Blog Feed: Andy's Epic Ramble

How things are going so far.

Published on 2012-05-22 13:25:00

It's been a while since I posted so here is what's been shaking lately:Class is now three days a week, same time same place. The last class we had was a one on with one of my students. The focus of the class ended up being patience. Tori needs to wait for uke's movements using tori's arms as a "curb feeler". Uke will clue you into what he's planning to do far enough in advance to make the necessary counter movements. It was a pretty cool class and I hope to work on that some more with the others [..] > read more

Week one 2.0

Published on 2012-04-11 23:34:00

This Monday and Wednesday I taught aikido to a handful of friends at a local park as part of a continuing practice group. One successful week in the bag!Monday I introduced them to tegatana, the first two moves of hanasu and shomen ate with emphasis on the initial brush off. The overall idea for this class was to be aware of ma'ai and to move as soon as uke crosses it.Wednesday was more tegatana and additional work on hanasu 1 & 2. With tegatana the goal was smaller steps and trailing foot recov [..] > read more

A second go round.

Published on 2012-04-02 23:17:00

Just an update that i'm trying to get another aikido class started at my local park. Nothing much to report at the moment, we're going to be rained out this week. Hopefully next week we can start training. We also have a facebook page! > read more

Ponderings

Published on 2011-11-13 16:28:00

I've spent most of the morning thinking about some aikido stuff. It has mainly centered around initial off-balances, ushiro ate, and waki gatame. I think it would be fun to just have a class about the little brush off bump from inside the arm, the one that happens on the outside that "drops uke into the hole" as the intro to quite a bit of junana, the "cow catcher" as a brush off and using ushiro ate and waki gatame as the two ways to finish all these off balances. Then some multiple uke randori [..] > read more

In case you were wondering.

Published on 2011-11-09 18:32:00

It has been some time since my last post. This could very well be the last one you see. Class eventually declined into a series of nobody showing up leaving me to sit in the park, wait 15 minutes, then go home. I made attempts to get students to show but after weeks of no shows it felt like i was only begging. So for now, the little study group I had named Konwakai is defunct.I guess the real problem is I don't believe i'll be restarting it.I recently tried to demo for my shodan with dishearteni [..] > read more

Seeing where we're at

Published on 2011-08-26 11:33:00

Wednesday was something of an off day for class. It was a rainy afternoon, which seems to keep most of the students away. Even though the usual back up plan is to get under the large pavilion in the middle of the park it seemed to be overrun with people. I decided to wait and see if anyone would show up just in case and told Jesse we'd see if we couldn't get something accomplished despite everything else. After wandering the park and finding a gazebo that would do the trick we had a small class [..] > read more

Just the basics

Published on 2011-08-22 06:02:00

This post is for the class we had Wednesday the 17th. I'm a little behind on updating because i've been rather busy with the first week of college and all that entails. I decided to push our start time to 6:30 to try and have most of class take place towards dusk and it seems to have helped with the heat slightly. Jesse was the only one who could make it so we had a lot of one on one time. After the usual stretching and ukemi we practiced tegatana a couple of times. The first run through was fi [..] > read more

Stretching the pieces

Published on 2011-08-12 18:07:00

After about a month of random delays class resumed last friday. I had John from Johndo show up along with regular student Jesse. We ran through tegatana a couple of times and paid attention to the same hand-same foot relationship of the movements and how they work like in hanasu. Disengaging our hip and fall-stepping to the hand-foot side works in both kata. The rest of class was spent working on hanasu 1-8. More practice for jesse and a refresher for john turned into an interesting evening of [..] > read more

And Socrates said..

Published on 2011-06-30 07:24:00

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."I bring this up because Pat's class is a constant reminder of this quote to me.Instead of having class tuesday i tried to lure my students to McComb for Pat's class, but it was to no avail. I'm st > read more

Morning showers and deep thoughts.

Published on 2011-06-24 12:55:00

This isn't really all that important, just something I wanted to jot down. A notion struck me earlier today that a key to better understanding something like aikido is to be comfortable and confident in the path you're taking at the pace you're exper > read more

Double the students, double the fun....

Published on 2011-06-17 10:26:00

...."it's the statement of the great mint in Doublemint gum!" (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)So I had two students last night which really helped me stick to my plan to keep it simple. After spreading out the tarp and doing some warm-up stretches we gave > read more

Ma'ai, ma'ai...it's hanasu!

Published on 2011-06-14 09:55:00

So far class is going well. I'm trying my best to be patient and not overload the guy with too much info at once but at times it is a bit difficult. I worry I'm going too fast so for the next two classes i think I'll just stick to tegatana, hanasu 1- > read more

Deflect, evade

Published on 2011-06-07 05:19:00

2nd class was a repeat of the basics with the student that's new to aikido:A few reps of tegatana with relaxed small steps as the focus. We went through the whole kata each time. Next we did some ukemi. Stepping back falls and forwards/backwards grou > read more

The difference a year makes.

Published on 2011-06-02 10:34:00

Its been one year exactly since the last post on this blog and there has been a lot of changes in my life since then. The video blog project fell through almost right after its inception. I moved back to Mississippi from Washington State. Several oth > read more

Aikido where you can do....it.

Published on 2010-06-02 12:06:00

To pass the time at work I've obtained a high bounce ball to play around with. One of the things I've been working on particularly is trying to do the first portion of hanasu one bounce at a time. It definitely shortens up your steps. I occasionally > read more

Classified Ad

Published on 2010-05-11 23:07:00

Semi-adequate aikido student willing to do degrading menial tasks for aikido lessons. Must be within bus distance of Bellingham, WA. Specialties include medical sanitation of premises and odd job repairs. Also capable of taking falls and receiving mi > read more

Bass Rutten is an expert. Andy learns the importance of sarcasam.

Published on 2010-04-23 10:57:00

Any thoughts? > read more

So much for that idea.

Published on 2010-04-22 00:34:00

The aikido project is dead. It was, i thought, a good idea for the hour it lasted. At the moment it looks like i'm going to be taking something of a step backwards. My plan now is to try and find a way to get into the local aikikai classes and start > read more

Aikido Project

Published on 2010-04-09 00:38:00

Just a quick update. Here's the actual page for the project John and I are doing. It's nothing fancy and you are bound to be disapointed if you're looking for the reinvention of the wheel or extremely crisp technique. It's really just something john > read more

So, here's what i did....

Published on 2010-03-31 02:15:00

Sorry for the large lapse in blogging. I realize it's been 5 months and no one may even still be reading this. That's cool because i use this thing to write down my random scattered thoughts on aikido.The last 5 months were filled up mostly with life > read more

So, what do i do?

Published on 2009-11-23 19:03:00

I haven't been able to travel to class since august. I have no one in my area that wants to practice. I have missed and will miss seminars because of my job. There is only so much tegatana i can really do.I'm just really discouraged and don't know wh > read more

"I thought i could instruct him....

Published on 2009-08-28 13:11:00

....as well as Yoda. I was wrong."So today i got up early and went to USM to do some aikido with my buddy Jessie. He's taking an aikikai off-shoot there at the college so every once in a while we get together and compare notes and work with a few thi > read more

Community

Published on 2009-08-05 09:00:00

As i moved around in class last night trying to remember how this technique goes or how that technique moves a certain way something occurred to me that i thought i'd waste the virtual ink to share.One of the new guys (i say new guy but he's been goi > read more

Our dojo has popsicles.

Published on 2009-07-12 20:47:00

I made it to class yesterday and i convinced Jessie (the aikikai guy) to come along. We had class outside of the dojo this time, and it's always an interesting change. The parking area in front of the dojo has a decent slope upwards towards the stree > read more