Aikido Of The Week

Thursday

All of the evening classes throughout California were great, but many of us agreed that Thursday at Two Rock Aikido was probably the best. Some of the stuff that Jan Sensei had been saying throughout the classes started to click for me, and it was a great group of training partners.

There was one woman there wearing a white belt and hakama whom everyone seemed to know. I didn’t get a chance to work with her during class, but we were folding our hakama next to each other at the end. We started chatting, and the fact that I was from Madison came up. I still didn’t know her name. She mentioned knowing John and Robin Sensei, and said she had somewhat recently been to Wisconsin visiting Eric Novak Sensei’s dojo in West Bend. It turned out she grew up in Milwaukee, we knew tons of the same people, blah blah blah. She had on a relatively new white belt, and I hadn’t seen her train much. Eventually she asked me if I want to “roll around a little bit”. Keep in mind this was after a full two hour class, but I wasn’t about to say no to that. She couldn’t fall because of an injury, but it was no problem, I took all the ukemi. We started training, and I was thinking “There’s no way she’s new”. It was super fun, she was really connected and smooth, and we practiced for probably almost five minutes. Afterwards she goes, “Tell Robin and John that Jamie Z. says hello”. And then it hit me. THIS IS JAMIE ZIMRON! She’s the golfing sensei! And she’s a 5th dan! OH MY GOD! But I restrained myself, and let her know how much some of the members of our dojo enjoyed her class in West Bend (the class that she previously neglected to mention that she taught).

After that experience, I asked Jan Sensei a question about one of the techniques we did that night, and got an even-better-than-expected answer.

The Two Rocks Aikido dojo is gorgeous. Out on Richard Strozzi-Heckler Sensei’s ranch, all the buildings are built like log cabins, there are tons of windows, and rosemary grows everywhere. The mat was pretty small, but we made it work. Lots of line throws. The weird thing was, there are no changing rooms, so everyone just changes in the dojo.

Friday
Class at Aikido of Tamalpais. After our extensive walking and eating of the day, I was really excited for class. Although the classes of the last few days were certainly not identical, they had a similar theme. In Tamalpais, however, Sensei started to change things a little bit (maybe in preparation for the weekend with Linda Sensei?). He did an exercise from shomenuchi where you enter, turn, and cut with uke. Then bring them around and “touch their center”. You don’t literally touch it, but use the connection through both of your hands as a bridge. I really liked this as an ukemi exercise, as well as a different entry from shomen than we usually do. Something that we often don’t realize as nage is that in many cases, when you can get uke’s balance, they can also get yours. Jan Sensei often talks about “researching” techniques. When you practice something new, it won’t be, and shouldn’t be, effective right away. In training, we often try to go off the line and be protected, but you learn the most in the vulnerable places. He talked about how the top of a mountain is both the most dangerous, and the most interesting place.

First in Seattle, and then again later, Jan Sensei was talking about “pure” technique, kata, or kihon waza. One of his goals is to not have to undo anything. You put your feet and hands exactly where they need to be, have balance in the right place, etc. Then, when you have solid kihon waza, you start experimenting with spacing, pushing and drawing, stepping or foot changes, and that’s when it gets interesting. This is back to the idea of researching.

The Weekend

Okay. So we got to Linda Holiday Sensei’s dojo Aikido of Santa Cruz at about 9:00 Saturday morning after an early drive from Berkeley, thinking class was at 10:00. It was at 10:30. Now, I love being early. Arriving at a seminar less than 45 minutes early makes me nervous. But an hour and a half is a little excessive. Luckily, the dojo is gorgeous, they have an extensive Aikido library, and nice squishy couches.

When I saw that Jan Sensei and Linda Sensei would be co-teaching half of the classes, I was really excited. They taught some of my favorite seminars of the past year. What I didn’t realize is that when one was teaching, THE OTHER ONE WAS TRAINING! So while one 6th dan was teaching an amazing class, the other one was just practicing with everyone else. I had taken a fair amount of ukemi from Jan Sensei in the previous couple days, so I was getting relatively familiar with his nage waza, but it was really interesting to see his ukemi as well. Jan Sensei and Linda Sensei are both definitely among the people whose ukemi makes your technique better, and when they throw, you can do ukemi beyond your normal skill. It was really interesting to see such a distinction in Linda Sensei’s Shingu style, to what we had been seeing all week from Jan Sensei.

Linda Sensei was continuing the theme of a bridge between uke’s and nage’s centers with some of the exercises she was doing. The contrasts between the two sensei was particularly clearly illustrated when they did the same exercise: when Linda Sensei throws you, it feels like you got scooped up and spit out by a tornado, and when Jan Sensei throws you, it feels like a trapdoor opened up beneath your feet. And yet even with all the variation, the two styles and teaching methods complement each other really well.

There’s still lots to absorb, so there will certainly be more to come!