May 15, 2014

Stuff going down peripherally, so didn't train, but watched class carefully. Came away with some observations.

Where we are looking:

Sometimes at our hands, sometimes anywhere but at uke. There's generally no soft focus (180 degree awareness). D looks up and at the ceiling, M looks at the hand. We should be looking at uke, but not focusing on any one part of uke, but on the whole.

The cadence of training:

We pause at certain transitional moments in a technique, rather than allowing the entire thing to flow naturally and dynamically. What about timing and follow-through? There's very little attention to timing from the initial attack to the first contact. There are a lot of pauses that interrupt the real flow of the technique. The minute uke is thrown, we need to be looking to the next attack.

Alignment:

Everyone waits until uke is aligned with the mat. No one begins from where they were with martial awareness. This happens even if there is plenty of space. Why is that?

Finishing:

We don't make certain that uke is immobilized. We need to develop some intensity and situational awareness.

Centers:

We don't lead with our centers, which means we are continually unbalanced. We need to be loose and low, close to the ground.

Randori:

Attackers are too polite, and wait. If this is an exercise in how to do randori, ok, but if it's testing prep, the ukes should be more merciless. We need to use the ukes against the other ukes to guide the flow of the attack.