2014

A significant year for our club with Brett Nener Sensei visiting us and conducting our grading. The club feels a great sense of accomplishment in bringing Sal Fonte and Grant Meadows to their shodan grade, congratulates them on their achievement, and thanks them for the commitment to training that has brought them to this level.
Congratulations also to those who have had their progress recognised with a higher grade, and to those that have joined us recently who have been given a grade that shows them where the path begins.

meiyo shihan tanaka shigeho

Here's some youtube footage of our Meiyo Shihan Tanaka Shigeho, from an old Japanese documentary:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-fJ_sS7OCo&feature=youtu.be
Tanaka Shihan holds a ninth dan in Aikikai and this demonstration is closer to that style than ours. He also trained under Gozo Shioda at the Yoshinkan dojo in the 50's - I think there is some influence from that training in his techniques as well.

yves klein

As discussed at training, Yves Klein was the highest ranked judoka in Europe when he returned in 1954 from training in Japan with a fourth dan. Some say the French Judo establishment refused to recognise his grade, others that he was disappointed that the school he founded wasn't successful. He then constructed his career in art by painting big blue rectangles:

 painting models blue and rolling them on canvas:

and by getting people to give him gold that he threw into the Seine.
Was he a better artist than judoka? His tai-otoshi looks pretty good:

big guys' o uchi gake

There's a couple of ashi waza specialists in sumo these days:
http://vimeo.com/100621918
http://vimeo.com/101780979

Happy New Year.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/video/2014/jan/08/sumo-wrestlers-japanese-new-year-ritual-2014-video

Training has started. I'll be back Tuesday.

We can develop our aikido by doing a bit of judo. Neil Adams could do tai-otoshi a bit. In this clip he can be seen using the turn of his hips to push and pull, just as we do in most of our techniques.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0BAmgezQWg
Notice the coordination of the leg that sweeps around and back, the drawing hip and the pulling arm; and the pushing hip and arm with the hand in the most powerful position.

Congratulations to those who successfully graded. The club now has Sal and Grant as ikkyu, while at the other end Richard and Andrew now have their initial commitments recognised with gokkyu.

With further commitment and training we look forward to continued improvement and our club's first dan grades.