worst technique (3)

Continuing the series…here is another motion that I just can’t seem to nail.

It should be simple, really. This is a chest-level block, swinging into the center line from the outside. The forearm is kept vertical and the block is against an opponent’s weapon – probably a bo staff – thrusting in at your own body.

I do it well in solo forms. But in the sai vs. bo set, where some amount of real pressure comes on, I get hurried and the metal of the sai separates from my arm, a definite no-no. The problem is even worse when blocking from the centerline outward…

worst technique (2)

Yes, the sai again. A little strange, since I am usually at my best with pairs of short / small weapons (sai, yuan yang yue, nito ryu in kendo)…My chosen bed-side (futon-side, actually) weapon is a pair of short sticks.

I am working on the bo vs. sai set lately, 10 simple and elegant techniques which will feature in my upcoming testing. Two of these ten techniques have a technique which I have had much trouble with – the opponent swings the bo staff across at my left side.

I rotate my body to the right and block with the sai in the left hand (hand down, tip up). The key is to keep the left arm braced against the body (against the rear in one technique, against the left hip in the other) and the sai in contact with the forearm, not letting the tip flare out.

Failure to do this technique properly results in pain. I don’t seem to be learning from pain as quickly as I used to.

worst technique

I frequently hear about tokui waza, or one’s best / special technique to be used when fighting or sparring. I have a couple of those.

I think there should also be a word for the opposite – a technique that you practice but have a very hard time with, just can’t get it right. I have a couple of those as well, more than a couple.

One that stands out recently comes from the sai kata / form. The motion is 左上段返し打ち, or hidari joudan kaeshi-uchi, a strike to the opponent’s head which circles once outside the left arm before striking downward.

In practicing the first sai kata, chikin shita haku no sai (or tsuken shita haku no sai, if not in Okinawan dialect), I have gotten pretty comfortable with this motion on the right side, as it appears in the form several times. It is a great motion, really: after blocking the opponent’s strike (they are using a bo staff), you roll the sai outside the arm – keeping the opponent’s bo away from you – while moving in closer and striking their head with the sai.

It appears only once in the form on the left side, however, and I am right-handed. I try to keep well-balanced in my training with left- and right-side repetitions. I have even been using my chopsticks in my left hand to improve dexterity. But I just can’t seem to nail this motion.

Last week, it re-appeared in another incarnation. I am not officially learning the next sai form yet (chatan yara no sai), but I have had a glimpse of things to come. It is a wonderful kata full of great motions – and another one of these left-handed circling attacks.

So, there is one more item on the homework list – doing more things left-handed. Chopsticks of course. Brushing teeth. Operating iPods and other small gadgets. And, of course, the technique described above.

The gathering of the 5000

A couple weeks back there was a major karate and kobudo gathering in Okinawa. Over 5000 participants from around the world gathered inside the Okinawa Prefecture’s Gym. There were so many demos that 6 or 8 rings were running simultaneously.

I didn’t make it down for the fun, but several dojo mates and seniors did. By chance, I had an open Wednesday night so I visited the Morishita dojo where I have practiced a few times and have always been made to feel extremely welcome.

Though I missed out on the big event in Okinawa, it worked somewhat to my advantage because most of the people from Tokyo had not yet returned. That meant only four people for kobudo practice and more individual attention from the teacher.

He asked each of us to focus on whichever was our weakest weapon for that night’s practice. Oh, so many to choose from when they all need work. I opted for sai, since I will need to perform tsukin shita haku no sai (chikin shita haku no sai) for my next rank exam. And because I have not been able to nail the down block / rising block combo which is done about 552 times in the kata and that has caused some concern out in Tama where I usually practice.

The extra scrutiny from the teacher was well worth it and my kata or form has been completely rebuilt. Now to grind in the changes through about ten thousand reps before the test…

(photo of a number of bo staves strapped onto a bicycle for easy transportation around Tokyo)

one of those nights

It started off well – I got an early start for the 90-minute commute and arrived early. The teacher came a few minutes later – and sat down in the lobby of the 6th floor of the building we use for practice.

The room had been reserved well in advance but the paperwork had not arrived with the teacher. And without the paper forms in hand, they won’t let people use the room. There is absolutely no flexibility on this issue.

So we set up shop in the lobby and got to work. No uniforms – if we wore them, they would tell us to stop. But without a uniform – then it is OK to flail about with all manner of weapons, and flail we did.

No time to waste. Heavy nunchaku review, then bo, then something new: the sai vs. bo exercises. All of them. Nice partner drills, good contact, and the sai always “win” the encounter, always started by the bad guy with the bo. We had a nice sai vs. sai set in Nebraska, but I have never seen that over here, and this was my first chance to work sai vs. bo intensively.

So the frustration of not being able to get into the workout room – after a 90-minute trip – melted almost immediately. I had been given a chance, one chance only, to nail this set. Once it is ingrained, I can practice and review on my own, and with partners before/after the usual practice time, but getting it into the body is the hard part.

Rather than going through each of them once, one through ten, then repeating the whole cycle, and so on (the inefficient method so common in Japan), we did it like this: 1, 1+2, 1+2+3, repeat 1-2-3, then add one in, and so on.

In short, we spent over an hour doing the right kind of repetitions and I have a decent feeling for the set – and can now really begin to practice it. We probably wouldn’t have spent nearly as much time or done as many reps if we hadn’t been locked out, so all worked out quite well. The rest of practice went well and was disturbed only by the sudden mid-kata appearance of a rather noisy and confused stag beetle in the room. We maintained focus, he was caught and released, and all was well.

It was raining heavily after practice and I had left some notes behind in the lobby and both my trains were late and I just missed the bus for home and had to wait another 20 minutes in the rain and that bus shortens its route since it is late at night…..and none of it mattered. All because of forgotten paperwork and inflexible policy and an hour’s spontaneous drilling in the lobby. Who needs a special room for training?

unlearning

My first kendo teacher in Japan didn't immediately teach students who came to him with prior experience. He said he would wait 3 years, to watch them, judge their character, see if they were teachable.

By this I think he meant that he was waiting to see whether or not they could unlearn what they had previously "learned". He had to work with a blank slate, to write his own kendo upon each person from scratch. At the time, I had a hard time understanding his approach. Looking back, I don't think I unlearned enough kendo to learn what I could from him, and it is to my ongoing detriment.

I have a hard time letting go of things, especially when it comes to martial arts. That is part of what has gotten me into my current mess, trying to work on too many things at once.

Starting something completely new, unrelated to any prior martial arts activity, is relatively easy. But starting something that is related to things you have studied before...there are endless problems of cross-over, of old habits that interfere with new ways.

I have felt this most keenly in kobudo. As part of my karate training, we learned several weapons forms or kata. I burned some of those into my body pretty deeply, and the habits and motions of a decade and more are not easily erased.

I have had no karate action for a few years now. But I have recently made a big shift in kobudo, shifting from a couple-years' half-assed commitment to kobudo to a much more serious approach lately. It has not been easy, and there has been much unlearning.

The forms I learned many years back were right, true and correct for me at that time. More recently I have come to see them as having been "Shotokan-ized", adapted and changed from the original to fit into the overall rubric of Shotokan karate. Some of the forms I am working on now are exactly the same ones I started over fifteen years ago - and yet they are completely different.

The best example is Shuushi no kon sho, one of the basic bo / staff kata. It is the same and yet different. On the surface, you could see two people doing roughly the same kata, but once going in deeply, they become worlds apart.

For some years, my ideal was to preserve the old forms I had learned in my formative years while getting to know the "new" (original) ones. And, predictably, I made progress in neither. I have finally tried to let the old forms I grew up on go completely, and am focused solely on the "new" (for me) forms - and am, also predictably, also finally making progress.

Another example is the sai - a weapon made of metal, slightly longer than one's arm (see photo elsewhere on the blog), a rod with two tines protruding. One of the basic kata is tsukinshitahaku no sai (or, in the Okinawan dialect, chikinshita haku no sai). I have had to unlearn and re-learn completely opposite motions and principles. Only recently, after completely setting aside the "old" form which I originally learned, have the "new" motions sunk into my body.

"new": stack up at 45 degrees, block fully facing or torso square into the opponent. Stack up with the handle near my shoulder or armpit, not up by the ear. the arm is flat to block down, with the sai outside on the edge - not with the arm rotated or turned out. Narrower front stance. And on and on.

When I think about it, it has taken me just about three years to let go of my old habits, fully open myself and embrace the "new" habits. Maybe now the real learning can begin.

learning about your weapon

Regarding kobudo weapons training, a teacher friend tells me that you haven’t really learned about the weapon until you have injured yourself with it. Given the number of weapons in our system, there are ample learning opportunities.

I had a very nice one a couple years back, trying to follow along with some others who knew a higher level nunchaku kata. It is quite a bit fancier than the one I was working on and involved many more types of swings and strikes.

This was a new kata for me. They weren’t going to slow down for me. I could/ should have stepped out to observe, but something in me can’t do that. So, going too fast through a kata I didn’t know…

Bam, the tip circled back and struck me between the lower lip and chin. That smack or my following bad word were enough to draw everyone’s attention. Again, I could/ should have stepped out, but something in me can’t do that.

So I was frantically trying to follow along while also running my tongue around inside my mouth, trying to check for any teeth that might be floating about in the blood that was seeping out.

It is a sort of multi-tasking, I suppose. Like when sparring a Thai kick boxer who blasts right through and kicks me in the mouth, just like that. (Could have should have worn a mouth piece). My jaws and teeth crashed together and I heard something fall on the dojo floor. But it was not the time to stop. Knowing immediately that I was not near his level, he was kind enough to ease up a bit, which made discovering my half-broken tooth with my tongue –while trying to continue sparring - a bit easier.

Following up last night’s excellent 3 hours of kobudo practice, I was outside this morning when another learning opportunity arose.

This time it was the sai. Everything was going smoothly and I was reworking all my motions from the ground up. Then one of the metal tines on the side of the weapon caught or snagged the pocket of my jacket. There was a beautiful instant of realizing that it had caught and adjusting the usual path of the sai to avoid ripping the pocket. (see “if I were a true master” series of posts)

That instant was followed by another in which I realized that altering the path of one hand, without altering that of the other, could have unpleasant circumstances. The beauty of the prior instant gave way to a rather different sensation, one of pain, as the end of one sai ripped across a couple of my fingers.

Then it was time for multi-tasking again. Of course stopping the motions of the kata to inspect the damage was not an option. But I was really curious as to whether or not blood was flowing. I could glance down at the hand…but that would disrupt the flow and focus of the motions. Drops of blood on the ground or jacket? Same problem.

Nothing to do but keep going. As expected, the damage was not too severe: the blood staunched quickly and the lingering sting is a good reminder.

Time to review the tekko (brass knuckles, basically) next. Surely I won’t be served up two learning opportunities in one day.

(picture from Vancouver)

Kobudo Day

I really shouldn’t do things like this.

But it’s spring, and sometimes the body and mind just can’t be controlled. I couldn’t help it. The entire day was spent on ryukyu kobudo.

My glorious days of underemployment are rapidly drawing to a close. Today may have been my last full, complete, and uninterrupted day of being a househusband / occasional part time worker. And my kobudo practice has been terribly neglected lately, despite larger amounts of free time.

It started with the nunchaku. I haven’t covered that form in a while and I needed to go through one of the kobudo forms I know well. That got to feeling pretty good pretty quickly so, just for fun, I ran through an old nunchaku form I had learned in Nebraska. Once through and that was feeling good, but better put in a few more reps to make it better than good. That led into a third form, and so it goes.

After that, well, you can imagine.

The sai came next. I have been stuck between two forms for too long now. The Shotokanized version of tsukin shita haku no sai I learned in the US, and a very different (original??) version I am learning here as part of Okinawan Ryukyu Kobudo.

I say different, yet they are fundamentally the same kata. That is the worst possible combination, because there is too much cross-over and interference between the two. My first idea was to preserve the weapons forms I had learned in Nebraska (each differs slightly from the Shotokan versions I learned here in Japan), and slowly learn the Okinawan forms.

I have not dedicated enough time to either set and have recently felt that I must go in the opposite direction – set aside the Nebraska forms for a while and get these down well, then maybe go back and re-integrate the forms I started with.

Suddenly my progress has quickened and as of that fine day, I can get through this version of tsukin haku no sai (or chikin haku no sai, in Okinawan dialect) reasonably well. Now the real work begins…

Anyway, it was a fine day all in all, working through other weapons in the curriculum and getting ready for the upcoming classes I will be able to squeeze in before the ugly thing that is work raises its head.

I have gotten over the hump, anyhow. For too long I was stuck half-knowing a couple of these forms, able to follow along with the group and maybe able to stumble through it on my own. Now I am where I need to be, able to take a decent version of the form into class and have it worked over and really benefit from that. Then all my solo work at home will be taken up a higher notch, and I will be ready to take in an even better version the next time, and so on.

Like I said, now it really begins.

(photo shows home-made version of tinbe and rochin. real ones are on order)