Aikido Action!

Back to the mat today for a class with Mugambi who was filling in for Anwar. We did a variety of techniques ranging from 5th kyu up to 1st kyu. Then we tackled some variations on a pin (a sankyo variant that pins the shoulder) that are disarming techniques for knife and sword (shodan techniques). Any bare-hand vs sword technique is always interesting. Psychologically you are very aware of how close you must be to the blade (even tho we are using bokken).

We finished with a nice long session of jiwaza with three techniques. I really need to do more of this. Reacting quickly with appropriate techniques to random attacks is clearly crucial to application in real circumstances and we don't practice jiwaza enough.