Day 63 Wednesday 23 June – Aikido

A very tough lesson of Aikido today, especially the warming up. We did the same rolling exercise as on June 14, but I learned that they are more exercises to practice falling. This may be a good exercise to bring home, to help us fall better. Then followed a number of exercises with walking on the knees, back and forth on the tatami. We did a big number of sit ups. And when we finally began with the techniques, I was already out of breath and tired. The techniques involved yokomenuchi with shiho nage and kote gaeshi. We rounded up with koshi nage. I’m doing a lot of stuff here we didn’t do much at home. The students are not rolling here, almost all of them are falling. Just like me. I’m happy that I get this chance to see a whole new way of Aikido. After the practice, we did the torture of the legs again. My partner was pushing me pretty hard… It’s going to hurt tomorrow.
On Monday as well, we practiced a form of ushiro ryotori attack, which was more like a strangling attack. We never used this attack before. But it is interesting to work with.