Breaking the balance, physically ....

[bruceb]

How much physical domination does it take to break the balance of an opponent or training partner?

Do we need to resort to judo, or cause pain as in jujitsu?

Too many people dance around this subject, when in fact, Aikido no longer is the simple easy practice when a commited confident opponent is determined not to be manipulated or thrown, and the more physical aspects of pain or domination must find their way into application over the gentle practice, don't you think so?

Throw out all the things that are the gentle practice, and think out side the box ... this could get real interesting.

[Stephen_Bannan]

Taking balance:

Isn’t it easier to take something that is handed to you then it is to steal something that is not?

In dealing with your original statement, being a student and Fighter, [lets not kid ourselves if you’re in the position where you’re needing to break balance, your fighting], my training does not dance around the subject of breaking the balance of the opponent. We do not resort directly to Judo or Jujitsu, however many of the locks and throws are borrowed/past between these arts.

Opponent determination:

The more serious the attack the better. The more force the attacker uses the easier it will be to use Aikido against them. I mean not to be derogatory or trite, however domination is something not needed in Aikido.

The more power/aggression/force/determination/supremacy/ etc an attacker aims at you the better I would have thought.

Style vs. Substance:

If someone plans on Dancing with someone in a fight it’s probably best if they study Kick boxing or boxing.

Hard and Soft:

Koshi Nage for example, The opponent has to be moving in, so in the event that you’d use this technique your commitment to the move is more relevant then domination. This type of thing executed against “Joe on the street” is going to end badly. Any of the throws performed in an Aikido Dojo executed on the street for that matter would cause someone to get hurt. Take away the mats and start throwing people at the ground, I bet for a start no one will agree to letting you throw them at force at the concrete.

Sumi Otoshi: Don’t know how you’ve seen it done, but I’d not like to get thrown with it specially if I didn’t know how to breakfall!

In addition to the above, if a committed confident opponent isn’t trying to punch living Jesus out of you, walk away. If they are, trust in Aikido!

If someone reaches out to strike you, you already have half their balance, use what you know and take the other half. Aikido has nothing to do with strength. Unless someone is just standing still and waiting for you reach out and grab them DON'T! Force the oponent to attack, once they do you'll have them right where you need them to be.

Just my humble opinion.

[Rob Turtle]

Stephen ...
"If someone reaches out to strike you, you already have half their balance"

't ain't necessarily so. Only if they strike and loose their internal structure/ alignements (I'm from a Chinese internal background, so you'll have to excuse me while I use the term [i]liu he[i]) will they have off balanced themselves.

If they keep on balance during the strike, as a decent practitioner will do, will you be able to borrow what they are giving you in the way you describe. It is still possible to borrow force in this situation, but one has to be a little bit cleverer - one must help the other to give you their balance, before you borrow it. You are quite right that this can be achieved with distance and timing (i.e. moving such that the other was to adjust during their powerful movement. It is this small adjustement that opens the door to borrowing the larger powerful movement), also circularity of technique becomes very important.

Just thought I'd chime in and remind that not every committed opponent neglects to be on balance when they strike. And there are other philosophies that would not immediately assume that just because I attack, therefore I am [meta]physically off balance.

RT

[Ron Tisdale]

I agree with Rob...

RT

(as in Ron Tisdale)

[bruceb]

Originally posted by Rob Turtle
Stephen ...
"If someone reaches out to strike you, you already have half their balance"

't ain't necessarily so. Only if they strike and loose their internal structure/ alignements (I'm from a Chinese internal background, so you'll have to excuse me while I use the term [i]liu he[i]) will they have off balanced themselves.

If they keep on balance during the strike, as a decent practitioner will do, will you be able to borrow what they are giving you in the way you describe. It is still possible to borrow force in this situation, but one has to be a little bit cleverer - one must help the other to give you their balance, before you borrow it. You are quite right that this can be achieved with distance and timing (i.e. moving such that the other was to adjust during their powerful movement. It is this small adjustement that opens the door to borrowing the larger powerful movement), also circularity of technique becomes very important.

Just thought I'd chime in and remind that not every committed opponent neglects to be on balance when they strike. And there are other philosophies that would not immediately assume that just because I attack, therefore I am [meta]physically off balance.

RT

So if they do have that balance there must be a physical break in the balance?

Well, it if fine to put up support for this physical balance not being lost during a strike, but then ... do you have anything you would like to contribute to the discussion pertaining to the discussion topic? How to break the balance, physically ... come on ... it is a pretty broad topic and I am sure there are more details that would be helpful to us all ....

[Ron Tisdale]

Physically breaking the balance requires...stepping on the mat. Kind of hard to discuss on the internet. That said, at the Friendship seminar given by Utada and Ikeda Sensei this past weekend, both instructors focused on breaking the uke's balance at first contact.

Ikeda Sensei stressed relaxation and using your center to capture uke, even if uke didn't know it, and maintaining that off balance through-out the waza. Ikeda Sensei was clearly a master at sensing uke's balance, and obtaining kazushi without uke even knowing it. He would have you grab his hand powerfully, even 4th and 5th dans, and then when you were sure you were in control, he would say 'nope', and throw his uke effortlessly. You could actually see uke's knees buckle, and then they were done. At one point, he demonstrated how by using his center to move uke, he could make uke look like they were having a fit. With almost no perceptable motion from his hand, he had uke twitching and jumping, all from unbalancing them with his center. His sense of humor was excellent!

Utada Sensei stressed various methods of focusing on particular joints throughout the body to effect off balancing your opponant at contact. An example might be shomen uchi iriminage ichi. At the moment of contact with the strike, shite uses the angle of the wrist and hand to redirect and off balance uke through the shoulder joint to the side and front. On stepping in with the left foot (from aihamne) and meeting uke's face, one method might be to focus on your elbow joint, control the back of uke's neck with the other hand, and off balance them further by controlling their neck. Done properly, uke's hips actually move forward, while the head and neck remain in place, virtually causing uke to throw himself. Utada Sensei chose uke from the lowest student to the highest, as did Ikeda Sensei, and demonstrated how various joints such as the waist, knees, shoulder and neck could be the particular focus of kazushi for various techniques. Utada Sensei taught the entire weekend with a severe cold, actually loosing his voice for part of the seminar. But he continued to teach excellent sessions all weekend, performing at his best for the conditions at hand. As always, he continues to teach us the true meaning of Budo.

My thanks to the members of the Doshinkan dojo who hosted us, as well as to Utada and Ikeda Sensei, for showing us how different schools of aikido can come together and train in friendship. I hope my relation of the events I participated in has helped in this discussion a little bit.

Ron Tisdale
Homeikan Dojo
Doshinkan Aikido

[Rob Turtle]

There are many ways of "breaking" or "taking" balance.

From the simple: give them something to lean on, then when they commit to it, take it away approach. [Or at an even more simple level, resist their attack slightly. When they fight against the resistance remove it and go in the opposite direction]

To the complex: circularity, open and close (kai he in Chinese), changing internal pressures so that (effectively) what they think they are doing is not quite what they are doing (done through kua [hips/waist] and dantian [center]), recycling their own force back at them etc. Such things are not easy to describe, but are skills that can be used in a vairety of ways (e.g. same techniques can be used to escape from locking techniques)

Only reason why I chimed in is, e.g. a xingyi fighter is very on balance even during their characteristicaly very strong strikes. Or a bagua stylist will often only emit power over very short range once contact with the desired target area has been made.

regards
RT

[Ron Tisdale]

Good points Rob. Now, on to something more important...Do you have a middle initial?

RT

[Rob Turtle]

Indeed - D.

I'm obviously feeling verbose this afternoon ...

on using circles, open-close etc. (actually these all same thing in this example). If on first contact, my partner is moving relative to my body. Indeed he has to be, else he doesn't make contact. This means there is a space where he is moving into, and a space where he is moving away from - both in terms of gross whole-body type scale, but also within each jointspace and little part.

Take that instant and specific place where he contacts me. Say he is pushing firmly to my center. Opening one of my hips changes the angles internaly and mean he is now no longer pushing at my center. Therefore we have open and close as above. I can now apply open and close by helping to create a gap in the direction he is moving into (opening) and "filling in the gap" from behind in the space that he is moving away from. Now techniques can come into play and the partner is easily thrown.

The trick is that opening from the center such that they are no longer emitting force at ones center. Everything else is then backing up that motion. Technique starts from the center.

If the opening/ movement of the center is correctly done, it is hard for him to keep up - as the more comitted he is to taking my center, the larger he will have to move to adjust to my small movement of my center. Thus again why the top people make it all look effortless - it has to be else that element of "trying" to take center can be recycled and used against them.

What one needs is a fluid body that moves as a unit from the center. Correctly trained in the right sort of movement principles, the body reacts in the right way by itself. The result "just happens". Hence the illustration of grabing the wrist until you think you have control - for starters there is no way you can control an extremity without taking that control down through to the center by means of working through the joints from minor to major. Secondarily, movement from the center initiaties/ involves the whole body and is far more powerful that movement starting at the external part. Lastly, focusing on the external part means that it is very easy to make a small adjustment from the center and "get behing the pressure" (open-close again) as the center will always be in a smaller circle than the extremity.

R[D]T

[Rob Turtle]

Also ...

orignaly mentioned that if they keep the internal alignements/ structure correct then they are on balance, even if they are striking.

Correlate to this is that techniques can focus on taking this alignment, this also taking balance.

E.g. hip and shoulder should back one another up. If in meeting the punch ("blending with") one follows the motion, then ever so slightly changes it so that the shoulder joint is drawn ever so slightly forward in the shoulder girdle, the shoulder blade rises etc ... then they have lost alignement. This rising up of the shoulder blade also then reflects a rising up of their center ... and also one has open-close again.

Just thought I'd throw that in too.

RDT

[Ron Tisdale]

That is an excellent description of what Utada Sensei did this weekend with shomenuchi ikkajo osae ni...

I failed miserably at it with some of Saotome Sensei's 4th and 5 th dans...

RT

[bruceb]

Originally posted by Ron Tisdale
That is an excellent description of what Utada Sensei did this weekend with shomenuchi ikkajo osae ni...

I failed miserably at it with some of Saotome Sensei's 4th and 5 th dans...

RT

Do you want to learn how accomplish your goal of success with shihans?

Then we will have to go farther than the physical prompts that break the balance, such the emotional triangle that interupts one state of mind, but the results of using such a technique can become physically violent to the opponent as their resistence only increases the effect of the techniques. It is much easier to describe it as the opposite poles on a two magnets trying to be forced together when they are pushing each other apart.

The fact is, some of these signals are able to be visualized and generated to the effect that they physical applications of Aikido are the result of years of practice in both the physical and mental application of sending signals that confuse the opponent or weaken their intended responses ... much like pushing the opposite poles of magnets together.

I didn't want to get into that in this thread, although I knew it would come up. I wanted to see how broad a spectrum of awareness exists for the physical means to overcome an opponent when the gentle means of practice is far too inadequete for the task at hand. It happens, and it will happen as practice levels increase.

The question in my mind was ..... do you resist when the physical efforts are bordering on causing you injury, or do you transition and adapt to use the physical breaking of balance to your own advantage?

Many people just look to take control without looking to maintain control to the point of tap out, or they don't transition when injury to themselves or their training partner is imminent.

On the other hand ....

I am starting to feel better. Maybe good enough to carry Ron around the dojo with one arm?

(In the play I am doing, one of pirates gets frightened when we hear the word 'DIE" and jumps into my arms. I calm him down as I carry him around the stage telling him, "No, you won't die ... no dieing . That's a good lad, back in line" It gets a good laugh, but he is bigger than you are Ron, so I see a marked improvement in my strength from when John Stevens was here.)

I think the time is coming for us to train for a couple a days Ron. Get some of these ideas defined into practicality. Get the Emotional triangle, the human conditon defined, and apply a good solid dose of Yankee common sense to the words and lessons of Aikido.

Most people grasp the physical lessons of training, but the aspect of training the mind to use the forces of the body in conjunction with the physical lessons, now there is a power we are just starting to understand .... although most people think it is from years and years of "Train .... Train ... Train ...." I do believe we can clear up much of the misconceptions.

Never mind me ... you guys keep training .... it will either come to you or it won't. Either way, what you find is what you need ... Enjoy the journey.

[Ron Tisdale]

Do you want to learn how accomplish your goal of success with shihans?

Uhh, I don't have a "goal of success with shihans"...or anyone else. I just train.

I am starting to feel better. Maybe good enough to carry Ron around the dojo with one arm?

(In the play I am doing, one of pirates gets frightened when we hear the word 'DIE" and jumps into my arms. I calm him down as I carry him around the stage telling him, "No, you won't die ... no dieing . That's a good lad, back in line" It gets a good laugh, but he is bigger than you are Ron, so I see a marked improvement in my strength from when John Stevens was here.)

Hmmm, you seem to assume that while you may have changed, everyone else has stood still...not a very martial, or safe, assumption...

None of which has one whit to do with the topic of the thread, as far as I can see...

Ron

[Stephen_Bannan]

It seems that many individuals that are either training, just starting or about to start Aikido no matter which version are lead by their own misconception and often are mislead. Although some of the Aikido schools will equip its students with the ability to stay clear of trouble and therefore not have the need to use the skills learned on the mats other schools will deliver to its students a manner of effectively rendering an attacker obsolete. Now I know for fact that most of my opinions on this forum start arguments and for that I’m sorry, but the arguement I’m probably going to start this time is going to be worth it…

As stated earlier in this thread and in many other threads both started by me and not, Aikido as it stands is not going to teach you to be a street fighting death welding stick of hell. However.... It's certainly going to help.

I’ve seen many people simply lose the plot when discussing the finer points of an art that is meant as a self-defense. This meaning is unfortunately incoherent to the beginner. Although the beginners mind is something that we all as Aikidoka need to keep throughout our training, the beginners mind is also fraught with danger when we look at the art and it's esoteric aspects regrettably not being self-evident. Many times as a beginner we see that individuals misunderstand blending with Uke and we see individuals clashing instead of blending. It’s a touch concept that needs to be dealt with.

Atemi not unlike blending is also a touch aspect that many miss the point. One must be able to tell the difference between a Bee sting and a strike to the face with a brick. “Seen one Atemi, Seen one Atemi” Unlike “Seen one Atemi you’ve seen ‘em all” is a good start. There are many different was to strike an opponent. In relation to the original post, breaking balance is key to Aikido granted, however you’re never just going to take someone’s balance, they have to give it or you have to take it, and it’s very much easier to take it if they give you a hand, foot or shirt tail.

My Kung Fu training revolved around the use of the surrounding environment. If someone’s having a go at you and you’re in danger, throw a chair at him or her; hit them in the face with an ashtray, extreme but you get the point. I’ve seen Aikido demonstrations where Uke has been thrown at another Uke to demonstrate “How it’s done on the streets”.

Efficiency or effectiveness? How efficient is your Atemi opposed to the effectiveness of your throws? I’ll bet money if your Atemi is efficient your throws will be far more effective. To personalize this post, I was sparring with a kick boxer about 2 months ago and he was kicking my !!!. I was trying to throw him and he was boxing hell out of me. I stopped trying to throw him and just tried tagging him with jabs, soon I hit him once, then a second, then a third, the forth, a solid full weight blow to the chest came about 40 seconds later and I used Sumi Otoshi and put him on his back. This was the first and only time I managed to drop him, before or after. He’s very good at his Kick Boxing and although I’m getting better at Aikido I’ve got a way to go. My point is that throws are opened not given, timed not granted. If you have someone that doesn’t want to be thrown, kick him or her in the groin. Throw a handful of pocket shrapnel, if you have any, at their face, flick a chair at them, blow wind in their face. Anything to get them off guard. Bork them if you can, but under all circumstances WAIT! Don't be the first to move.

In boxing terms, “jab, jab, and move”. It applies to Aikido, maybe not Jab Jab Move but “Atemi Atemi Move Atemi Atemi Move Atemi Atemi Throw” is more likely how it’s going to happen.

Do you consider your blocking technique as Atemi? Try and block with all you have and see how easy it is to take someone’s balance. Don’t stop. Block while you move forward and don’t stop. Uke yokoman strikes at you, move in block [hard] keep moving forward, now add you’re favorite throw. If they don’t move you didn’t do something right. If Uke grabs you with both hands kick them in the ankle, they’ll move. How hard you kick them is completely up to you. You wont have to do it to hard.

A lot of Aikido demonstrations have Uke charging in, why? It's easier to take someone's balance when you about to redirect their kinetic energy and enertia(sp?) I hope that not the same thing.

Anyway just some thoughts.

[bruceb]

That was right on the money, Stephan Bannan, that story about having to shift to boxing to take the attention of the kickboxer, and create an opening, but as practice / your level of transition increases the need to box with a kick boxer will decrease until there is so little that the few distractions will seem to fit right into your Aikido practice.

As for Ron Tisdale's note, a few posts back ...

I put it in brackets because it is not applicable as a point to most people practicing Aikido, in the sense not everyone here is over 275 pounds built like a professional wrestler, able to throw most people across the room if they are not physically ill as I have been. Maybe it was an inappropriate note that tweeked the nose of someone who considered themselves superior, both in your own mind and my own, It was not supposed to do that. It was a note that simply related a recent event that let's me think I have regained a portion of my former strength which in real terms is about two to three times that of most people training in aikido, which in itself may be a brag, but in keeping the practice gentle makes training that much more difficult.

Shifting the focus of breaking the balance physically, there is the option of not breaking the balance at all, but lifting the object or thowings the object in its solid form because in terms of weight it is possible. Not many people have experienced the mindset that allows one to pick up another human being and experience no concept of weight or feedback that says there is nothing but air in your hands, I have. This is the mindset that the founder was able to draw upon that led people to believe he was phenonmenally strong and invincible, but he wasn't, and he knew it but he didn't let it go to his head thinking he was far above the rest of humanity. Although it may sound like that in some of the things I write, I don't consider myself above anyone, nor below anyone, I just am, and that is that.

Maybe I am delusional in thinking that no one is my better, just better trained with more experience that I will get sooner or later, but I didn't mean to insult anyone with my little story, it just means that some of my old strength is coming back with my new retired lifestyle, and I am approaching some normality in my life. The possibility of actually lifting most people off their feet from an awkward stance or postion again presents itself as a means to take the balance away physically, taking the thinking and actions outside the normal box of Aikido training ....

Something we all have to do, to re-examine how far we have come, and where we are going.

My apologys Ron, if it was seen in another light other than a passing friendly story.