|
I was hoping somebody here could recommend a good rebreakable board or two. I am along enough in Aikido now to run the show sometimes, so I spent last summer teaching them strikes from my taekwondo days in order to make the attacks more genuine. We had bought square targets for that. This summer they want that again so I wanted to up the ante and go to some boards. I am afraid of liability issues at the university here with splinters and stuff, so I was hoping to get some of these rebreakable boards at least for starters. Going on 15 years ago, I recall they were inconsistent and people were wary of them. But they seem common enough now. I personally have a good grasp on board breaking do's and don'ts, but I'm a bit lost with the rebreakable boards. Is it actually safe to punch one of them? I'm talking straight on knuckles. I remember horror stories from my taekwondo days about punch boards; palm strikes or other modified hand strikes were preferable. But without wood to dig into knuckles, I wonder if that's not so much an issue. While the people I am teaching have experience in Aikido going on decades in some cases, I don't want to get a rebreakable board necessarily at the black belt level. I suspect for a confidence boost there should be a really basic one and then maybe something representative of two to three years of training. Generally I am working on upper body strikes, not kicks.
|
#
¿
May 6, 2011 09:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 14:32 |
|
|
Ligur posted:What's the use or rather, the purpose of breaking? Also I'm not trying to be an rear end, but never having done any TMA (or else) with breaking I honestly just don't know. The square hand targets were a good starter for getting the basics, but board breaks add some more value. As was already said, they test that you have good form and power. What I feel is missing from hand target practice is that bit of extra power that I think would make the attacks more compelling. It also teaches you to strike past the target; a common problem is delivering the strike to the surface of the target. You can hit a board as hard as you want on the surface, and it will likely stick together. Striking through is the difference. The tweaks they'll get from this will further improve their attacks. They will probably end up attacking just a little bit deeper, which would actually make some of the throws easier if blended correctly. This offsets the extra power they're going to be playing with. The final reason to do some board breaks is for confidence. I've told people it's kind of like how TV shows would represent the rope climb in gym class (did anybody ever actually have to do that?) as some kind of personal obstacle. If you haven't broken a board before it's a little intimidating to do it the first time. After they've broken the board, they at least they know that within themselves they have that kind of power--even if that kind of power is somewhat trifle.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2011 20:55
|
|
|
Thoguh posted:Isn't it more of a practical issue than an ethical issue? You can't go around doing the kind of strikes you use for board breaks on people because they'd just stop coming to class due to broken bones. For the most part, we'll just hit the padded targets. The rebreakable boards is more something to bring out towards the end of the summer as a milestone for what they've managed to learn. I'm otherwise not really in a position to test some of these people since some of them outrank me, and none of this is in the curriculum technically anyways. I'd like to get into grabs too but my background isn't in some other grappling art. And there we have some Aikido we can use to apply something for a grab. I didn't expect so many Aikido people to pop out of the woodwork here, so I thought I'd bring up what I imagine you've all seen: the "realistic" attack that involves latching down on their wrist and turning into a boat anchor. It actually says a lot of what people think attacks are. Last summer people were hurting their thumbs hitting the pads and I was trying to figure it out. In my taekwondo days it usually meant they were leaving their thumb out or too exposed, but that didn't do it. Eventually I figured out they were closing their fists so tightly that their fingers closed so much that they couldn't tuck their thumbs in even if they wanted to. You are all free to try to do that with your hand right now because it's really strange. I suppose the big thing they got out of it last year was that Aikido didn't have a monopoly on trying to be loose, and that there's a reason punches are "thrown" not "put."
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2011 04:59
|
|
|
This was a separate thing so I thought I'd respond special.Senor P. posted:I think one of the problems with Aikido is that there is very little agreement in the community as to what it is. Plus there has been a very extensive history rewrite in Japan, abroad, and people just going on about things when they didn't know any better. Plus the mass confusion about everything the founder said and what he meant. I am practicing Seidokan Aikido, which is looks like its in its own little world. I guess it went something like: 1. Tohei started Ki Society and Kobayashi (the Seidokan founder) followed him over to that. 2. Ki Society started breathing the purple smoke a little too much and Kobayashi goes off to ultimately form Seidokan. I think Ki Society isn't quite the same way anymore but the ki testing stuff and the ki development classes sound a little odd. Kind of like getting your weekly thetan refill at the local Scientology office. I thought it funny somebody once told me the 70s were the dark ages of Aikido because of that kind of stuff. 3. Seidokan runs for awhile on the mantra "earnest, sincere, realistic" and generally accepts a lot of divergent views w/o forcing anything down anybody's throats. There's an annual camp where the member dojos come and compare notes. Starting out this makes a lot of sense since Kobayashi didn't have a bunch of longstanding students to force some specific style . . . 4. Kobayashi passes away and a little bit of a personality cult starts to form from their headquarters about how to do things. This throw must be like this. You do this throw this way. That throw that way. And so it goes. If you see anything about Henry Kono, he'll make it a point in his seminars that Ueshiba had something of a "gently caress you, got mine" attitude towards teaching Aikido. He'd certainly show it but wasn't necessarily teaching anything. It was up to the individual student to figure out what it was for them. Apparently this was how things used to be done or something. So I guess it was a bust from the start. Even then it didn't stop people from forming a personality cult around him too and enforcing this or that motion. I do enjoy the quote "It is impossible for you to know what I'm talking about because even I don't know what I'm talking about." Contextually I think it meant that he was explaining it on-the-fly and that often was what he thought was the best explanation afterwards, but it does sound really bad out of context.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2011 05:10
|
|
|
kimbo305 posted:I'd like a drawing or picture. This sounds either really hard or really dangerous. The effect was that the tip of their thumb was poking out from under their middle finger. It wasn't because their thumb wasn't tucked in enough, but rather their fingers were curled in too tightly. I had to go pry at their fingers to see what they were doing with their fists. To try to get the effect across I told them punching was more like grabbing the target, and to come at it not necessarily with an open hand, but one that has spare room to squeeze. In retrospect I think that wasn't the best explanation but I really was at a loss since I had never seen that before. And there it was happening to multiple people at the same time! I am thinking more to say that one should curl their fingers up enough to, say, be able to hold a pencil across where the fingers meet their hand. The pencil should slide out. Seriously I'll take suggestions here because it is as bizarre as you make. Now that I saw it I know to keep an eye out for it, so I wouldn't just walk in with some rebreakable board and have them make a go at it. Stuff like this I think was why I was told never to break boards with punches. Too many stories of busted digits or knuckles getting planted into the wood. That's why I asked about punching a rebreakable board. I suspect ones knuckles might not get stuck but it probably has a lot of the same problems.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2011 05:16
|
|
|
kimbo305 posted:Maybe I don't understand, but when you (hypothetical you) throw a punch, what direction do you (real you) think the tip of the thumb is supposed to point? I know the most common starter mistake is to put the thumb outside the fingers, fully extended, so it would point completely up in that case. And that would certainly hurt their thumbs. So it was a surprise to see people had it curled in but still hurting their thumbs. I suppose they weren't necessarily tucking their thumb in enough but the more salient thing was their fingers were so tightly wound that it was hard to do that.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2011 05:43
|
|
|
kimbo305 posted:I'm gonna keep talking about this, because for striking, few things are as fundamental and important as making a good fist. The odd thumb-hurting punch I was seeing wasn't so clear from a side profile though. You'd have to look at it underneath to see how all the fingers were curled in. I'll take a shot at explaining it again even though a real picture (no ms-paint) would do it best. Form your own fist, or like the one in the Internet picture there. Now open and close up your fingers and thumb a few times like you're squeezing on something like a stress-relief doll or something similar. Now start squeezing the piss out of it and look how the thumb comes closer and closer to being beyond the protection of your fingers, even if the thumb is tucked at a right angle. For me I managed to reproduce with my own hand where the thumb pokes out between the middle and the ring finger. But to do that while keeping the thumb bent correctly meant tucking the fingers in real tight. So when they hit the target, the thumb wasn't necessarily what made first contact but it did impact some of the blow. It wasn't a whole lot, but over the course of 20 punches they'd start to complain about their thumbs.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2011 06:06
|
|
):
|
Death Bucket posted:When I did TKD we had a couple guys who were into coming up with the most bizarre one-step sparring techniques. One time I was supposed to 'attack' one of the guys and he backed away literally like half the mat and then signaled he was ready. I had no idea what the hell to do with this so I just stood there dumbfounded. Eventually he yelled that I should punch him, and I asked how the hell he proposed 1. Is the defender running on a slower timeline where they get to do a million different things while the attacker just kind of takes it? 2. Is the attacker doing more moving than the defender? Usually if one was happening, so was the other, and their bullshit detectors would go off. I don't remember any one-steps where I had to do something like that, but there was a some of "you punch at me, then I dodge it, grab your crotch, shove it in your face, kick you, punch you, kick you again, and then do this strange two-handed thing." I think our instructor there just wanted to make sure we had memorized them to cover his own rear end.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2011 17:45
|
|
|
If you're not out permanently you should still make it a point to show up sometimes even if it's just to watch. There will be less kinks when you start practicing again and you will not come back as a stranger. It sounds though like you might be too tempted to step on the mat and get in trouble though. At the least I would hope your school would respect your need to recover and not coax you out to get permanently wrecked.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2011 19:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 14:32 |
|
|
We've had a breakdown in who we normally use for uniforms at my Aikido club, so I'm trying to find a good place to get something very peculiar. Most of the year, it's stupid hot here, and the place gets pretty warm despite being inside an air-conditioned building. I'm trying to find a generally very light uniform that needs to just be sturdy enough for the occasional collar and sleeve grabs. I only want a uniform top; I tend to just wear shorts under the hakama, so I skip on the pants. I am looking for something with the waffle/seersucker weave. I typically use a karate top, but I think that's a little too weak for handling people latching on.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2016 21:45
|
|