Friday, May 16, 2008

Small-Circle Jujitsu And Push Hands


Sensei Rick Alford

Here is a fairly good demonstration of how Small-Circle Jijitsu (Wally Jay style)
sticks and flows with the opponent. You can see some of our versions of lock-flows on the video bar to the right of the screen.
At our Dojo, we are trying to integrate the techniques in the video above with Tai Chi Chuan push hands practice. In that case I guess it would be called Chin na.
You can see how well they would work together; close proximity, face-to-face, constant contact. Push hands may appear more circular than the demonstration above, which clearly has the Japanese Jujitsu influence.
I'm curious what the Aikido and BJJ guys have to say...

8 comments:

said...

If'in ya wants to view the coolest Hemp music video, ever, visit my
lill' blog.


Stay on groovin' safari,
Tor

Dave Chesser said...

Okay, I get it now. He's extending the locks to control the center further into the clip.

For the drills you guys posted earlier, it looked like you weren't extending the locks to the body -- a big no-no IMO. But now it becomes obvious that you were just doing the flows to build sensitivity and the ability to go from one lock to the other. This clip must represent what you're moving towards, correct?

It's a good clip. Thanks for sharing it.

Dave C.

Dojo Rat said...

Hi Dave;
Yes, you are correct. We are trying to show sensitivity and flow in our video attempts. My training partner is thankfully not cranking on me with full pressure in the locks. As you know, if he did it would bring me to my knees and stop much of the flowing aspects. It also allows you to keep it going without damaging your training partner. But you are correct in saying that all locks should be connecting to opponents center, and it's important to crank on a few here and there to insure you are getting the technique right.
Combining this stuff with push hands patterns is one of our projects right now, we don't have it down good enough yet to put it on video, but soon!

Patrick Parker said...

Interesting video. I've watched it several times and honestly, I don't know what to think of it.

You know how enlightenment often starts when you say, " that doesn't look right." Well, something about this guy's motion on the video doesn't look right but I can't put my finger on it (pun intended).

In any case, he'd probably beat me up, but still...

Martial Development said...

I liked the video. You could argue that these are Aikido techniques, but they would be performed this way in an Aikido dojo. They are lacking a cool Aiki-disregard. ;)

Martial Development said...

Oops. Would not be performed this way in an Aikido dojo, I think.

Patrick Parker said...

Ha! I agree it might just be the lack of that cool disregard you mentioned. Hadn't thought of it like that before ;-)

There's really nothing special about the techniques in aikido. you could just as well call these things jujitsu or karate or (i guess) chinna techniques.

I was just noting the absense or addition or something that i was not expecting or didn't understand. something subjective and perhaps aesthetic. (see this article: http://www.mokurendojo.com/2006/07/effective-efficient-and-elegant.html)

from a purely subjective pov (again, not something i can put my finger on), I liked Dojo Rat's lockflow video demos better than this one...

Dojo Rat said...

The best person I have seen do this ((other than Wally of Leon Jay)) is Ed Melaugh, who runs a school in Boston. My friend trained with him and said he is one of the best fighters he has ever trained with, so I got his tape on this drill. It is a much better example. I'll see if I can find any video of Ed that I can embed on the blog.
Pat, maybe the action is too static and face-to-face compared to Aikido, different neutralization?