Cool stuff I learned this week

[bushido_man96]

That's crazy! From a real high to a real low real fast! I'm glad everything is getting sorted for you. Please keep us posted on how things go!

[aurik]

The road back to normalcy today involved an hour of training in Kobudo (bo and sai), followed by a 1.5 hour karate teaching class. Kobudo mainly involved working the first set of bo hojo undo, a little bit of the second hojo undo, starting to learn the first bo kata (sushi no kun), and then the first set of sai hojo undo.

I may have mentioned this earlier, but there's a lot of muscle memory involved here -- I trained in bo for about year back in the mid 90's (sai, too). So my brain still somewhat remembers the fundamentals. What my body does NOT have is the muscular strength and endurance for bo and sai. There is a lot of lat involvement with the bo kata, which tends to wear those out. And working the sai warmups is pretty hard on the shoulders and rotator cuff. It doesn't help that I've had a partially torn left rotator cuff for decades. It tends to get tired and achy very easily when working new sequences I'm not used to.

The good news is that I'm starting to get the hang of the first set of bo and sai hojo undo, and I was able to follow along through most of the first kata. There were a few sequences that I struggled with (mainly just trying to get my legs to do what they need to). All in all, I'm starting to feel good about how I'm picking up the basics and how they're starting to feel natural.

The other good news is that I wasn't completely gassed for karate after the kobudo class. Since we had a couple of students in for their very first class, our CI ran the warmups and basics. However, once we split into groups, I was running the advanced group. I found myself getting gassed a bit easier than I am used to, but I attribute that both to a) doing the kobudo class beforehand, and b) being about 4 weeks out from regular training. I felt pretty good and strong with running kata today, even though I made a pretty big boneheaded move on Seiryu (required for nidan). Again, I haven't run that in a little while. I found the power and speed were about what I'm used to. The stamina is just a bit short, but I expect that to come back to where I'm used to in the next couple week.

On a slight tangent, I started making my own weapons -- a few years ago, I bought a bunch of lumber to make cabinets for my garage. While I was there, I saw this nice big chunk of purpleheart -- about 2"x8"x78". Last weekend, I took my table saw to it, and cut a couple of 1 3/8" square x78" blanks. One of those I further cut down to octagonal, and now I'm working on turning it into a bo staff. The other I'll also make a bo out of, but it'll be a (slightly) belated birthday present for my CI. After that, I plan on making a pair of nunchaku and a few other things.

[aurik]

I've been quite remiss in updating this thread.

 

A lot of things have happened over the past few months.  I've been keeping up with all of my doctor's appointments related to my incident in May.  I had a nuclear stress test in July, which showed that my heart is still pumping blood how it needs to so that isn't an issue I need to worry about right now.  I spoke with the cardiologist last week, and she suggested that since what I had was atrial flutter (different than atrial fibrillation), there is a surgical way of correcting it.  From what I understand, the surgeon would go in through my femoral vein with a laser and essentially zap away the set of neurons that can go haywire and trigger the atrial flutter.  I'm nervous about it, but it would mean I wouldn't need to be on blood thinners anymore.  I have an appointment to speak with the surgeon in October, so we'll see what he says.  I'm very concerned with complications, but I'll at least see what the surgeon says.  The weight is down by 20 lbs since I had my episode.  It's not coming off as fast as I'd like, but it IS coming off, which is the important thing.  I've had to trim my belt twice, and I'm going to have to start buying smaller pants here soon, so that's a good thing.

In terms of martial arts, I'm continuing to teach my weekly Thursday class, and we just got a new batch of white belts in the class so that's fun.  My Thursday night now consists of an hour of kobudo followed by teaching my karate class.  Saturdays is usually an hour of karate followed by an hour of kobudo, with last Saturday I did an hour of karate, an hour of kobudo, and then a kobudo test.  Our instructors tend to give feedback after the test, and one of the pieces of feedback I got will basically mean I'll need to relearn the way I handle the bo (specifically with the grip changes that are involved).  

I did finish my purpleheart bo, and it's a beast.  I intentionally made it long and heavy with the intention that if I can wield this effortlessly, I can pretty much pick up any bo in the dojo and it'll feel like a toothpick.  I'll get some pics of it shortly.  In the next couple weeks I plan on taking that purpleheart (I"ve still got plenty of it) and making a set of nunchaku.  We have a guy in our dojo who has made quite a few weapons and is willing to help me out on that.  It also turns out that I've got some pretty unique tools that should help with that.  More on that later.

I spent the first 2 weeks of August in Colorado Springs taking an "Introduction to Bladesmithing" class.  I have to say that in those 2 weeks, my forging and grinding techniques improved by leaps and bounds.  I'm now able to take a piece of steel and forge it efficiently into the shape I want, so that there's a lot less time required on the grinder afterwards.  I'm also getting to the point where I can draw something on a sheet of paper and forge within an eighth of an inch or so to that shape.  (That's about 3mm for you metric folks).  There's a LOT left to learn, but I feel like I'm at a point where I'm comfortable making something and giving it and/or selling it to someone else.  So this coming weekend I'll be heading down to Colorado Springs again and starting on a few projects:

- A set of Japanese scabbard chisels (https://www.waltersorrellsblades.com/product-page/saya-nomi-japanese-scabbard-chisel).  It turns out these are also EXTREMELY useful for cutting in the side grooves on a set of nunchaku.  I checked with my friend, and it looks like a 5/16" width is just about the right width for it.  And it so happens I've got 1/4" stock that will forge out to just about the size I need

- Two test blades for the ABS Journeyman test.  I made a couple in my class, but these won't qualify since they were made during a test.  These are blades only for the purpose of passing the ABS Journeyman performance test:  They have to be no longer than 15" with a 10" blade, the blade can't be any wider than 2", and they have to pass the performance test:  Slice through a 1" rope in one swing, Cut a wooden 2x4 in half, twice, Shave hair off your arm (to show it's still sharp), and then put it in a vise and bend it to 90 degrees without breaking.  It's okay if it doesn't straighten back to true.

- We have a few kids in my son's Scout troop who will be completing their requirements for Eagle Scout in the next few months.  I plan on making them custom knives to commemorate the event.  I've found a really cool idea for a pommel that I should be able to cast out of bronze, and we'll see about other things as well.

And I'm going to start making the commitment to work as much on fit and finish as I do forging.  For the longest time I'd forge something out and never finish it.  From here on out I'm going to finish them.

 

 

[bushido_man96]

It's good to hear things are going well on the health front.  Keep it up!

Very cool on the weapons forging and finishing.  Sounds like a lot of fun!

[sensei8]

Your journey, aurik, is very inspirational for all levels of experience because you drive through the situations one at a time and there's no give up in you at all that I can see, which is very admirable.

Making weapons can be quite rewarding. I tried to make my own Nunchaku's once, as crud as it was, but I gave up trying to make them myself when during my High School demo, one handle flew away into the audience, thank God nobody was hit, leaving me only with just one handle and the Kusari (Chain). I've never been quite a carpenter at all. 

Edited September 20 by sensei8

[aurik]

Last week was a really good week.

As I've previously mentioned, I started training in Matayoshi Kobudo this June.  Having a foundation in Uechi-Ryu definitely helps in some ways.  Some of the body mechanics are the same, but some of the others are waaay different.  For example, in Uechi-Ryu, you generally want to keep your shoulders square at all times, to keep an opponent from pulling you off-balance -- once you're off-balance, you're vulnerable.  However, in kobudo, you have a weapon, and that weapon is more effective when you can get reach on an opponent.  So you'll often lead with your weapon shoulder, and the hip rotations in kobudo are far more pronounced than in Uechi-Ryu.  So it's "different, yet same".  (I actually have the converse of this conversation with the students who have started doing Uechi-Ryu after spending a lot of time in kobudo).

So I'm starting to get the hang of the bo and the sai.  With the bo, we have 3 sets of hojo undo (basic techniques) followed by a number of kata (5, I think?).  While you'll start learning the bo kata as soon as you're ready for it, it's not a firm requirement until shodan.  Likewise the sai consists of a set of hojo undo along with 3 kata (and the kata aren't tested until shodan).  I'm still struggling mightily with the tonfa (we call them the tonkua), but I won't be tested on those for quite awhile.

Well, this past week, our CI brought in Raymundo Veliz from the Matayoshi kodokan.  He ran mini-sessions (30 mins each) on Thursday, then ran additional sessions through the weekend.  There were 2x 2-hour sessions on both Saturday and Sunday.  Session 1 was bo, session 2 was sai, session 3 was tuonkua, and session 4 was nunchaku.  In each session, Raymundo sensei started out with the fundamentals, and for each fundamental he showed the movement, we'd practice it a few times, and then he'd bring a partner up to at as an opponent with a rattan/bamboo bo, and then explain WHY we did the movements the way we did.  In many cases the move as written was drastically different than the move as applied.  For example, with the sai, all of the hojo undo combinations start with a chudan tsuki (mid-level punch).  But per Raymundo, it's not "really" a punch, but you're switching stance to get in a more advantageous position.  It just "looks" like a punch.  He also has a sharp sense of humor (in 3 languages no less) -- he grew up in Mexico and has lived and taught in Japan for the past 18 years.  Every so often his English would fail him, so he'd fall back to Spanish or Japanese and wait for someone in the audience to give him the right English word.  But as an instructor, he is energetic and has a real passion for teaching.

The sheer amount of information I learned over this seminar is astounding.  We worked on fundamentals, bunkai (which you usually don't even start on until green belt or above), kata (including tonkua no kata dai ichi and nunchaku no kata, which I'd never tried before), and a LOT of discussions about the why and how, including generous amounts of body mechanical explanations.  

The good news is that for the past 2 months I've been training with the massive purpleheart bo that I made.  It's about 6 1/2 feet long, octagonal, and untapered.  It's extremely heavy to wield and wears me out using it.  So this past weekend I used my old oak (untapered) 6' bo.  Which is heavy and stout, but not nearly as big as the purpleheart bo.  After using the purpleheart bo for 2 months, that oaken bo felt super light.  Which is what I was going for.  I think from now on I'll test with the oaken bo and train with the purpleheart one.

It was one of those weekends that "levels up" your understanding of everything, especially if you can remember it all.  I'm just not sure if I can, and I'm not sure where to begin writing it down.

Now I'll be spending the next day or two recovering.  My traps and lats are shot, and my lower back is exhausted too.  But it was definitely worth it.

 

Edited September 23 by aurik

[sensei8]

Excellent post, aurik!! Quite excited for you that your Kobudo training is off to a good start!! There's nothing more vigorous than adding Kobudo to your MA journey!! Keep up the good training!!

[bushido_man96]

What a great seminar!  Getting the why's along with the how's is awesome.  Getting those explanations makes everything make more sense.  Sound like an awesome time!

[aurik]

And now back to our original programming...

This past week I've tried to get back to my original training schedule.  Tuesday kobudo followed by Tuesday advanced karate, Thursday kobudo followed by Thursday teaching.  Unfortunately, due to some GI issues, I had to skip the Thursday kobudo, but training around health issues is something you have to deal with -- and it's a more often thing the older you get it seems.

In our style of kobudo, we start on the bo, followed by sai, then tonfa.  I'm starting to get pretty comfortable with the bo (even my massive purpleheart beast).  The sai is coming along as well, and the tonkua I'm still having issues with, but improving.  In terms of the techniques we learn, I'm feeling really good with the first bo hojo undo, the second one I'm getting familiar with, and the third one I'm still iffy on (I'm not sure when we test on the second or third one, so I'm not worried).  I'm also getting pretty comfortable with the sai hojo undo - this is what I'll be tested on in a couple months.  The tonkua hojo undo I'm still struggling with, but I won't be tested on that for a long time.  I'm also feeling really good about my first 2 kata - tsushi no kun (bo kata) and nicho sai (sai kata).  

Unlike uechi-ryu, our CI will pretty much teach you anything in kobudo he thinks you're ready for.  For example, tsushi no kun isn't a hard requirement until you test for shodan, but he teaches it whenever he thinks you're ready to learn it.  The kata itself is mostly the same sequence of hojo undo techniques, with a couple of extra moves sprinkled in for flavor.  Likewise, nicho sai follows the same lines.  While they're not hard and fast requirements, they are definitely good to know.

I also attended our Tuesday advanced class for the first time in awhile -- between stamina issues (the kobudo class tends to wear me out, and I'm still trying to regain my stamina after all of the issues at the beginning of summer).  I got to work with David (who recently earned his shihan license) on kotekitae, and this resulted in an "a-ha" moment.  One of our fundamental kotekitae sequences is the arm pounding sequence.  Partner A steps in with a punch.  Partner B steps back performing a chudan barai uke, striking the partner's interior forearm.  Partner B then circles underneath the arm with a watari-uke (circle block), maintaining contact with the partner.  The drill concludes with Partner B striking Partner A's forearm either with a shuto uchi or a tettsui uchi (chop or hammer fist), depending on preference.

Here's the a-ha moment.  David is also a 4th or 5th degree in Aikido and has put these two concepts together.  If you modify the initial chudan barai uke to "hook" with your wrist at the exact same time Partner A is finishing their extension on their punch, you'll pull Partner A forward, disrupting their balance just enough that they'll have to take a moment to readjust.  That little bit of disruption can make all of the difference.  That's one of the differences that our CI has mentioned between Okinawan and Japanese styles of karate.  In most Japanese styles, you are strongly discouraged from disrupting your partner's techniques.  However, in many Okinawan styles, you're expected to disrupt your opponent, especially in 2-person drills, because that disruption makes your techniques more effective if you ever need to actually use them.

[bushido_man96]

25 minutes ago, aurik said:

Here's the a-ha moment.  David is also a 4th or 5th degree in Aikido and has put these two concepts together.  If you modify the initial chudan barai uke to "hook" with your wrist at the exact same time Partner A is finishing their extension on their punch, you'll pull Partner A forward, disrupting their balance just enough that they'll have to take a moment to readjust.  That little bit of disruption can make all of the difference.  That's one of the differences that our CI has mentioned between Okinawan and Japanese styles of karate.  In most Japanese styles, you are strongly discouraged from disrupting your partner's techniques.  However, in many Okinawan styles, you're expected to disrupt your opponent, especially in 2-person drills, because that disruption makes your techniques more effective if you ever need to actually use them.

Very cool.  I like this idea of disruption in partner drills.  I like his blending with Aikido, too.  It's fun when you start seeing where the two styles can cross up a little.

I've been really enjoying training with the jo and bokken at the Aikido dojo.  I like jo better.  The sensei also doesn't seem to concerned about how the testing requirements shake out; if he feels something is useful, he'll teach it to us.