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.

Sometimes accomplishments are both a positive thing, and a reminder of a negative.

What I’m thinking of specifically in my case is that is the last several months I took a firm grip on myself and got my weight down. I stepped on a scale this week, and compared it to what the scale said last time I went to my doctors; net difference: 60 lbs. Sixty!

Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t regret doing it, and it gives me a certain sense of accomplishment and satisfaction to have done it. I am rather pleased with the reaction many people have given me because of it, as well. But on the flip side I’m rather appalled that there were 60 pounds to lose in the first place!

It’s kind of like the humorous tongue-in-cheek advice you might here about your resume’: avoid putting down personal accomplishments like “I was a model inmate and was released years early”, and “I finally had enough and through sheer force of will kicked that heroin habit”.

Like I said, I’m not regretting any of it — nor will I regret getting through the last stretch to an ideal healthy body type, in which I’m currently engaged.

I’ll just have to keep this in mind as a “dubious accomplishment” as a safeguard against backsliding, and otherwise let go of the past.

The last 6 month have seen some changes for me: lost weight, reworking of my eating habits, regular (or at least semi-regular) exercise in the form of walking partway home from work (one added “perk” of taking public transit to and from work is that you don’t have to take your “vehicle” all the way home to park it).

So there came a time when I thought I hadn’t finished (I still have aspects of my “make over” that require work yet, and work is still ongoing), but I came to the point where I thought I might let myself “swing out” a little. You know, loosen the self-imposed shackles to “treat” myself a little, occasionally, but not so much that the waistband needed loosening as well as the self-restraint.

I am astonished to find that I just can’t do it.

I mean I am capable of doing it. I have done it. I just don’t like it anymore.

Case in point, after a night at work I thought I’d just zip down the street to the local Denny’s [Home page, Wikipedia] and have an omelette for breakfast. For those of you who don’t know Denny’s they’re an American chain of “family restaurants”, specializing in what I think of as “Diner Food”. Not quite “greasy spoon” style, but close. I didn’t enjoy it at all. Didn’t taste as good as I remembered, and my system reminded me strongly for hours that it just wasn’t used to handling that much fat in one meal.

Likewise for many of my remembered “comfort foods”; I’m just out of practice.

I’m a little saddened by this. However, I’m not sure “going back” is worth it. I know that I could both acclimatize myself to eating that sort of thing again, and learn to enjoy it … but do I really want to deliberately learn to eat worse again? Somehow that seems silly. Yet I must admit I have some very comfortable cozy memories of diner style food Sunday brunches with good friends, spirited discussions, and “bottomless cups of coffee”, and somehow that just doesn’t seem the same with yogurt and fruit salad, you know?