PDA

View Full Version : Good Uke?



Oni
2nd January 2003, 19:10
Ok,

Saw the start of this in another thread and thought it would be better served moving into a new thread.

There is a lot of discussion concerning resistance training, sparring, full contact vs. traditional training, etc etc etc. I would like to gather together some ideas of what taijutsu folks thinks make up a good uke.

What are good things to do? What are bad things to do? What kind of progressive methods do you use to help create good ukes for the instructors out there?

What kinds of things do you do when you find yourself training with a 'bad' uke?

This 'might' be a good question for Shojins forum...but I would really like it to stay ninpo focused. There are a lot of good methods that may work for other arts that may or may not necessarily be good for ninpo work.

I am sure this has been discussed before...but it is always a good topic and hopefully some new things will come out with this new year ;)

Janin
2nd January 2003, 23:11
Oni A good Uke is like a Mirror Image of you he/she niether helps nor hurts your training.

Don Roley
4th January 2003, 05:34
I have come to the opinion that a good uke is so important to training that I would rather train under a so-so teacher and a great uke than vice versa. In the old days, the person in the uke position was the teacher. This is how important it is.

The thing is, in the Bujinkan there is very little in terms of a "right" technique. Mainly you can say that we try for the most right technique for the situation. Thus we try to do the most appropriate thing we can in a given situation.

Hatsumi has wrote (Japanese source) that a technique really does not have a form of its own, but rather like water takes the shape of whatever vessel it is poured into.

In this case, the job of the uke is to be the perfect vessel for the technique being practiced.

Here is a simple example of what I mean. If someone grabs the front of my jacket and gives a push to slam me against something in preperation for a punch, I can slip around the arm (like one of those spinning targets knights used to practice jousting against) and add a little to the guys arm so that his arm is extended as I put my shoulder under his elbow and then hyper- extend it. This is a simple technique that all of us in Nagase dojo can do without thinking.

But if the uke grabs from a half step closer and does not push at all, then the arm does not go into a hyper extended position as naturally as the example I gave. You could still do the technique, but it takes a lot more to do and is not the most appropriate and natural thing to do in that position. In a real situation the other guy probably will not stand still as you position the arm to do the technique.

In many arts, I have heard that the other guy should "give" you the technique you do. The chance presents itself and without thinking you make the most appropriate move you can. There is no thinking, "no matter what he does I am going to take him down with an oni kudaki." In the midst of movement something presents itself and you take the oppurtunity before you are concious of it. This can only come from long and repeated training with the perfect conditions for the technique set up so that it is already familiar and easily recognized by the subconcious.

So you see just how important the uke and his role of setting up the proper conditions for the technique can be.

A lot of people may be saying, "no duh" at this point, but there are a lot of people that just do not seem to get this basic point. Here is a real example of an incident that happened to me. One night while training at Shiraishi's I got teamed up with a visitor. One of the first techniques Shiraishi showed was against a basic punch. He had one of his Japanese students throw a punch at him and he slipped it and was practically within kissing distance. Because the student had learned to punch from Shiraishi he had his left hand up by his right shoulder and trying to punch his face or rush him from there would not have worked and may have gotten Shiraishi an elbow to the face for his trouble. So instead Shiraishi covered the left hand (preventing a left jab to his face) and then turned the suppresion into a painful wrist lock. It was very natural for the situation.

So I team up with this guy and the first time he throws a right I slip the punch and find that there is nothing between my hands and his eyes, throat- his entire centerline in fact- but air. The guy was punching san shin style with his left fist on his left hip. As I said, I could have had a clear shot at some very damaging targets, but that was not the technique that Shiraishi was trying to teach, now was it? So I asked the guy to throw a punch like the Japanese student did and this guy sniffs and says, "Oh, I don't punch like that.":mad:

And some visitors to Nagase dojo may wonder why some of us residents tend to train with each other rather than get the benifit of working with new body types. Sometimes we do. But the need to work with someone you can trust is really important.

And then there is intent. I don't want to get too much into woo- woo land here, but there is a difference between someone coming at you with emotion and intent and someone just going through the motions. Strike that last sentence. Anyone that can train with the knowledge of the godan test should not be surprised about the importance of intent. Even when you slow things down, you can still get a hell of a lot more if the guy throwing the punch is doing so in such a way that if it were real there would not be much differnce in the emotional content.

One frequent example of someone just going through the motions, and one that drives me nuts and will get you tossed across the room in Nagase dojo is when someone throws a punch that has no chance of reaching you. Since part of the process of training with a partner is to get used to the movements of the other person, their movements have to be as close to real as possible. I try to move at the last possible second to train my sense of perception as well as prevent the other guy tracking me. If I react to a punch that moves away from the line I am supposed to move on, we are really not reacting to the other guy and do not gain the full benifit of partner training. Frequently a newcomer will throw a punch that I do not move to avoid and it does not even graze me. I am told that I look really, really scary when that happens.

I could go on and on about this subject, but I think most people have gottent he gist of my rant. So many people look at what the teacher does and try to copy the movement. But they rarely look at the attacker and see why the teacher chose to move the way he did.

I'll get off my soap box now. Sorry about the rant.

Tamdhu
6th January 2003, 17:08
So many people look at what the teacher does and try to copy the movement. But they rarely look at the attacker and see why the teacher chose to move the way he did.


Such a valuable point all by itself. I now find that studying the attack of a demonstrated kata or exercise to be equal to or greater than the attention I put on watching the response, this after learning by painful experience how embarassing it is to get up with an uke after a demonstration and suddenly not knowing what attack I am supposed to feed my partner!

Feedback is also important with an uke, but the amount and style of delivery is critical. There are fewer training downers more annoying than the uke who, knowlegable or otherwise, insists on using valuable (and sometimes expensive) classtime to deliver unsolicited personal soliloquys on how to do this or that. Don's example above, where he simply asked his uke to punch like the guy in the demo, was perferct. Granted, it didn't pan out, forcing Don to work on a different aspect of the excercise and/or find another partner, but chances are that a detailed speech with comedic interludes, interpretive dance and animated pie charts wouldn't have changed things a whit.

The best feedback can usually be delivered in one or two short sentenses.

"You don't have my balance."

"Try getting lower."

"Slow down a bit and see if you can do it without forcing."

"Watch your distance, I can still reach you."

"Stay covered."

It can also be positive:

"Wow! I felt that through my whole spine."

"Wow! Nice gi!"

Or just random nonsense:

"Oh look, an eagle!"

Eric Reed
12th January 2003, 06:28
Although I am just starting out in Bujinkan, it kinda feels like I have been doing it most of my life, I started reading Stephen K Hayes books when I was in Middle School, during the Ninja craze.
Well anyways just like Don I was training with someone who had never even stepped foot into a Dojo before, and just like Don we were practicing a tequnique and he was doing the puch wrong, but I guess I must listend pretty well in the meshing with your enemy class:D becuse instead of perforing the teqnique I found myself doing something completely differnt.
Since I knew he was new to this I instructed him on how the punch should have gone, which I always like to instruct new people so I finally got him going in the same direction as everyone else.
As for the intent factor I also know what Don is saying, I once was trying to show my brother something, well since he was my bro I knew he was afraid of hitting me, so I had to tell him not to worry and just do it. I did tell him it takes alot of practice to get use to even prtending to hit someone.
Well If I am wrong in any observations here I would like to know, like I said I have alot of learning ahead of me so any insight is all good.:cool:

Eric Reed