Cardio Kickboxing

As part of my ongoing recovery from the stress and weight gain of early fatherhood, I am trying to increase my aerobic capacity to a level that is … well, on a chart somewhere.

Jogging is out (it would have been my preference). I’m just not built for it, and now past 40, my ankles don’t even recover well from three-milers.

I bike to work, but it really does nothing. I can’t bike fast because it would be hazardous. Plus I don’t want to show up at work bathed in sweat. Coming home that way is sometimes acceptable, so I’m going to do what I can with that.

Working out at home is out because our toddler daughter considers exercise the equivalent of ignoring her. Maybe she’s right.

So I’ve been trying cardio kickboxing. [looking sheepish]

Besides the occasional urge to direct one of my kicks into the instructor, who screams “HIGHER” over the techno beat, it has not been a completely embarrassing disaster. I do pause ever few minutes, with increasing frequency as the class progresses, to catch my breath or stifle the urge to throw up (five hours after last meal). I don’t tuck my hips under me for front kicks (not planning on backflips any time soon). My side kicks barely clear 2 feet off the ground. My quarter kicks and knee strikes from TKD ages ago have come back and seem to work pretty well.

I am literally the only person in the room who does not bounce on their feet. Seems martially wrong to me.

Just need to find a way to get to more than one class a week, or nothing much will stick aerobically.

Plan B, part 4

Really, there should be no Plan B.

Plan A is Aikido, which is part of Budo, which theoretically consists of all possibilities. Plan A gives precedence to those actions that de-escalate, reduce harm, and resolve conflict. If my Plan B is a potentially lethal strike to finish the game, that’s just too easy–at that moment I’ve stopped practicing aikido and completely broken with Plan A. Was Plan A just a ruse or a trick? Why bother? Aren’t we just training? Am I really in any danger?

Plan B is also legally problematic. People die in relatively minor scuffles now and then, and the one left standing can go to jail.

There is a term from Alexander Technique called end gaining. It refers to the natural human habit of focusing on the end-point of our actions and becoming frustrated when we do not immediately achieve our aims. Consciousness of this tendency in yourself allows you to inhibit it and focus instead on the moment. The ironic side effect is that achieve your aims more easily and with less stress when you aren’t directly obsessed with them.

For me, the aggressive Plan B in aikido is a kind of end-gaining. It sets up a habit of escalation in more things than aikido. It reminds me that I’m thinking about *me* winning, not a win for the situation. That can carryover to personal interactions off the mat.

I remember an exercise from when I was about 12, in a karate class. Your parter shoves you, and you do nothing, but stand your ground. He does it again. You again do nothing. He does it a third time. You take him out.

This exercise is very basic for a reason–it’s for children. And I’m sure I learned a bit of calm and patience from it. But I also learned [unfortunately] that past a certain point you can stop caring for the other person and just win. This has been my impression of most martial arts (aikido excluded). The idea being that a good defense isn’t just a good offense. A good defense is a perfectly timed rapid-fire highly targeted devastating attack that obliterates your opponent. Our culture, especially action movies, seems to encourage this thinking.

Outside of Hollywood fantasies, reality is more prosaic and bureaucratic. Training for police officers and emergency responders includes considerations of levels of force. Justifications for their use are laid out in detail, and woe to the officer who uses lethal force in any but the most obvious of circumstances. A mountain of paperwork, mandatory time-off, and possible legal action awaits. This is as it should be.

In our day-to-day life often the most dangerous situation we deal with is getting cut off in traffic. There are few immediate penalties for just being a jerk. There is unfortunately no dope-slap angel to appear and correct us when we go over the line. But training to be compassionate in a violent situation can, I think, mitigate some of our negative, though natural human responses.

Plan B, part 3

Example 3

Plan B Becomes Intention

Aikido can seem frustratingly nice. So many opportunities to do damage fly by during every technique, without the time to savor them, much less try them. Most techniques are designed to do no permanent damage, even when executed full force. A flickering black and white movie of O’Sensei shows him walking around flapping his arms while being attacked, seeming to expend no effort, much less give off macho malice. What fun is that?

Now and then something snaps and I toss all the peace and love and de-escalation talk out the window. Plan B becomes Plan A. I toss in light atemis to the ribs, groin, solar plexus. Oooh, sooooolar plexuuussss. My favorite! Is my angle right for gut punches? Uppish for floating ribs, straight in for compression, downish when at or just below the belt. For fun during knife practice I’ll add a few extra slices to cripple or finish uke off. While doing a standard ikkyo pin I sometimes run through my mind the many continuations that I might need to do if I found myself in this position on the street with someone I knew would not stay down. Strike to sweet spot where the jaw, ear, and neck come together. Hard knee down on the arm between elbow and shoulder to break the bone. Kidney punch. Rear choke.

These alternative plans fill my mind and make a mockery of the idea of aikido as a moving meditation. When I do this it’s more like fantasy target practice, and ultimately, as fun as it is, I feel like things have gone off the rails and I’ve erased whatever gains I had made in recent days.

A teacher once referred to aikido as “riding the dragon”. He may have been quoting O’Sensei. I don’t know. But now I’m thinking, to paraphrase a hackneyed joke about the Soviet Union, “In Aikido, dragon is YOU.”

Plan B, part 2

Example 2

Aikido pins take a lot of practice to get right, and are not really so fool-proof or rock solid as they seem to the beginner. Sure there are people who can pin anyone. But in reality, no pin is permanent against someone who a) doesn’t feel pain, b) is abnormally flexible and strong (or simply much stronger than you can physically handle), or c) who happens to know a good reversal to the technique you are using. Moreover, the grips and positioning that pins and joint locks depend on are set up long before you actually “see” them as a spectator, long before it is applied.

Nonetheless, when a pin fails, especially if there is ego at stake, the next move is often what the pinner believes is a really badass pain-compliance technique. Or the pinner points out uke’s exposed vulnerabilities, as if knowing about them would be enough to take advantage of them without any real practice doing so.

Suppose you have uke in what is referred to as a ‘high pin.’ Uke is lying face down, you have one of his arms essentially vertical as you kneel at his shoulder and torque the shoulder and elbow while pushing toward the head and screwing his arm into the mat. For whatever reason he manages to tuck his shoulder and will momentarily roll out of the pin. Do you take the hand that is still under your control and start bending fingers? Do you roll back to get your legs around him and do a jujitsu arm-bar? Do you politely point out to him that you could break his neck from this position? Would you really do that to someone?

The completely ‘aiki’ way seems to me to be to blend with whatever uke does. If he squirms out of the pin and just sits there, the game is over. If he attacks, you do more aikido.

But if he squirms out and pushes it to so-called ‘ground work’?

Sometimes this happens with aikidoka I know well (we know what to expect from each other) and only rarely with aikidoka I don’t know so well. But it almost never happens, and certainly not to a great degree if a high-level sensei is teaching the class. We know instinctively that we have diverged from the usual training, that we are not ‘doing the technique’. Not good in front of the boss.

Plan B, part 1

Aikido has a number of memes that are not explicitly part of the art, but that seem to arise naturally from it being a “soft” martial art. One of them is “Plan B”. You often hear it mentioned when a technique seems to fail, or someone demonstrates how a technique could be reversed. The instructor says something along the lines of “If this happens, go to plan B,” or “Uke moves this way because he doesn’t want to experience plan B.”

Example 1

A well-known aikido sensei was demonstrating yokomen uchi shiho nage for a class at a retreat. Yokomen uchi closely approximates someone swinging a weapon at your head (starts overhead but curves just before with the head, with the arm fully outstretched at the moment of contact). The uke swung fast and hard. Sensei moved just enough (the attack missed), but somehow the attacking hand got away from him, so the desired technique wasn’t going to happen.

Sensei counterattacked.

What we saw next was not yokomen uchi shiho nage but yokomen uchi open hand to throat. Uke’s head flew back to absorb/evade and he was airborne for a moment before hitting the floor flat on his back. Clearly surprised, but having appropriately saved his own ass, he scrambled back to his feet and got into position.

Sensei smiled and shook his head, then motioned for uke to attack again.

We’ve all seen this sort of thing. Even though the ‘technique failed’, the martial artist moves fluidly into a valid response, but it’s not a ’soft’ technique. I completely respect this sensei’s martial judgment and depth of aikido (he studied under O’Sensei), and I accept that what we saw at that moment was aikido. But I find it difficult to explain to myself why.

More examples to come.

Donut Theory

Yesterday Sensei explained his donut theory of martial arts. There is a circle around an individual that describes the arc of their attack. If you’re inside or outside the donut you don’t get the full force. If you’re on the donut, look out.

I nodded and translated this to my mind’s eye, and then we went back to practicing a counter to round-house kick. A few minutes later Sensei looked at me and said “You’re on the donut.”

Damn.

Aikido Reminders to Self

This is a list I have been adding to ever since I started aikido. It’s idiosyncratic. You’re eavesdropping on my mind, and I might not be able to explain what I mean by a particular line. But what are blogs for? If other aikidoka have such reminder lists, please post or link!

every time

• obtain and re-obtain a signal – relax/pay attention until you get one
• continuous breathing
• upright posture, comfortably standing, centered
• retain sword posture and extension/readiness
• imagine center in motion, often below ground, as on tightrope
• imagine circular saw with gyroscope at its center
• zanshin 360 (observe, interpret, relax, be attentive, see without looking)
• whole body/mind ready
• when time to act, no mind
• when finished, leave nothing behind
• ready to guard your center
• ready to move center in any direction
• blending, you disappear, then assert, like water undermining earth
• if you know the technique well, add ki flow, i.e., smoothness of motion, fluidity, natural reaction and compensation for uke’s micromovements

rising from the mat

• should be centered, easy, solid architecture, quick, with zanshin

simple sequence
zanshin – ma’ai – invite/hiss – blend, shift, blend, shift, … – break balance – keep off balance to ground – pin – release – zanshin

first contact

• unless it is a block, should be soft and stealthy, matching speed and rotation with the attack, contacting and hijacking uke’s momentum more than half way through its natural movement, when it is too late for uke to effectively resist
• first contact can be entering–with assertion of space via arm/ki/hara/atemi

atemi

• focus briefly and intently on the target of atemi – so that warning bells go off in uke’s mind
• occasionally go slow and actually hit uke if uke is not responding (are you not convincing or is uke not paying attention?)
• with rapid small shifts, find paths of no resistance and start coaxing toward ground
• try blend with vector, then shift it perpendicular along z-x plane, then downward along y-?, etc., in wave motion
• working backward from anticipated kazushi point, intend to resist along uke’s strong axis so that uke unconsciously feels and resists, then curve vector while gradually intensifying ‘push’ to spiral into kazushi point.
• ghost atemi: you can give off an atemi without actually initiating an attack (uke will stiffen or change posture slightly as reaction); play with how much of a feint it takes

balance-taking

• occupy the good angles
• incremental variable-speed conveyor belt carrying away uke’s balance
• turn hips in direction you want to channel uke’s momentum
• let hips lead your movements
• guide uke to kazushi points
• weight is dynamic, with multiple centers, vectors, rotations
• your weight can come down via uke
• rear kazushi points are generally more effective
• incorporate ki-flow (willow/water)

pins

• knee should come down to mat with inner shoulder
• heels together, up on toes
• wrap and control at elbow
• capture hand palm up in crook of elbow
• pressure and torque can be applied in either direction along path from shoulder to head (rotational perpendicular to that axis and generally with a feeling of into the ground)
• across and uptown is usually good
• think of what you are going to do next to set up the next attack/response

after pin

• move laterally into uke’s blind spot
• initiate the next attack/response; no downtime

physicality

• arms whiplike energy (dynamic tension, but with no tension)
• hands relaxed but awake
• grip like magnetic glue, not vise, starting with pinky
• wrists and forearms like 20′ sword/searchlights
• shoulders relaxed
• cat-like, but a big cat

ukemi

• punch/strike straight with first two knuckles
• keep eyes on nage amap, even when falling/rolling
• prolong the relationship
• bend
• use nage for support in slow ukemi
• ready to protect from / avoid atemi
• bend head toward nage in shiho nage
• turn head away in irimi nage
• tuck inner leg under
• how to fall softer
• relax as much as possible into pins
• follow nage with your center, staying upright
• attack intelligently — you are practicing your strikes and ability to seize opportunity

jiyu waza

• take time with each throw
• keep moving
• keep observing attackers
• keep all attackers in view AMAP
• throw each uke at attackers
• protect attackers
• pick and attack attackers
• split attackers
• learn direction of throw that follows from each technique, starting with the atemi

ma’ai

• forced commit (if uke tries to creep forward gets attacked)
• subvert uke’s next obvious move, and the next, and the next
• jam up uke’s fighting mechanism
• prevent uke’s natural rotation
• augment uke’s natural rotation
• reestablish presence in blind spot, just within or outside of uke’s peripheral vision

principles

• keep center
• relax and smile genuinely
• continuous 360 awareness
• rotation on multiple axes
• force begets force
• elbows in and down
• invite with open palm
• occasionally do the unpredicted and observe reactions
• snake hand
• one scoop
• if too fast, ratchet back the speed and seek more details
• half speed is close to the maximum you need for daily training
• move as if holding katana, or a medicine ball, or a pack
• move as if wearing a skirt
• lose the ego
• it’s a practice, not a contest, not a performance
• keep your attention constantly moving, internally and externally

my approach

• pragmatic
• simplified
• direct and crisp
• out of the blue – no tells
• anything could happen
• highly targeted atemi
• without ornament
• based on natural analogs (climbing, drinking, catching)

the best students are thieves

Razors in Fog

“A millimeter can determine who lives and who dies,” one of my teachers points out every so often.

The dojo is a riot of glare and shadow. Morning sunlight blasts through the wide open warehouse door, an empty promise of heat in the chill air. A gaggle of middle-aged jedi, we strike at each other with wooden swords called bokkens, our cold feet shuffling across frigid mats. Our teacher’s words give meaning to the practice, letting us know that swordsmanship is not about flourish or going through the motions. It is exacting. In a real fight steel flies faster than thought.

Her words bespeak our own fates and the fates of countless others. Seen through the lens of time, our motions are palimpsests of lessons learned in dojos and on battlefields centuries ago, endlessly repeated and varied. Thousands, perhaps millions of people have died due to mistakes in sword technique, and their surviving comrades have sometimes noted the mistakes and incorporated them into their art. This advice has been passed down by teachers who train their students to do things this way, not that way. The past is remembered and yet mutated by the inherent failures of transmission.

Sometimes we cannot grasp the meaning of the advice. Why should it be this way? Mimicking the motion feels robotic and empty. Other times you feel that you see the kinesthetic meaning instantly, and the advice passes into your personal repertoire without effort. Ironically, you may be stepping in a certain manner or holding the bokken in a certain way for entirely the wrong reasons. The teacher cannot know. She sees you doing it “right” or “wrong” and reacts accordingly. That is her role.

Does anyone do it “right”? I don’t think so. That is why it is an art. At best our teacher can help us to internalize her own high standards.

Rightness in an art is subjective, and pure transmission of technique is impossible. Whether we are hopeless dilettantes or dedicated, long-suffering students of an art, we are never perfect. A recent study of how the body learns motion showed that the brain simply does not store the full motion. Our minds and bodies improvise our movements every single time. It is actually impossible for a human being to repeat a motion in exactly the same manner.

It gets better though. Your eyes do not transmit actual images to your brain. Rather, they send a kind of multi-channel sketch, sort of the way an image can be separated into red, green, and blue,, except that there are more than ten channels with complex interactions between the different signals. The brain reads shorthand and from these signals, then imagines reality. Our other senses probably work in similar ways. The data directly from reality is compressed and abbreviated to optimize its transmission along the nerves. Then, like a game of telephone, your brain weaves a story. The philosopher Daniel Dennett suggests that you might not even be capable of voluntary actions, but that your massively parallel brain tells a sequential story of your actions right after you perform them.

Whether we have free will or are essentially a herd of so many zombies, lots of significant things in life do come down to minutes, millimeters, or other small, unforgiving increments. This is the nightmare of the neurotic. Every action counts, every decision could have irrevocable consequences. There are a number of moments, daily for some people (soldiers, politicians, surgeons, police officers), that carry razor-like significance. Of course, in our cushioned modern world, this is usually not the case for the individual, which makes those moments even more difficult to spot.

A few months ago I missed one and have been living with the consequences. The fallout has been truly educational, though I have not enjoyed the lessons. It has taken months to pull things back together. I do believe that the lessons of basic ukemi and jiyu waza practice helped keep me sane during that time, but ultimately these are just a set of strategies. Under actual “attack,” you don’t have time to think. You just do. Curiously, this has not been an occasion for regrets or much self-recrimination. When I play back the sequence of events, I cannot see how things might have unfolded differently. We were dealing with a new baby and were thoroughly distracted. Yet it did come down to minute differences in timing. A few millimeters of bad luck, essentially.

So, imprecise, involuntary, possible-zombie denizens of our easy, mediated world, learn to pay attention. Little things do count.

The cold sunlight stabs my eyes, hiding my partner’s bokken. I have to reach out with all my senses. He carries out the prescribed attack, the and crack of wood and sense of martial balance at play feels absolutely real and crisp. I know that what my brain has put together is not real, but I’ll embrace it anyway. Somewhere, very very close, all of this did happen. For real.

Inadvertent Activation

Although my ballooning sleep deficit has finally leveled off, I feel like the asymptotic curve is trawling the bottom Lake Baikal.

The other day I came home, tossed my jacket onto our feeble, secondhand coat rack, keys into the key dish, and bent down to untie my shoes. A moment later, a leather-jacketed thug fell upon me from nowhere.

My reaction was so swift and fierce that the attacker (the coat rack) made no further moves. I found my self standing edge-on, knees slightly bent, well centered and ready to fight, chin down, shoulders forward a bit, one hand extended to throat level, hand blade outward, the other in a nice guard position, ready to block or deliver a counterpunch.

Happily, there were no witnesses.

center

If you take more than a few aikido classes, at some point you’ll try to do a technique, and nothing will happen. Your partner will say “connect it to your center.” You’ll try to swallow your frustration, feel connected somehow, and the technique might work. As you do more aikido you get better at “connecting to the center”.

They say the center is a point a couple inches below the navel and inside.

A two-day aunkai seminar seems to have done more for my “center” than several years of aikido. Naturally, the years of aikido informed me about what to look for and I had already developed some sense of it. Aunkai is a training regimen, not a martial art, and you have to train regularly to get the benefits, but with just those two 6-hour sessions, plus a little work on my own, I’m already feeling it in class. More power, better stability, better ukemi.

In short, forget about the center. Connect and maintain your frame, and connect to the ground. Moving with your center will happen naturally. These guys give a great seminar, well worth your time.