Orders of resistance

After Ledyard's seminar, I am having to re-evaluate (among other things) appropriate levels of resistance. At first I struggled with the idea that in order to feel, get and learn these more subtle levels of internal aiki, that we had to have an uke who provides the perfect level of both connection and resistance. But I keep remembering what George said about having to relearn this stuff from a basic starting point before moving on, and that having a cooperative uke to help is an important part of that process.

So that get's me started thinking about my own progression as uke and the different orders of resistance we can apply.
I'm using the word "Orders" here like I would "orders of magnitude" or "third order differential equation", or "fifth order polynomial approximation"...you get the idea.

First Order:
I could not get out of this mode to save my life until about 4 years of training. I don't know if I was just too nice, too soft or too whatever. I was a compliant uke, offering nothing but strikes and force in one direction, rarely connecting constantly to nage. This is a nice place to be for learning kihon waza through about Nikkyu exam.

Second Order:
This is what I'm going to call the ukeme required to learn the subtle internal aiki techniques we learned at the seminar. The ittaika one-body, bridge connection. This has underlying martial principles of connection and sensitivity to nage. Once the uke-nage connection is made, it's kept until the last possible moment before receiving the throw. More importantly, and what set this up as different from the next order of resistance is that resistance to unbalancing is minimal enough that nage is allowed to get a rough feel for success using subtle aiki technique. Once a movement is induced that would break your balance, you do not try to regain it.

Third Order:
Add to the second order resistance. Now when nage connects and you move let's say forward a very little bit, you try now to reset and resist by going the other way equally. Nage has to sense and shift from forward unbalancing to rear, or what ever direction is required to throw to fully unbalance and throw.

Fourth Order:
Let's just call this bastard ukemi for now.
In this mode I try to not move under any circumstance. I'll use all my internal structure, frame and center finding tricks to undo nage's power and leverage.


To these order of resistance, there of levels of course. Roughly...too soft, just right, and too hard.
I usually spend most of my time doing third order and a little too hard for my(and our) own good.
I want to move back to second order so that we can start building on successful applications of proper soft aiki power. I'm afraid that if we don't start back there, we'll loose that feeling of "can-do" we found during the seminar. I think it takes a more compliant, but better connected uke than we're used to...

That's my theory for the week...


And now for something completely different:
Some OUTSTANDING randori.
Be sure to check the 5v1 with bokken around 1:00 mark.