Hi Rose and Shelley, thanks for the comments last week :) It’s nice to be back, I’ve been keeping an eye on my dash but have just been too busy to contribute much really. Hope you are both ok! Aikido last night was a really good class. My friend Keith taught the first hour of the class and did some weapons work and then I taught the last hour. The students had been asking me for some time about ukemi (how to receive a technique) and so I’d been wanting to put some serious time into explaining it. I did some exercises which involved them rolling out of a technique that they would normally just take a side break fall out of (essentially falling down onto your back) and then we managed to build it up until they were flipping out of the techniques (an aerial forward roll finished by slapping the mat with the arm) which generally speaking is the most complex (and intimidating) form of ukemi to take. I was very impressed with how well they took to it, particularly when falling from a technique like shihonage (a throw that requires a flip over one’s own shoulder to escape from, so roughly at least 5 foot of air time). They’ve all been training roughly 6-8 months with a few breaks in-between for holidays and if they can keep this level of intensity up then next year we should be able to start doing a lot more advanced training and just training harder generally. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and gave me some positive feed back, which was nice. I was particularly impressed with Anna, who is sometimes a little hesitant but last night she managed some excellent ukemi and I used her to demonstrate how to take a judo style hip throw, which she managed no problem. It’s a real shame she’s going back to Finland this week now that her exchange year in Durham is over. That’s the problem with a university class, people rarely stick around longer than 2 or 3 years. Though on the plus side you get a large volume of people each year and you get to meet people from all over the world and different walks of life which makes the class very interesting sometimes. Sam also has really crept up in skill level without me noticing, which says a lot about my attentiveness I guess (though I’m partially guessing this wasn’t helped by the fact that he hasn’t been to class regularly for a while). He’s got very strong technique and I threw a variation on iriminage (an entering throw where you control them by the head down to the ground and project them over your hips at the same time) on him that he hadn’t seen before and he took it no problem. One to watch there I reckon. Jasper was also very good as usual, he continues to train hard and have a positive, friendly and conscientious attitude which is exactly what you want in a training partner, he managed the shihonage break falls with aplomb. We threw each other with hip throws for a bit and I’d love to see more judo from him, he’s a first kyu and though he says that he didn’t do any competition at his club and is generally quite self-deprecating about his skills I think that his technique is really good. Was a bit of a shame that two or three of the other regulars weren’t there as I would have liked everyone to hopefully benefit from that session as ukemi is such a fundamental part of training but I’m sure we’ll get a chance to repeat the lesson soon.
The majority of the students go home for the summer holidays next weekend and Julie and Tobias are away in Europe next year, I’m really going to miss them all over the next few months…
