Kiri age

A few weeks ago I injured my left ankle.  No, it wasn’t the sort of injury that brings with it an epic tale. It wasn't even the sort that you'd begin to tell with a dramatic declaration of ‘There I was...’  It was the sort of story that you try your best to just mumble out. A mumble that sounded much like “I was celebrating a ping pong shot...”  

So not only did it I do it to myself, I did it in a context that’s rather silly too.  Not only that, but I went and made it worse by not giving myself enough time to heal.   And so, Sam and my aching ankle enforced two more weeks of waiting and much grumbling on my part.

In between bouts of grumbling and mumbling I did have plenty of time to read about martial arts and thinking about thinking.  It also had the chance  to think about movement without actually being able to move.  

Eventually I healed enough that my injury was a limitation to try to work around.  Making me  find out just how to move so it didn’t hurt but where I was still flexing the joint and not letting it weaken too much and not having Sam command me to sit back down and ice that ankle.  With this renewed hope that I soon would be able to get on the mat again I started thinking about how movement and how much aikido’s movements resemble those of battodo minus the sword.  

That isn’t to say that they’re exactly alike. I’m not going to claim that I remember many of the names  since I am just a beginner at both of these arts, but the basics of turning, balance changes and entering are shared repertoire.  The same exact foot movements used to get out of the way of a charging uke could and were indeed used to quickly turn to face an enemy while at the same time drawing your sword so they could run into the pointy end of it.  But these were not the sort of movements I could do since they would have really hurt.  No, I was looking at a far more basic motion.

The movement in question that I was taking apart was that of a upward angled sword cut called kiri age.   I had noticed that there was something not quite right with how it felt whenever I tried it.  My elbows felt strained, my shoulders too tight and all in all there was a sensation of getting in my own way.  Almost distinct feeling that I was trying to swing a golf club more than strike at a target in front of me.   Except that with a sword would have had a very literal sort of slice.  There was something subtly wrong with my movement and I was trying to look for what it was.

While I was searching through various movements, I put the bokken down, just to change my perspective on the motion and see just where I could draw from other sources.  This is where I started looking both at aikido and my own background in karate for possible resolutions to the problem of getting in my own way, or at least trying to stop feeling as if I were trying to do a two hundred yard drive to the green.   Without the weapon in my hand, I was free to move differently and I came to a motion that looked much like the one for the cut.  Hands held low in front of one’s center, then moving upward at a forty-five degree angle or so.  But this movement also included turning the hips and moving my arms as if I were about to greet someone with a very dynamic sort of hug.  

That was it, I thought to myself.  There wasn’t any of the tension I was feeling in my shoulder and it did not feel as if I were getting in the way of my movement.  Instead it was just a perfect sort of flow.  The sensation at least, maybe not the movement.

So then picked up the bokken up again and started swinging once more.  This time it felt like the torque on my elbows was gone, and even the cut felt as if it were straighter.  Both left and right versions of the cut had changed drastically to me.   It was as if I were pulling the blade with my leading hand instead of pushing at the handle.

Instead of pushing at a stick, there was a sensation that I was holding a brush to draw an arc through the air.  I realized that part of this sensation of getting in my way had come from the desire to push with the supporting hand, instead of letting it be support -- this was particularly noticeable when cutting to the left since my right hand was the one doing the supporting and I am right handed.

Where this all leads is still a mystery to me. I could be quite wrong about this way of seeing it, but it works for now.  I’m sure I’ll adjust how I see these motions and their various pieces as I learn more and age more.  The reason it feels like it’s closer to how the motion truly must be is that it doesn’t feel strained, and it doesn’t feel like I’m making  or need to make the movements more muscular than they should be.   

It’s an easier sort of flow, but not the sort of easy that came without searching.

The Intensive (Partial)

I'm back from joining at least part of the winter intensive the dojo that Sam S and me attend. It's an all weekend event, seven hours every day. It was a fantastic experience, and most certainly want to do the full thing next time it rolls around. 

Each day is built around a particular style taught at the dojo, which gets a three hour class. The other two get two hours each. 

Today's focus was sword, and it was awesome; if swinging a wooden sword is the sort of thing you might consider a groovy activity to engage in at nine in the morning on a Saturday. 

Saturday morning cartoons? Nope, it's pyjamas and cold mats. Luckily it stops being much of an issue after you're done with warmups and then get to the that class' main event. 

The two thousand (and some) cuts.

What is this madness? It means you lift your bokken and bring it down two thousand (and some) times over the course of around an hour. That's around 1.8 seconds per slice. Not a bad pace. Now think about muscling something up and down at about that pace. It's surprisingly tiring. So it's about conditioning, but it's really about finding out just how wily you can be with how you use the rest of your body to help you swing that bokken around. 

This was followed by two hours of partner exercises in sword (having gotten all the cutting practice out of the way a few minutes earlier.) And so we swung and stepped and turned and blocked. 

There were discussions about armored and unarmored combat and about blades made for the battlefield and those for more formal occasions. Something I'll have to research and perhaps write about later.

Demonstrations by sensei were in abundance and on a few of these he decided to explain how many of these techniques were used in actual combat. It all starts innocuously enough with what looks like a high block with a step to turn and cut at the back. Instead it all goes horribly wrong (for me) when sensei executes the block, but instead of spinning away, makes his arc smaller and plants the pommel of his bokken against my temple -- gently mind you, but it got the point across. 

What's interesting to me was that the edge those samurai back in feudal Japan found were all within the same basic movement as the more rarified form taught in class. Much like basic movement of a cut contains within it all the elements required to put together the 'tricks' required to lift your bokken just one more time if one is wily enough to look for them.

As always, I walked out of the dojo quite thoughtful and had to share a little bit. You, my reluctant audience, will have to continue deal with minor floods of rambling, disconnected prose about kickpunching.