In session 41 most of my time was taken up with the beginners and it gave me a chance to slowly build up my own technique as we looked at elementary kata. It becomes very obvious that many of the problems that beginners experience is a need to rush the kata and I believe this is borne out of a feeling of being unbalanced in their posture. This is further caused by a lack of training and strength in the legs and hips. Certainly during any session, as the muscles in my lower body start to warm up and start to work I can feel the entire stability and sharpness of my form begin to improve.
We were also visited by Inbar Oren from Israel at this session so I spent a bit of time with him trying to work on various bits. It's funny that some dojo and sensei encourage loud and dynamic breathing. I have always been of the belief that the breathing should be natural and where it is required to be dynamic it should be silent. This is all possible I am sure. Anyway, horses for courses.
Session 42 I decided to get stuck into some of my own training and begun with some blind-step-cutting as I have decided to call it. I think I described this in Session 39 and have sensed two effects, one that I get better at doing the exercise myself and two that my overall kata stability has improved. The outward effect is that my posture has widened slightly and my feet are less likely to find themselves close to the same centre line in any forward posture. I may spend a Shugyo entry looking at the static physics for this at some time but not right now. During the rest of the session I did a bit of work on Okuden Suwari Waza as I think these offer some of the most difficult technical challenges in the whole of MSR. Shihogiri/Yosumi is perhaps one of the hardest forms of all, not purely through the number of opponents but in the fact that they must all be dispatched rapidly but without getting busy. This busy-ness occurs through a few different media:
- In the flurry of turning round, one's metsuke gets lost.
- The stability of each cutting posture begins to fail through weak foot positioning.
- The stability of the posture during the turns degrades.
- The control of the kissaki suffers.
I don't think anyone with an ounce of physical fitness can fail to do this form fast; to do it fast with all the elements important to a form like Seitei Mae however....well, it feels like I am strolling in the foothills of Mount Yosumi. I have seen Ishido Sensei doing the all the variations of this form and he doesn't fail at each cut to deliver a decisive and convincing dispatch at every point while linking each opponent together into one continuous form.
I do feel like my Kasumi has improved though, I don't know why but I suspect it is by me disintegrating the form slightly and ensuring that each component doesn't suffer by continuing into the next. I further believe that training in MJER at the Okehampton Seminar helped me a lot as this version of Kasumi is far more component focussed and expansive.
In Session 43 I started by helping a complete beginner, Robert, to learn Reiho and then went through Mae in staggering slowness with him although being an Aikido Yudansha he picks things up very quickly. For me to do Mae at this speed was a great technique builder for me and I could feel where the energy had to be put into the components of the form.
In my own training time I decided to work on Chuden. Chris Sensei got me to reduce the movement in my noto and it did start to feel nice and smooth. I got as far as Iwanami and the lesson drew to a close. I finished by getting George to do a little grading demo and gave him some written feedback.
I have an embu movie that George took for me on Session 42 for me to review but it is quite massive being an HD movie so I am going to close this post for now and post another one for that review.
Fair thee well.