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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.

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

Over the last year my concept of “aiki” has evolved and clarified into a paradigm that I’m calling the “Three Shapes of Aiki.” Unlike Christopher Li’s excellent work translating and analyzing published works or speeches by notable Aikido and Daito Ryu instructors, this is my own synthesis of what I’ve been lucky enough to have been exposed to. While I don’t claim that any of this is 100% unique to me, I haven’t heard anyone else connect and combine these concepts in the same way.

The Three Shapes are the triangle, the square, and the circle. These shapes each represent an aspect of aiki and aikibudo. They can be studied and improved individually, but it’s my belief that aiki is what happens when you bring the three shapes together in the same person at the same time.

The Triangle represents what I call “The Rule of Threes” of jujutsu: triangulation, using three distinct triangulation points during each throw, and the three phases of nagewaza (kuzushi-tsukuri-kake). The Rule of Threes is the basis for efficient jujutsu and aikijujutsu waza. You can have clean and powerful jujutsu technique if you only use the Rule of Threes. It’s my observation that coordinating the three phases of nagewaza with three unique triangulation vectors creates the best and most efficient throws. Many of the techniques in Aikido, from ikkyo to iriminage, seem purposely designed to teach this association and yet it seems almost completely overlooked in most mainstream Aikido. Some extremely popular international Aikido teachers don’t seem to have any grasp of this concept at all. I’ve found that those techniques that seem problematic generally violate this paradigm thus causing frustration and confusion. Making subtle changes in these techniques often results in much more efficient and effective techniques, not to mention laughter. “Why didn’t anyone show me this before?!?!”

The Square represents body structure and connection. The specifics of this connection can vary depending on the training paradigm but the goal is a highly connected body of recruited tissue that has been trained to move in a coordinated manner. My primary influences here are Dan Harden’s Sangenkai material and to a lesser extent Akuzawa Minouru’s Aunkai system. I’ve also met people with Tai Chi and Yoga backgrounds that have skills in this area. Personally I find that the MOVEMENT mechanics of Dan Harden’s paradigm are the best fit for my waza (both open hand and weapons work). My group uses a combination of exercises to develop connection, recruitment, and stability.

The Circle represents tangential motion and is often referred to as “sideways” in the Sangenkai. If you visualize a ball, any vector of force acting on that ball can be adjusted to become tangential to the surface of the ball. Movement in this tangential (or nearly tangential) direction becomes very efficient and hard for your opponent to respond to while simultaneously thwarting their ability to move you efficiently. This is different from “center to center contact” or “going around the attack.” The Circle is in many ways the simplest of the three shapes, but it’s almost impossible to use EFFECTIVELY in budo without the Triangle and the Square.

Aiki waza (technique) is what happens when someone uses tangential forces (The Circle) with a recruited body (The Square) to accomplish the three phases of nagewaza using three points of triangulation (The Triangle). In my experience very few schools actively and effectively teach all three shapes which can lead to frustration and confusion. It’s my hope that by making this paradigm explicit, my group, Japanese Fighting Arts Northwest, will offer our members some of the best and most complete aiki based training available.