Big Ideas

During the last month I have been trying to transform my aikido practice into something new. New to me at least.

I've taken some ideas from different sources and I am trying to unify and integrate them into something practical and meaningful. First, here is a list of some of the more important ideas.

• The fence.
• Mirrors.
• Compliments.
• Pillars.

The Fence. The fence is a very common sense idea that I am lifting from Geoff Thompson who has authored a whole series of books and DVDs on practical martial applications. The fence is simply a guard up position, but whereas a normal martial arts guard signals your opponent that you are about to go all Bruce Lee on him, the fence very casually says that you don't want any trouble. The hands are palm out, staggered, hovering around chest level. They keep him out of your face, bring you closer into his guard, help you judge distance, and allow you to either attack pre-emptively or respond to his attack. From an aikido perspective, the fence brings my hands up higher into a less passive or reactive starting point.

Mirrors. This comes from aikidoist John Bailey who practices a more contemporary aikido. Basically, a mirror is one body movement that produces two or more techniques depending on uke's position. For me, right now, the major mirror movement I am working on is ikkyo/ irimi. With my fence up, uke grabs my arm cross handed and I move right through him into ikkyo. Uke grabs again, this time non-cross handed, and I perform the same movement which now results in irimi-nage. One movement, two different results. I do not need to wait for uke to clarify his attack (which would be too late anyway). With my fence up, I sense the immediacy of uke's attack and move to meet him half way.

Compliments. Also from John Bailey. I think of compliments as an no nonsense approach to henka waza. Why complicate things? Certain techniques (when encountering resistance) feed logically into others. When they do, take them. I am seeing that compliments really tie in well with the next idea, pillars.

Pillars. I have seen this idea in several places. Basically, the idea is that not all techniques are created equal. Some are more straight-forward and universally applicable. These are pillars. One of my pillars is ikkyo (also part of my mirrors practice). Being a pillar, I will generally go for ikkyo whenever possible. But sometimes it may crumble, especially under stress. Then I look for its compliments, techniques that logically flow from and incorporate uke's resistance. For me, I often end up with sankyo (which can then take me back to irimi which is another pillar). I like pillars for a few reasons. For one, it gives me a focus; I no longer have dozens of options to choose from for responding to an attack. I just have to hardwire a few fundamental techniques. Pillars also lets me off the hook. A lot of techniques are just plain hard to make work most of the time. Pillars says that that's all right. They aren't supposed to work most of the time. Your core (pillar) techniques are the ones that are supposed to be your bread and butter; the rest are supplementary for meeting specific instances of resistance.

At the moment, my pillars are ikkyo, irimi, sumi otoshi (for lack of a better name), and shihonage. Focusing on these four shows a lot of examples of mirroring.