Aikido 3

Tonight I thought things were starting to come together because were worked on many similar techniques, but stuff where I take some pride really suffered. Specifically my rolls. I'd like to think I'm one of the better rollers in my class, but in Aikido I'm like a drunken elephant. Most of the time I go into the roll to fast and get a resulting boom whereas the seasoned practitioners enter and exit the rolls with nary a sound and always appear to be soft and comfortable.

Something that came up several times was when I was the Nage I would regularly forget to step out of line when the Uke attacked. This led to a lot of bad technique setup. Ironically I would say this was a problem I had at my TSD classes. So it was nice to have that corrected and I hope that it pays off in TSD.

The second portion of that problem was that I needed to be facing Uke with hips parallel, or being centered correctly, as they say it. I tend to enter the technique correctly but then get far beyond instead of blending. A fascinating concept for me since it's not something we do in TSD.

My third significant problem was my tendency to lean. This is something that comes up from time to time in TSD because it throws my balance forward and makes it easy to take advantage of me. No different here. Thankfully everyone is totally cool with pointing it out and I think it made it easier to not do it or, at least, reduce the incidence. I just really have to focus on my "carriage and posture."

A final note for this week. I was going into the class with a bit of a frown because I was expecting a larger experience earlier in the week, but exhaustion and the job were making it tough to enjoy afterwork activity. However, when I walked out I felt reinvigorated about attending and going back again next week. Clearly it's having an impact on things I know I need to correct and I'm getting to learn all kinds of new things.