How To Be A Good Uke

[pboylan]

We all want to train the best we can, but without a good uke, that's impossible. Unfortunately, not much time is spent teaching people to be good ukes. My frustration with that resulted in this blog post about how to be a good uke.

http://budobum.blogspot.com/2015/05/...-good-uke.html

What do you think? Did I miss anything important?

[P Goldsbury]

Hello Peter,

Do you see any differences between being an uke in koryu and in a gendai art? I am thinking especially of Daito-ryu and aikido, where neither of the founders appears to have taken uke for their students.

Best wishes,

PAG

[pboylan]

I see 2 main differences. The first is that in koryu beginners don't generally partner with other beginners. They work with senior people, so they have the advantage of always working with someone who's form and control is well established.

The other difference I see is that koryu teachers will spend as much time telling the uke side how to attack properly as they do telling the shite side how deal with the attack. This makes for much more confident and nuanced ukes. In aikido circles (I haven't done enough Daito Ryu to hold a worthwhile opinion on that) that I have moved in, most of the ukes really didn't seem to understand how to give skilled attack. They would most often overcommit to their strikes, which made kuzushi far to easy to achieve. Grabs often felt like just a grab, with no intent to do something beyond getting a grip. In the koryu that I've done, uke's job is to provide a fairly specific attack which will create conditions making a particular response more suitable than other options. With the sort of one-size-fits-all attacks I see from many aikido ukes, there doesn't seem to be any reason to pick one response over another, whereas if the attack is carefully thought out, it can be structured so that some responses are sensible, and others might actually be foolish.

I hope this makes some sense.

[P Goldsbury]

Your reply makes perfect sense (insofar as I understood what you stated about koryu). However, in Daito-ryu and aikido I was not thinking about beginners training with beginners, so much as about (for example) mid-ledvel yudansha training with experts. K Chiba Shihan passed away recently. Have you ever taken ukemi for him? Or for Seigo Yamaguchi or Sadateru Arikawa? Taking ukemi from these experts is more similar to beginners or mid-level students training with experts in koryu, at least as I understand this.

I, too, hope this makes some sense.

[Cliff Judge]

The other difference I see is that koryu teachers will spend as much time telling the uke side how to attack properly as they do telling the shite side how deal with the attack. This makes for much more confident and nuanced ukes. In aikido circles (I haven't done enough Daito Ryu to hold a worthwhile opinion on that) that I have moved in, most of the ukes really didn't seem to understand how to give skilled attack. They would most often overcommit to their strikes, which made kuzushi far to easy to achieve. Grabs often felt like just a grab, with no intent to do something beyond getting a grip. In the koryu that I've done, uke's job is to provide a fairly specific attack which will create conditions making a particular response more suitable than other options. With the sort of one-size-fits-all attacks I see from many aikido ukes, there doesn't seem to be any reason to pick one response over another, whereas if the attack is carefully thought out, it can be structured so that some responses are sensible, and others might actually be foolish.

FWIW, traditional Daito ryu is kata based and works like a koryu. Everything about attack and technique is very structured.

One of the problems Aikido has is that there is an understanding that there is something wrong with the attacks, but people don't really know what they should do about it. Attempts to address weak, overextended, or undercommitted attacks usually result in making the techniques extremely hard to pull off. Attempts to fully integrate Aikido training with puglisitic training such as kick boxing haven't yielded uniform results either.

[pboylan]

Your reply makes perfect sense (insofar as I understood what you stated about koryu). However, in Daito-ryu and aikido I was not thinking about beginners training with beginners, so much as about (for example) mid-ledvel yudansha training with experts. K Chiba Shihan passed away recently. Have you ever taken ukemi for him? Or for Seigo Yamaguchi or Sadateru Arikawa? Taking ukemi from these experts is more similar to beginners or mid-level students training with experts in koryu, at least as I understand this.

I, too, hope this makes some sense.

This makes great sense. The most skilled aikidoka I've taken ukemi for is Hiroshi Ikeda. I'm thinking of shihan taking ukemi and doing the uke role for mid-level students and other shihan. This way the top level people get uke's who push themselves. It is quite common for koryu shihan, as well as 7th and 8th dans in kendo and jodo and even judo to act as uke for people including other shihan. This gives the shihan the chance to really sharpen their skills with the best. I have to admit that I don't recall seeing aikido shihan ever act as uke for each other (I could be very misinformed on this point). Does this ever happen?

[P Goldsbury]

This makes great sense. The most skilled aikidoka I've taken ukemi for is Hiroshi Ikeda. I'm thinking of shihan taking ukemi and doing the uke role for mid-level students and other shihan. This way the top level people get uke's who push themselves. It is quite common for koryu shihan, as well as 7th and 8th dans in kendo and jodo and even judo to act as uke for people including other shihan. This gives the shihan the chance to really sharpen their skills with the best. I have to admit that I don't recall seeing aikido shihan ever act as uke for each other (I could be very misinformed on this point). Does this ever happen?

When I went to Japan, I virtually stopped teaching until I received 5th dan. Everyone practiced under the dojo-cho, who always taught. This was a local dojo with a good mix of yudansha, the top rank at the time being 6th dan. However, the dojo-cho (7th dan) always practiced with his senior-level students. Yesterday, we had a godo-geiko session with a visiting instructor, ranked 7th dan, who trained with at least half the students in the dojo. (That he did not train with everyone was due to time constraints and was certainly not intentional.)

The only place I have seen this happen, apart from my local dojo, where shin level practitioners also trained with beginners, was at the Aikikai Hombu dojo on Friday evening. In my experience, senior level shihans attended this class, always taught by Doshu, and paired up with lower-ranked students and occasionally with each other. Thus I saw Fujita and Arikawa training together. I have to admit, though, that this is rare and I am reminded of Ellis Amdur's observations in his Hidden in Plain Sight about Daito-ryu and aikido being taught through ukemi.