Aikido-L Seminar '99 - Pictorial Review [1/4]

Group mug shot (38K).

Aikido-L Seminar '99 - Pictorial Review* [1/4]

by Tim Gion

Introduction

November, time for the second annual gathering of the members of the Aikido-L list. Unfortunately, I had been diagnosed with chondromalacia or runner's knee a month before. At the last (US) Aikido-L seminar, Mike Bartman had taken photos during the classes because he couldn't practice. I decided I'd try to fill his shoes this year. Since I only had a point and shoot camera, I bought a Canon SLR so I could have better control of what was in the frame. The next two paragraphs talk about taking the photos and digitizing them. Skip them for now and read them later if you're unhappy with the picture quality.

Now a few words on picture quality: I shot two rolls of film with my new camera before the seminar, so I was still learning the camera at the seminar. I used FujiColor 800 for the photos and a good number of them were taken without a flash. I realized after the first 1 1/2 rolls that the camera was complaining about the light levels, so I slowed the shutter speed down until it stopped blinking. Some of the pictures have quite a bit of motion blur due to the slow shutter speed. Jim Baker's and Alan Drysdale's classes were both taken with the camera in full auto mode with flash. I got to see the results of no-flash, 1/250s shutter before Chuck Gordon's class and decided to go back to that for the last class.

Now a few words on scanning: I scanned the photos in at 150 dpi to save time. Then I trimmed a lot of the extraneous background in each photo. I hope I didn't overemphasize the foregrounds in my hack and slash photo editting. I didn't get around to balancing the color in the photos.

George Simcox's Class

George Simcox from the Virginia Ki Society started the seminar's first official class. He started with a basic ki exercise where stability is tested from the front. Scott Crawford was picked to help demonstrate this test.

Scott Crawford (L), George Simcox (R) - 30K

George followed with a few more exercises which showed how to take uke's balance in a relaxed manner.

Paul Gowder (L) and Don Tedesco (R) start the exercise (45K).

Maria DeRosa (L) and Bob P. (R) start the exercise (38K).

George shows the goal of the exercise with Mark D. (39K).

At some point, George moved from the exercises to the Ki Society's basic kokyu-nage. Like the exercises, the basic kokyu-nage starts from a crosshand grab.

Tony Fontaine takes Mike Bartman into kokyu-nage (34K).

As we later came to realize, shihonage was a theme of the seminar. George demonstrates the Ki Society version of the technique on Craig Hocker. This is number one of about twelve shots of shihonage. There's even more that I didn't scan in!

Craig Hocker (L), George Simcox (R) - 33K

Philip Akin's Class

Philip Akin of the Yoshinkai Aikido Headquarters taught the after-lunch class. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from Philip's class. A day or two before the seminar, I decided to test my knees with one class. Since I had taken at least one class with George, Alan, and Chuck and Jim came from a style familiar to me, I decided to try Philip's class. Philip showed us some of the elements that make Yoshinkan aikido different from other styles. From his class and the one other Yoshinkan class I had, the main difference seems to be the teaching style. Beginners start learning techniques in a step-by-step fashion, so that precision is really drilled into them. We began by practicing the footwork for shihonage without a partner. After repeating the same movements with a partner, we worked on irimi-nage and tenchi-nage. Philip ended class with 15 minutes of what-technique-would-you-like-me-to-demonstrate-on-Scott-Crawford? My knees seemed to hold up ok through most of class before starting to hurt. However, just standing still hurt later that evening. Oh yeah, Scott seemed to hold up ok under the demonstration, too.

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