and not by extension or “pushing” with arms and legs as much.
• Aikido techniques seem to come in two “flavors”. There are probably a lot more than just two, but I’m noticing there always seem to be at least two: same side to same side, and cross sides (i.e. a left handed “grab” being met with both right and left body techniques).
• Extending one’s arm outwards from the center of one’s body as one is being thrown, transfers a lot of your body’s angular momentum to your hand. This slows you down (conservation of angular momentum, or the exact opposite technique that a figure skater uses to speed up a spin by drawing their limbs inwards). Hitting the mat with the flat of your hand first can therefore “bleed off” a lot of the rotational energy of your body into your hand (which is tough), and not your hip, or shoulder (not as tough). I find this especially cool!
• Smacking into the mat is actually conditioning your body to be able to absorb smacking into the mat. Eventually bruising should be a rare event. So they tell me. I’ll get back to you on that.

Aiki-Ken

• Basic stance is critical. Feet pointed forward, left back and straight and just enough off to the left of your body’s centerline to make you stable. Right leg forward slightly, calf still strait up and down, bent at knee. Left foot rocked up so weight is on ball of foot. Hips square, back straight; center of mass should be in your spine pulling you straight down.
• Pay attention to footwork. Position, orientation, rotation, and inclination are all important. These are not only important in a static position, but in moving from one stance to another.
• The proper grip on the tsuka (the hilt, or handle portion of the bokken) changes with the technique. Pay attention to handwork as well as footwork.
• Focus should be in two places: the tip of the blade, and the center of gravity “pivot point” of the sword. This defines a position in space and an orientation simultaneously. Note: the placing of this “sword vector” is critical as well.
• In basic stance, the end of the tsuka should be about a fist distance from your body, pointing at your hara (your physical center of gravity located in the abdomen three finger widths below and two finger widths behind the navel), with the tip of the blade (kissaki) pointed directly at the eyes of your imaginary opponent.
• Pay attention to extension of limbs, and angles of joints. Holding the “sword vector” out of position can open up vulnerabilities where an opponent could attack through before you can respond. Over-extending a leg or an arm can leave your body exposed, or open up an opportunity for an opponent to lop it off!
• There are several cutting techniques (I think), but they all seem to rely on the right hand being somewhat relaxed on the tsuka, just behind where the tsuba would be, acting as a fulcrum, with the left hand near the end of the tsuka, levering the sword around the pivot point, whipping the tip around at high speed. This cutting can be augmented by large circular swinging movements of the limbs, and followed up by a lateral “drawing cut” once the blade has “bit”, but this seems to be the basics.
• Keep looking at your (albeit imaginary) opponent! You can’t tell what they’re doing if you’re not looking at them. Conveniently for you they just happen to be the same size as you.

I think that’s it for this week.

It seems to be a lot! However, knowing and jotting this down doesn’t mean I’ve learned it yet. It is one thing to be able to abstract and reason something out, another to remember all and keep it in mind, yet another to assimilate it into the way you think and do things, and yet a fourth to program the movements into “muscle memory“.

We’ll see what else I pick up next week, especially as I’ll be taking Aiki-jō for the first time Tuesday.

My shoulders hurt, my arms hurt, my knees have just stopped hurting, and I have a heck of a swelling/bruise on the inside of my left elbow where I managed to mash my head into it during a forward roll.

I couldn’t be happier about it all.

I did it; I went to an Aikido class after over a decade of wanting to try it.

It has been an Aikido weekend. As Toronto Aikikai has an open door policy with regards to visitors, I hauled myself down to the dojo to observe the classes this Staurday. Saturday was a good time to check out the dojo, as they offer a good mix of classes that day, all in things I’m interested in trying; bokken weapon’s practice, general mixed level Aikido, and – much to my delight – Iaido. Apart from picking up the beginnings of a cold (rain, cold, windows all open, sitting and watching for 4 hours, and me being one of the few people not keeping warm through physical exertion), it went well. I was favorably impressed with the “everyone pulls together” attitude displayed by everyone. There were people present with a wide range of skill levels, and it was encouraging to see the more advanced students explaining and working things through with the newer students. Pretty much what I expected, but nice to see.

I had some qualms about taking up the study of Aikido and Iaido: I’m pushing 40, I’ve never been particularly flexible or physically active, and I just lost about 75lbs of body weight. It isn’t exactly a description of the ideal martial artist candidate. However the head instructor had some good advice – in my opinion at least. If I’m willing to apply diligence and perseverance to study, and if I gauge my progress based on self-improvement and not against how well or fast other people progress, there’s no reason I can’t do this. And he’s right; I don’t feel the need to be shodan in 3 years or anything.

So, as Toronto Aikikai allows prospective students to try out a class before deciding whether or not to join, I packed up a gym bag and headed back down to the dojo this morning for the 11am beginners class. After all this research and checking out Aikido and Toronto Aikikai, I can’t say that it was radically different than I thought it would be – but it was quite exhilarating.

Physically I did better than I thought I would – although I probably don’t want to know what my forward rolls look like from the outside. I also need to work on my flexibility like you wouldn’t believe; I’m thinking a daily regime of stretching isn’t a bad idea. But both the instructor, and the other students were very good at making me feel at ease; They’re a very patient bunch. It is going to be a long and hard climb to get over the first couple of initial steps; I’m not 18 anymore, and I’m working on developing a number of baseline physical abilities all over again, but I’m willing to keep plugging away at it until I get it right.

Getting up to get coffee halfway through writing this has highlighted another couple of twinges, and I’m sure new places will pipe up to voice their complaints at unaccustomed strain.

I’m still going back Tuesday.