East Bay Aikido - Oakland, California

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How Can You Train if You Are Away from the Dojo

Nicky Roosevelt

    There may be times when you're out of town or can't make it to the dojo as much as you'd like. Have you been frustrated about missing training? There are things you can do to advance your Aikido.

   One thing I've done, especially when out of town, is some weapons work. If I don't have my weapons with me, I'll go to the hardware store and get a dowel of similar length and circumference as a jo (along with some sandpaper). There's plenty of work to be done on the 31 jo kata and 20 jo suburi, and while you're at it, pretend it's a boken and do all the ken suburi.

   The main thing is to work with a focus on getting all the details worked out. Before you are gone, it is very important to carefully watch Sensei as he demonstrates the kata and suburi and ask questions to get clear in your mind how things should look. Sempei are also a resource, but I like to make sure of what Sensei does.

   So there you are, in some parking lot or driveway, wondering if you've forgotten anything. To start with, are your hands in the right place? Begin with the basics: tsuki's and shomen strikes, and check to see if you are using your breath, keeping good balance, paying attention to having strikes come over the top of your head (hands in front of top of forehead, not to the side), delivering everything to a specific target. I usually choose a fence post and imagine my weapon's energy being delivered in a tightening spiral for a tsuki or slicing for a shomen strike. The clearer you are with your target, the better the energy's shape and intensity behind your technique.

   Then there are all the actual movements of the kata and suburi to coordinate while checking details such as angles in your hanmi and arms and hands, plus timing and breathing. That should keep you busy for a good long time. Depending on what you're working on, you'll want to vary the speed at which you're moving. It's good to go slowly and patiently when you're getting the details grounded. But you'll also want to work with some flow and speed when it's time to look at that.

     I've had some wonderful results from my weapons work away from the dojo. My breath work and footwork got much more solid. The connection to my hips and center became more clear to me and I was ready to integrate what I had worked on with my tai jutsu. It also made it more fun to do partner practice.

     Are there other things you can do away from the dojo? You bet! There have been times when I've been stuck at work or on an airplane or injured; I've got some time and an examination coming up, or I just miss Aikido. I'll take my current exam list with me and go through each technique, trying to remember everything I can about each one. Some of the things I'll examine with each technique are how it might look canonically, the timing of nage's and uke's movements, how I take uke's balance, what I know of the footwork and whether it's important to be exact, any hand changes, how uke might flow and why, what my posture looks like throughout, how my center fits into the technique and finally what I want my finish to look like.

     If you tried to think of all of this on the mat, you wouldn't be able to move. But away from the mat... that's a different story. You may know all the answers about how things go, but more likely, you'll run into parts you're not so sure of. That's the time to see if you can figure out a good hypothesis, based on the principles of Aikido and similarities with techniques you might know better. Then you've got something to try out before or after class when you get back to the dojo, to see if what you came up with works.

     If you have variations on your examination, this is a great time to work on those. You might want to show different blends for each technique and characteristic throws from each blend. If you're the kind of person who wants to figure out ahead of time which variations you're going to use, this is a good time to practice remembering in which order you might want to do them. I'll change things around to match the logic my brain remembers most readily. It doesn't matter so much whether it comes out in the demonstration that way (with nerves and all), it just helps me not freeze up to have rehearsed it in my mind that way.

   All of this work away from the dojo can sharpen your focus on the mat. It doesn't even have to do, necessarily, with technique. How about the source feeling behind your Aikido? Sometimes it's hard to relax and be loving in the face of an attack. Away from the mat, you can visualize how you want your Aikido to look and feel and then bring that to the dojo to work on. It can really make a difference.

   These are just a few ideas about training away from the mat. You can see that there is a lot you can do for your Aikido. All it takes is your attention.

Happy training!