Sword and Bokken Basics

This week’s video blog is all about sword basics. While there are lots of different Japanese sword schools, there are some foundational basics that are common across most arts and this includes aiki-ken. Here I discuss how to hold the katana correctly, some commonly found kamae (postures), moving between kamae, and some common grip and cutting mistakes. I used a bokken (wooden sword) in this video since that’s what most people studying sword work in the context of Aikido will be most familiar with.

Pull, don’t pull!

Due to a nefarious flat tire I wasn’t able to shoot any new content this week, so here’s a re-post from my private YouTube channel. Here in this 2018 video, Evan and I work with the concept of “pulling” yourself to help neutralize and control your partner’s pull. This is a direct application of many of the drills we’ve been posting lately and is similar to part of Aikido’s “boat rowing” exercise.

Why do shiko?                 

While I first saw shiko in the context of sumo, I was first TAUGHT shiko by the Aunkai. What is it and why should it be part of one’s solo exercises? While often referred to as “sumo leg lifts” or “sumo stomps” the kanji is actually made up of the characters for “four” and “limbs”. While we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking of this as the meaning or translation of shiko, it should at least point us in the direction that shiko is about more than the legs. The various versions of shiko can be used to develop hip and leg strength, stability, core strength, and improved balance. But the core of shiko as a bodyskill exercise (sometimes referred to as “internal power”) is as a way to coordinate and associate disparate parts of the body. The arms PULL the legs up through the torso and can be used to hold the leg lifted position as well as to help control the descent. Opening and closing of the kuà (hip joints) can and should be used to raise and lower the body. By holding the raised leg posture for a few seconds, we get to experience what many arts call “double weighting”: loading all of the body’s weight onto one leg which is often a precursor to being thrown. Developing a sense of balance and control at this extreme position can make one much harder to complete techniques on and allow one to recover full balance much faster. How does it relate to Aikido or jujutsu? Besides the points listed above, we know that Sagawa Yukiyoshi of Daito Ryu considered shiko to be one of his main solo exercises and bragged that he did thousands of them a day. Ueshiba Morihei of Aikido was a contemporary of Sagawa Sensei in Daito Ryu and also was supposed to have done sumo (though not professionally) in his youth. Personally I after I began doing shiko regularly as a warmup for class, I was surprised how often a guest Aikdio instructor would take note and almost always ask me where I learned the version I was doing or why I was doing it. They would often nod knowingly, and like my Iai-battojutsu instructor, say something alont the lines  of, “Ah, that’s very good,” with a bit of a wink. Many Aikido and jujutsu techniques are driven by shifting weight between the feet and it’s hard to think of a better exercise to develop that than shiko.

The Origins of Daito Ryu

Great article looking at the historical origins of Daito Ryu and Sokaku Takeda!

“…as the legend of Daito-ryu says, “Daito-ryu is a martial art that has been handed down from ancient times only to the upper class of the Aizu clan, and Sokaku TAKEDA is the founder of its revival.” Is it really true? Considering that Sokaku TAKEDA’s family belonged to the class of Ashigaru or Goshi, a low social class that locates between Bushi and farmer and was not officially recognized as a Bushi, I cannot help but doubt the credibility.”

【Web AIKI Course Part 1】Knowledge of AIKI Series 2「Daito-ryu founded by Sokaku TAKEDA」 | BUDO JAPAN

Yanagi Ryu Box Walking to Develop the Kua and Leg Bows

Christian Moses from Japanese Fighting Arts NW introduces the concepts of the hip joint (kua), opening and closing the kua, and how that relates to bowing and unbowing the legs. Rather than begin this in a static position, he uses a basic exercise from Yanagi Ryu Aiki-bugei to help introduce new practitioners to these concepts or as an alternative exercise for those already pursuing these skills.

Bowing and The Yoke

Here’s our first video content made specifically for JFANW. Here we look at what it means to bow the arms, how that helps create dual opposing forces in the body, and we review one of Dan Harden’s most basic exercises, The Yoke. We also contrast these concepts with the “unbendable arm” trick that many Aikido practitioners may be familiar with. Enjoy!

The Tightrope

This is going to be a bit of an odd blog post as it’s more like a legal disclaimer than anything else. As we continue to get used to regular training again, consider accepting new students, and look to producing more public content it feels important to be clear about our influences and our affiliations. Jeremy Hulley and I have been training and teaching together for nearly 30 years now, and during that time, the question that we have always asked ourselves is, “Is this what our teacher wants us to be doing in their space?” After closing down Seattle School of Aikido and introducing the idea of Japanese Fighting Arts NW, the question is now, “Is this what WE want to be doing?”

One of the biggest challenges for us going forward, especially wrt video content, is to credit our influences and teachers correctly and transparently while not implying an ongoing affiliation or endorsement that does not exist. This also means generating useful content for public consumption that does not violate any trust put in us to protect information that is not considered public. This is the tightrope that we will walk.

For the upcoming video content we will be posting a mix of exercises and concepts as they were taught, but also modifications and variations of those concepts and exercises. A large part of that content will be based on what we learned from Neil Yamamoto and Dan Harden. We are not an affiliated Sangenkai study group, but we must acknowledge the deep influence he had over us and every aspect of our training over the seven or so years that we regularly attended his seminars, workshops, and intensives. For those of you who have trained with him, a lot of what I’d like to talk about will be extremely familiar. I will not however be going into any details on anything that was presented outside of his normal open weekend workshops that have been attended by literally thousands of people. Generally speaking, I will be limiting even that content to the material that I personally was asked to present to newer students during his seminars. At times I will be intentionally vague and may even be misleading. So, if you find yourself thinking, “That’s wrong, that’s not what Dan said…” you might be right! Or it might have been how he USED to say something. It could also be how I am now thinking about a given concept or exercise and IS in fact different. My suggestion would be to try it on, take it for a spin, see how it feels to YOU. I’m a firm believer that we need to be able to put things in our own terms in order to truly own them and that parroting someone’s exact phrases is a poor indicator of true understanding.

If you find any of our content helpful or interesting, please let us know! I’d love to have some offline conversations with you, or if you find yourself in the Seattle area, we’d love to have you at the dojo. There is no better way to really communicate this stuff than hands on and in person.

The Greats Were Great Because They Were Boring

There’s an old joke, “Hey, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice,” and to an extent that’s true but how and when we practice can vary a lot and not all practice makes perfect. In looking at how The Greats actually got great, I found that the answer for many was that they did a lot of BORING work outside of the dojo. By all accounts OSensei was practicing all the time, even if it looked like farming. In the translation of “Transparent Power” Sagawa sensei (as told by his student Kimura) recounts doing thousands of repetitions of shiko (sumo leg lifts) every day. Actually the Cliff’s Notes version of Transparent Power boils down to, “You’re all stupid and lazy and that’s why you’ll never be any good.” Helpful… But is he wrong? I think a lot of us went through periods where we trained at the dojo 6-7 days a week. I certainly haven’t done that in a long time. In some ways I miss the lifestyle that allowed me to have that kind of focus, but that’s just not how my life is anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. In today’s work environment, I’m not sure how many people could even train five nights a week.

Currently I only offer one two-hour class a week. That’s nothing, but I still want to improve and I want to offer the opportunity for real improvement to my training partners and students. To that end, I’ve started posting what I call “The Daily Grind” to our private Slack. The Daily Grind is about 30 minutes of solo exercises that everyone training with me should know and can do at home in about the space of a yoga mat. Over the years I’ve really struggled with knowing what to practice at home not to mention the motivation to do so. It’s easy to WANT to practice something, but solo work at home is never going to give you the same buzz and energy of partner training in the dojo. And what am I going to do, dance around my living room pretending I’m doing waza? Am I going to learn anything doing that? Just thinking of what you CAN do at home can be a serious impediment to DOING anything.

Over the last couple of years, I really committed to playing and learning music again and have been shocked at the improvements I’ve made due mostly to a very simple thing: I do a 40 minute set of timed exercises every single day. Each month the specifics change and the bpm (speed) changes over the course of the month as I improve at the exercises, but I do them every single day. I do them to a metronome and I time them. Most exercises I only do for five minutes. Five minutes is nothing, so how can doing an exercise for five minutes make any difference? Well 5 minutes a day, every single day for a month is about 2.5 hours of practice on ONE single thing. Just doing my 30 minutes of exercises each day adds up to 15 hours of dedicated, focused practice a month. I play a lot more than that, usually several hours a day, but at the very least, I have 30 minutes of active, focused, BORING practice every day.

I started thinking of how I could bring some of that into my budo training, especially given the extremely limited time we have at the dojo, only about 8 hours a MONTH. ☹ With that in mind, I came up with The Daily Grind. Each month I post a sequence of exercises and times, typically only 2 minutes per exercise that adds up to 30-40 minutes. I don’t need to go anywhere, I often don’t even need to change into workout clothes (although this month’s DG has been kind of sweaty!) and it’s only 30 minutes of my day. I don’t have to think about what I SHOULD be doing. I basically have reduced the barrier to training to “do I have 30 minutes to spare?” Since introducing the Grind, I’ve managed to train 5-7 days a week and more importantly, I know I’m making progress again in my training. Doing a basic solo exercise for just 2 minutes gives me a chance to find new lessons within the exercise, keeps me from overdoing it, and lets me focus just on ME and not a partner that I’m trying to throw. One of the consistent exercises from Grind to Grind has been the Yi Jin Jing which I’ve found to be so incredibly beneficial that it’s worth its own post at some point.

So what are some ways you find to train outside the dojo? Do you? Do you mean to? Does your school discourage it (I have trained at some that did)? Would you like the list of exercises I’m doing? Let me know!

Finally, if you’re interested in creating your own version of the Daily Grind (and I hope you do) here’s what I recommend:

  • Keep it around 30 minutes in length total
  • Set times for each exercise where possible and use a timer
  • Use exercises that are simple and repeatable
  • Use exercises that you KNOW so that you can use your DOING brain and not your LEARNING brain
  • Change it up every 2-4 weeks, but do the same sequence enough times you can really spend some time with each exercise