Welcome to New York

I haven't been to one of Alberto's aiki-aerobics classes in a while. It was good to push myself a bit.

As I've commented before on this blog, Alberto's classes tend to be vigorous, with lots of fast moving techniques and partner changes.

We started with katatetori kokyu ho, as usual. I do believe he starts every class with that one. One thing about kokyu ho, it helps a lot, perhaps too much, if uke really sticks to nage. My partner was leaving a lot of space, making the technique difficult, and I was frustrated with myself for not being able to compensate well enough. I knew I should draw her in with my hips, but I kept forgetting to do it. Sometimes good ukemi allows me to be lulled into complacency, I find.

For most of the rest of the class we switched to ai hanmi katatetori, with mostly normal techniques.

Oh! We did the "45-degree" koshinage again, but from this approach, I didn't have as much of a problem with it as last time. One weird thing was I got the ukemi mixed up on the first throw, holding on with the wrong hand! It hurt, but I was more embarrassed than anything. I didn't know how I could do that until I realized my mind was still expecting the throw from the other direction (like it would be for the "90-degree" version) and my mind didn't change gears fast enough. DOH!

We went to shomenuchi for the last few, with kotegaeshi and irimi nage (of course) followed by any attack. We finished off with the Alberto favorite: "Anybody attack anybody." Just in case you were not yet tired.

Finishing off with bunny hops, sit-ups and push-ups, it was a good mini-boot camp.

We had a visitor from somewhere in Europe. After class, he asked me, "Do you guys practice like this all the time?!?" I just smiled and said, "That's Alberto."

He was pretty spent, kind of regrouping his energies. He just looked down and replied, "I don't like it."

I resisted the temptation to answer, "Welcome to New York."