...I get a compliment on my form from Chio sensei. My head might blow up. But I was noticing the "other" kuzushi that Josef sensei talked about (when he was visiting our aikikai last year), not of taking balance, but of taking over balance. When uke takes any step, there's this moment where they have no stability at all, they're light to move, and ideally you just never let them regain that stability. Timing is everything, as you're not forcing uke to react to anything so you have to go at their speed. Saturday's weapons class, Scott Sensei offered me exactly one correction, and verbal at that - I'm so glad I've studied the terminology, because it let me do things the right way. We did an extended jo kata with two variations, and in the process of developing it, "uke" and "nage" changed meanings a few times. But unlike last time this type of didactic nonsense happened, I was able to keep track. It was crowded with eighteen people in the dojo, and despite sticks waving all around, there were exactly zero yelps of pain - though I saw or heard two jos drop during warmup. The starting point was the kata that goes jodan tsuki, jodan gaeshi, ushiro uchi, gedan yokomen. Sensei added a reversed jodan tsuki, blocked with a disarming side strike, followed by a jab at the knee that must be blocked with only one hand on the jo (seeing as it gets knocked out of one hand with the side strike). We ended the class with a jo-taking sankyo that scared the crap out of me for a bit. It looked like the staff was catching between the body, arm, and the floor in a way to break the elbow, but it turns out to be spurious - the only way nage can finish the pin is by removing the staff. I haven't seen a lot of standing sankyo pins yet!
