Mokuren Dojo

Do NOT try this at home

patparker — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 13:16:00 +0000

We’ve been working a ogoshi-to-ouchigari combo in judo, but you have to be careful to make sure that what you end up with is definitely not kawazugake – a banned technique. You do that by making sure to rotate fully toward uke so that you are facing him between techniques.

The first of these vids is a controlled demo of kawazugake, but the second one is a neat vid of a kawazugake thrown in a sumo competition in the 1970′s. It’s not obvious from these videos why it is a banned technique, but I suspect that it is tempting for players under combat stress to entangle the leg and sit back onto it, endangering the knee as well as cracking uke’s head and falling on him.

The other thing that is not obvious to me is why it is called kawazugake (the frog-hook). Seems to me it would be called kiwazu gake (the dangerous hook) – but that’s just me.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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Kubotan anecdote

patparker — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:15:00 +0000

Some years back, when I was in college, some friends and I got our hands on Tak Kubota’s little black & orange police manual for the use of the Kubotan and we worked through it.
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One of the suggested modes of use for the kubotan was as a flail – holding the body of the keychain and striking with the keys. The book showed using it to flail the attacker’s extended wrist or at his face. We were skeptical (to say the least) as to whether or not you could create significant injury by flailing keys to the wrist of an assailent. I suspect something was said about “B.S.” whatever that means.
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Well, sometime later I was sitting around mulling over the question of kubotan effectiveness and I was absently tapping my keys against my wrist. Out of the blue, I tapped my radius bone a couple of inches above the base of the thumb and instantly numbed half my hand! It seriously hurt and I was only tapping.
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So, I’ll definately vouch for the potential viability of flailing keys at wrists, and definitely flailing at the face as a distractor for another techique or to give you time to flee.
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Here’s a kubaton very similar to the one I carried and worked out with throughout college (if anyone wants one).

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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Jutte and SMR Tanjojutsu demo

patparker — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 06:30:00 +0000

More SMR Tanjojutsu. I love this stuff. The first half of this film is jutte (truncheon). That’s okay I suppose, but the real coolness starts at about 1:40 into the film.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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Helpful handful: Backup plans in aikido

patparker — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 23:21:00 +0000

In our aikido classes we try to never lose sight of the one fundamental principle: Nothing Ever Works! Basic implication of that is, you have to have a backup plan. And a backup plan for your backup plan. And a backup plan for that… Five backup plans or general strategies that make aikido fail-soft to a large degree:

get out of the way (taisabaki)
get back away from the guy (ma-ai)
synchronize to reduce his potential energy (ki-musubi)
get behind the guy (shikaku)
hit him in the face (atemi, shomenate)

If a technique goes bad, doing any of these backup plans tends to improve your safety while you transition to another technique or get out of dodge! These backup plans reinforce each other so you don’t have to be the ultimate master of all of them, but if you can do each of them fairly well (and automatically), your aikido improves immensely.

Aiki for indirect violence

patparker — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:33:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of Amanky

A few days ago I posted an article about how to use aikido to diffuse veiled attacks in everyday life. Today I wanted to write about another sort of violence that you see not only often, but increasingly often – the rant.

Whereas the veiled attacks I mentioned before are sort of like someone shaking your hand and threatening you with a penknife in the other hand, the rant is more like someone poisoning a water supply, not caring who they injure. Someone who is into a full-blown rant is venting energy in every direction, making people around them hesitant to engage for fear of focussing the energy onto themselves. Well, there is an aikido principle that applies here too…

If you don’t want a response from them, don’t give them a stimulus – synchronize with them but don’t amplify them

This idea can be seen in both physical and psychological realms. For instance,

In a physical conflict, if you reduce the relative speed between attacker and defender, then you reduce the attacker’s potential to injure the defender. It is similar to driving down the interstate. Every time you pass a car or one passes you, there is potential for an accident to occur. But if you drive the same speed as everyone else, nobody ever passes anybody and you’re safer. Additionally, if you are pushing and pulling on the attacker, they can feel you and know what you are doing. You are stimulating them to respond to you, but if you are synchronized with them there is no stimulus, so the likelihood of a response is much reduced. So, in a physical conflict, synchronize to reduce potential and avoid amplifying potential.
The same idea applies in everyday life in more of a psychological (or potentially-physical) realm. If someone is ranting then you can synchronize with them to reduce their potential as they run out of energy. Synchronizing also allows you to guide their rant here and there so that it does not become a full-blown attack before it runs down.
Some therapists call this ‘predicate matching for rapport’ but that is just fancy talk for ‘talk like they talk so they identify with you.’ A.K.A. get in synch with them. I remember a case study in a textbook where a therapist had a patient who was ranting and the situation was escalating toward abusiveness. Nobody around knew what to do. Suddenly the therapist shouted right in the man’s face, “HEY!” (matching his tone) “Damn that would make me mad too!” (matching his emotion and his words) “I see why you were mad.” Did you catch that? She put that in past-tense, automatically placing the patient’s rant in the indeterminate past. The patient, realizing he had been mad but had now vented, calmed down and became reasonable with the therapist, who obviously shared his emotion and tone. That was predicate matching for rapport. That was synching to minimize potential. That was aikido!

Don’t think that this recipe is a magic bullet for diffusing a rant. You might just escalate them by shouting in their face, but consider how you can use synchronization to reduce potential energy around you.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Tanjojutsu – the art of the cane

patparker — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:41:00 +0000

I think this is super-cool – Don Draeger demonstrating techniques from SMR Tanjojutsu – the art of the walking cane. Perhaps the most practical of any of the weapon arts.

How to teach children’s judo classes

patparker — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:25:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of Pingu1963

I have been teaching children’s classes at my dojo for several years now, and have accumulated a lot of material in my archives here on the blog about how to teach judo to children. Following is a list of several of the best articles – I’ve gathered them together as a resource for all the folks that keep hitting my blog searching for info about how to teach kids’ judo. Enjoy, and leave me a comment letting me know what parts of this helped you.

Bonus:

How to teach kids’ aikido

The articles listed above are a few of the best of my archives on this topic, but of course you are welcome to dig through my archives and check out all of the material on teaching kids’ judo and how I have implemented my childrens’ judo classes.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Sharpie or Cold Steel Sharkie?

patparker — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:33:00 +0000

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the good-old kubotan! You remember – Tak Kubota’s modern remake of the ancient Japanese yawara stick. I’ve loved this as a self-defense weapon for years, though anything like this has plusses and minusses.

A while back, Dojo Rat suggested an unsharpened carpenter’s pencil as an option instead of a kubotan because of the un-likelihood of it being recognized as a weapon. I like that idea but the carpenter’s pencil does not have as good a feel in the hand as I’d like. Recently I thought, “Boy, I wish I could get an un-breakable Sharpie marker – that would be the perfect size for a kubotan, plus you could always keep it in the same orientation and location in your pocket (like a clip-on knife), making it faster and easier to access. Well, voila! Check out the “Sharkie.”

Anyone interested in buying one of these (super-cheap and reliable-looking) pens, playing with it and posting a review here to let me what you think?
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Alternately, if you want to splurge, you might like the Sharpie brand name marker in stainless steel. If so, let me know what you think.

Everyday application of aikido

patparker — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of Cloneofsnake

Ever had a co-worker, or perhaps a business phone call from someone, who wanted to attack you but still appear professional? Throughout your interaction they keep throwing out feints or thinly-veiled attacks… If you’ve ever had a job then you know the type.

These veiled attacks – the strategic purpose of them is to draw you out so that you will retaliate, thus granting the other guy the high moral ground by making it appear that you were the aggressor. Do you know the best way to deal with this sort of attack?

You deal with this sort of attack by re-positioning yourself and/or the attacker so that they cannot actually hurt you, and then accepting the attack without counter-attacking. This response tends to have one of two outcomes.

The opponent becomes so unbalanced so that they attack you vigorously and openly, even though you are safe from harm. If this happens, at least you and everyone around you knows who the real aggressor is and the shape of the battleground. Also, people that unthinkingly attack with vigor from a position of weakness and unbalance tend to be relatively easy to topple.
Alternately, since you refrain from counter-attacking, the opponent may take time to regain their mental composure and start acting professionally – actually accomplishing something productive. This is how my phone conversation turned out yesterday.

If you “get” the idea behind this post, you’ll likely also enjoy this post on the pre-requisites to do violence.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Pausing a kuzushi

patparker — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:28:00 +0000

For several weeks I’ve been tinkering with the idea of kuzushi (offbalance) on this blog. I’ve also covered the topic pretty extensively before – you can click here to see all the kuzushi articles in my archives.

But there’s one most common problem with beginners’ ability to generate and use kuzushi – and that is timing. Kuzushi is not a static condition, but contains elements of both posture and timing. Even if you teach a beginner to generate kuzushi in their opponent, often by the time they recognize that the opponent is offbalance and get ready to do something, the opponent steps and spoils the offbalance.

The opponent always steps! That’s the biggest problem. And here’s how to solve it: step on their foot!

I mean it. If you want uke to stand still in offbalance for a moment while you collect your wits and do your thing, stand on their foot. Simply stepping on a foot will both magnify an offbalance and will prolong it in time. This one simple trick improves the self-defense potential of much of the things you know.

You have to be really careful with this in practice, though. Ankles and feet are super-easy to sprain this way. If you want to practice this, do it slowly and gently with a compliant partner, and for goodness sake, get off their foot as they start to fall. Don’t stand on a foot as you throw someone!

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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