Great advice for beginners

Nev Sagiba, an aikido instructor, has written some excellent articles for Aikido Journal.  Here are two aimed at beginners, not just in aikido, but in any martial arts:

1. Training tips for timid beginners
2. More advice for beginners

And here's one of those great stories that you hear from time to time -- or even end up in! -- when you study martial arts.

Ideas for theme classes

This year I plan to do a themed class roughly every four weeks.  That may be too frequent: we'll see how it goes.

Where a regular class follows a standard format, allowing for repetition and reinforcement of foundational skills, with a couple of blocks where the instructor goes into a bit more depth, a themed class goes more in depth more most of the class.

The approach I'm taking this year is a bit different from theme of the month, which I ran in 2009, in which the discretionary blocks for a whole month were on a unified theme, which also seeped into the rest of the class.

Here's a list off the top of my head:

Throws

1. Kuzushi
2. Leg throws
3. Hip throws
4. Hand throws
5. Hidari class (everything left-handed)
6. Throwing with movement
7. Combination throws
8. Counter throws

Restraint and Control

1. Come-alongs
2. Reflexive self-defence
3. R&C throws
4. Standard escapes

Groundwork

1. Immobilizations
2. Groundwork randori skills
3. Arm locks and leg locks
4. Strangles
5. Combination locks: such a good title!

Advanced

1. Sacrifice throws
2. Stick defences -- hmm: will need sticks
3. Nage no Kata (kata of throws)
4. Katame no Kata (groundwork)
5. Gonosen no Kata (counters)

Requests and reactions welcome.

Effortless jiu-jitsu and judo / first class back in 2011

On Wednesday we had our first class back for the year with eight regulars on the mat -- what passes for a small class nowadays -- plus one prospective student.

It was good to be back, even on a rainy night; never mind this Summer's floods and cyclones.

* * *

This year I'll be taking an over-arching theme of "minimal effort".  How can we become so efficient in our jiu-jitsu and judo that it becomes near-effortless?

Of course, the training for such masterly ease will entail a lot of hard work!

A fun Judo kata

Featured in Aikido Journal Blog

A couple of days ago 2008 post of mine, The Broader Meaning of Kuzushi, was picked up by Aikido Journal and featured in their blog.

Nice!  Not only that, but one of their readers, Dan Rubin, was able to point me to the likely source of the quotation in the top left corner of this blog:

The source of the quotation is cited as “unknown.”

I thought you might like to know that the analysis, if not the exact quotation, is that of Donn Draeger in Classical Budo (1973), at page 11 (and elsewhere): “...a number of preconceptions and rigid beliefs about the relationship of the bujutsu (classical martial arts of self-protection) to the budo (classical martial ways of self-perfection) prevent a true understanding of these disciplines.”

Thanks Dan!