Mind matters

Here’s something original Lots of talk, but somewhere in the middle it’s quite interesting (if I may say so myself, and I may!).

This is recorded in Torsby in may this year, when I was uchi deshi at Lars-Göran Andersson-senseis dojo. Mark Larson from USA was there and had a seminar together with Lars-Göran, and one of his students, Matthew, taped it.

Biiru waza is japanese and translates to Beer Techniques (Carro or Martin, you have to help me with the translation if I got it wrong!). The art of taking and defending your beer, using aikido basics.

Someday I’ll register a good domain for Biiru waza and start the trend that will change the world!

21-22 of October there was an aikido camp in Norrköping, a town near to where I live, with Ulf Evenås. Ulf is a 7:th dan, that is 7:th degree of black belt, and has been training aikido for nearly 40 years. He’s pretty good. I would say he’s excellent actually, and fun to hang around

This weekend was special since four people from our club were going to test for black belt. We’ve been encouraging and supporting them for quite some months now, before their test. Until the last weeks before the papers had to be sent in, two of the people were still not sure if they were going to take the test or not.

On saturday there were three trainings before the actual testing, and since I was short of money, I chose to skip the first two trainings and attend the third one. It was quite fun to watch people sweat and train! And also to observe how the testees were doing. It also gave me an opportunity to connect with Lars-Göran Andersson, a 5:th dan who has held many seminars in our dojo, who arrived a little too late for the first training due to have been geografically challenged by the location of the dojo!

All went well, and then it was time for testing. I was uke to Traian, and it felt like it went very well. I didn’t see how the others were doing since I concentrated very hard to blend alot with the mat. And I’m quite good at that! There were 6 people testing for shodan (1:st degree black belt).

After the 6 people had finished testing, there were 2 more people who were going to test for 4:th dan! They kept at it for a long while, and when it finally seemed to be over, the committee said it was time for kokyo nage (breath throws, that is: throwing people around, preferrably effortlessly). One of them was assigned to begin, but after three throws they stopped it, deliberated some, and then something weird happened, atleast from my own perspective. Ulf looked up from the deliberation and said: “Mika, wheres Mika?”. I was so confused that at first I didn’t respond, and then I raised up my hand. Ulf called me forward and I made my way onto the mat and then he instructed me too to attack. People afterwards told me that the yell of happiness that escaped from me was hard to miss!

So I went in with all I had, attacking and was thrown this way and that way for some time, until the testing ended. Afterwards I asked Lasse (the committe was composed of Lasse, Ulf and Leif; our head instructor) why they chose me and he said: “Because you always have so much stamina left after a training!” and Leif said: “Mika, it’s because you take a beating so gracefully”. The swedish words he used were: “Mika, det är för att du tar stryk så snyggt!”.

Oh, and everyone passed, so now our club has 4 shining, new blackbelts! :pom: :pom:

A couple of weeks ago I decided to increase the amount of time I spend on training. Besides Aikido och weight lifting, I’ve picked up running again.

The typical week looks like this:

Monday – Weight lifting, aikido
Tuesday – Running, aikido weapons practice
Wednesday – Weight lifting, aikido
Thursday – Running, aikido weapons practice
Friday – Weight lifting, aikido weapons practice

Saturday and sunday I do aikido weapons practice by myself, and occasionally I take a walk.

This way I exercise aikido every day during a week, and today was my 14th consecutive day doing aikido, and it feels grrrreeeat I’ve noticed that my weapons techniques have gotten much better and more powerful, and I also get the chance of correcting the mistakes I make in them, hopefully I correct them the right way

If you can read swedish, I recommend visiting Funbeat, which is a site for registering all your exercises so you can keep track of how much you move that body of yours. If you register there, and search for my name, you can even see my training calendar.

It’s quite fun, and it’s thanks to Caroline that I started using it, and I must say that the aspect of viewing my friends training times gives an extra incentive to do my training, because otherwise I will lose my lead position!

Technorati Tags: Aikido, Weight lifting, Funbeat

It’s time for Easter! And what better way to spend the Easter holidays than training aikido? What? I’m nuts? Ah, yes, I knew that already! Tell me something new! There’s bird poo in my shoes!? Wait a minute… You’re pulling my leg! *goes to check his shoes*

Every two years there is a large Aikido seminar in Sweden called Sverigelägret (Sweden camp; we use the swedish word for camp for our seminars). It brings together aikidokas from all around Sweden. It’ll be 4 days of training with a bunch of different Swedish instructors. 19 instructors and hopefully over 200 participants. Wish it was larger. 2 years ago it was over 300 participants and over 30 instructors, if I remember correctly.

Tons of fun is about to be had! But boy will it hurt after a while… I have to remember to bring my earplugs because some of the aikidokas have very loud nocturnal kiais (snoring).

So I wont be posting in my blog for a couple of days now, you will have to find something else to read!

Technorati Tags: Aikido, Sverigelägret

I try to keep up with different aikido forums around the world using Bloglines as an aggregator for all the RSS-feeds. Today I ran into a funny thread from the AikiWeb about Aikido doh’s, funny things that you or others have done regarding Aikido.

If you train aikido, or other martial arts with pinning techniques, you’re familiar with ‘Tapping out’. That is, hitting the mat or something else with your hand to signal to your partner that it’s enough, you can feel the pain and give up. Well, one of the funniest doh’s I ran into was this one:

Only last Monday I went to see a dentist. I was in the chair in horizontal position; and when the pain came on … I tapped out.

Oh the laughter I had at the image of that!

Here’s a link to the thread. Enjoy

Technorati Tags: Aikido, Bloglines, RSS