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Mateo
15th November 2004, 11:50
Although I've never trained in Shorinji Kempo I've seen classes and demos and always been very impressed with the art's breadth.

When I was in Osaka the Manager of NCB English School was reputed to be the highest ranking non-Japanese Shorinji Kempo practitioner. One of my buddies worked out with and him said he was quite formidable. ( I'm forgetting his name at the moment. )
He said that as he got to the higher levels the emphasis on Buddhism started to be a bit much for him a he was a devout Christian.

I always wondered about the practise of taking falls on hardwood floors; Do you think it encourages the tori not commit to throwing as hard? Are there many injuries for the uke? ( I would think that ankles would be bruised quite often. ) I often saw falls where the uke was allowed to land on his feet. When this is not the case how does your manner of taking breakfalls differ from say judo or aikido?

I initially posted this on'Budoseek' and was asked to post here as there are more Shorinji practitioners t this site.

Matthew Rogers
www.spiritforging.com

Thanks for any input.

Tripitaka of AA
15th November 2004, 13:51
...and apologies to Mathew, who mis-read my post on Budoseek. I was referring to another correspondent when I suggested posting here. I wouldn't want to annoy our Budoseek Webmaster by sending EVERY member over here for the greater numbers of reader... :( :D

Ewok
15th November 2004, 13:58
Breakfalls on hardwood floors? Your ukemi becomes very good, very quick :D

Most of the embu competitions carried out in Japan are done in various gyms with wooden floors. The sort of things you see happening there and the noise is amazing.

Tripitaka of AA
15th November 2004, 14:51
We did a Demo in the Piazza at Covent Garden just before the first Martial Aid. On cobblestones! :eek:

An interestng experence ;)

tony leith
15th November 2004, 16:15
Cobblestones trump any surface I've done ukemi on. The Brentford Fountain venue for the taikai had a pretty damn hard floor - I was sore from just training on it, in terms of my joints. Mercifully I didn't have to try nage waza on it - the folks doing embu seemed to survive, though in several cases you suspected this was more a testament to adrenaline and beta endorphins than anything else (I fully empathise - I am not one of the flying fraternity, or one of those with the ability to apparently decelerate in midair). Dan (ex Southampton, now Bristol) however demonstrated that my own failings at nage are down to poor technique rather than body mass by manging an astoundingly soft landing for such a big bloke. Kudos to him.

Tony Leith

David Dunn
15th November 2004, 20:04
Originally posted by tony leith
Dan (ex Southampton, now Bristol)...

That'll be 'Dav' I guess.

satsukikorin
16th November 2004, 07:01
Matthew,

You might want to look at your line of inquiry from the other side: consider our throws rather than our breakfalls.

Shorinji Kempo throws are mostly of the joint-lock type rather than the judo type. The way I see it (and I'm NOT an experienced cross-trainer), judo throws enable a lot of spiking or pile-driving?\meaning that they can be done so that the uke's head gets driven into the ground way before their body can rotate over. Offhand I can't think of a Shorinji Kempo technique that does that. We don't grab the body; we always grab hands, fingers, maybe an elbow for good measure. And the techniques we practice tend to concentrate on countering others' judo-type grips, so presumably the idea is to keep ourselves the heck out of a position in which we might be pile-driven!

Oh, and yes, we get bruises when we're first learning (and later, when we screw up :o ), but they tend to be on the heel or the ball of the foot. I guess we go more directly head-over-heels than in the other styles.

crabbi
17th November 2004, 18:37
... When I first trained in Kempo I was really uncomfortable with Ukemi on wooden floors... So I satrted to train in Aikido to improve my breakfalls...

The Aikido dojo had tatami, although we did occasionally train on linoleum covered concrete.

To cut a long story short, my ukemi never progressed beyong 'very clunky', but the more I practiced, the less I felt the pain!!!

The only ones that I could ever really say were enjoyable in Kempo or Aikido were the projection rolls over a number of crouching colleagues (for distance) or over a doubled up single colleague (for height). Not really sure why these didn't hurt so much...

cheers

merlin98
17th November 2004, 20:42
i agree with colin...i've talked to an experienced/ranked judoka about how in shorinji, when flipped, we sometimes land on the balls of our toes, to avoid landing hard/on our head, and he replied that technique would not work very well against a judoka since in a tournament/self defense situation, chances are that you'll either land on your head/shoulders first, or the attacker would be landing on top of you as you go down.

paul chan

sean dixie
17th November 2004, 21:51
Originally posted by satsukikorin
The way I see it (and I'm NOT an experienced cross-trainer), judo throws enable a lot of spiking or pile-driving?\meaning that they can be done so that the uke's head gets driven into the ground way before their body can rotate over. Offhand I can't think of a Shorinji Kempo technique that does that.

There are techniques that when applied correctly(in a self-defence situation)cannot be 'flipped' out of. Sensei calls them "face landing" ;)

Kimpatsu
23rd November 2004, 12:32
Originally posted by Tripitaka of AA
We did a Demo in the Piazza at Covent Garden just before the first Martial Aid. On cobblestones!
Further to that, David, you have in your possession a photo taken in Paris in 1987, with yours truly sitting under the Eiffel Tower. Well, do you remember the Hono Embu performed at the start of the banquet on the Saturday night? Two senior French Kenshi performed it on a marble floor. I remember the entire audience wincing at the rather convincing thud! that the throws made.
Anyway, to answer Matthew's original question, I think you should bear in mind that the landing/breakfall system in Shorinji Kempo is different from that of Aikido, Judo, and Jujutsu. Whereas these latter arts slap the mat using the forearm to absorb the impact, because in Shorinji Kempo we don't use mats, we are not taught to slap the ground; rather, our straightforward rolling (mae ukemi, yoko ukemi, ushiro ukemi, and daisharin, which we learn first) are performed rolling the entire body, to enable immediate recovery to a standing or kneeling position. (See, we're not completely bonkers; we don't jump in at the deep end; we build up slowly to the "hard" stuff about which you're asking. ;) )
With the actual "hard floor" technique to which you refer ("tobi"), in some branches, interlocking jigsaw-type mats are used to cushion the floor for beginners, before taking away such training wheels. (See? It really is like learning to ride a bike. :) )
Anyway, to answer your main point, our uke waza is, as I said above, not performed using the forearm to slap the floor; you land on the balls of the feet, cocking the feet into a position similar to that used for jun geri, so that the ball of the foot, stretched taught by thrusting the ball forward but with the toes pulled back, makes contact with the ground first.
I hope that description makes some sense to you.
Regards,