This is a quick post about today’s classes. Tomorrow I’ll put down some thoughts about the whole 16 days.
There were 2 classes today: Weapons, and open hand.
In the weapons class we did the first 10 jo suburi. I think I’d done them all before, but at any rate none were a mystery, so I was able to focus on doing them correctly. I need to work on my timing. I was coming in ahead of the strike, which isn’t a terribly good idea. I’m feeling pretty good about most of the jo techniques I’ve learned. I’m sure they are very crude at this point, but I think I have the concepts down enough to practice a bit on my own, and recognize at least some of the things I might be doing wrong.
In the second class we worked mostly (entirely?) on preparing to do breakfalls. (Yay! Something I have done nearly none of before today.) Not exactly like this video shows, but that’s the idea. I was with a group doing really easy, low stuff (like early in that video), while most of the class did more advance practice (like later in that video). Even the “easy” stuff feels really awkward and scary at first! Like “no way, I’ll die.” LOL But by the end of class it was feeling much more natural.
It’s not that I’m in any hurry to be doing spectacular high falls, but I feel a little “at risk” not knowing the basics. Like driving a car without knowing where the brakes are. So I was really glad to start working on this a little.
More tomorrow about the whole experience of my 16-day “Personal Aikido Intensive” experiment.
