May 30th - Aiki-JuJitsu

I decided to attend the Daito-Ryu Aiki-Jujitsu class last night.  Sensei Gabelhouse was the instructor.  There ended up being 6 of us.  I partnered up with Nick and Joe during various parts of the class.  I'll try to explain the techniques we did to the best of my spelling ability.

E-Kai-Jo seems to be a type of armbar.  The difference between what I have done in Hapkido and this is they grabbed just above the elbow instead of using the forearm to put pressure behind the elbow like we do.  We did this technique from a chest lapel grab to start off with and did a lot of reps which was nice.  There were some things I had trouble with doing the way they wanted due to previous Hapkido habits.  It was a little frustrating and caused me to be a little tight and use strength at times I didn't need to.  We also did the same technique from our knees which was a little rough at times cause my right knee bugs me every once in a while.

We switched partners and I worked with Joe for a while.  We did some slow sparring where we sat back to back and then attempted to get the E-Kai-Jo.  Apparently I was going to fast or using too much strength because I kept getting told that if I was going 25% they'd hate to see 100%.

We stood up and worked on Ni-Kai-Jo I believe.  It was analogous to what I would call a vertical wristlock.  I was having some trouble with one part of this lock which made it very difficult for me.  We were supposed to interlace our fingers around the opponents hand and it didn't feel strong to me.  Again my brain was competing between wanting to do it the way I know and have practiced and this different way that I was being taught.  Kind of frustrating to be corrected on jointlocks when I've had so much experience with them.

At the end of class we did Randori with one person in the middle and I went first.  They were nice to me and attacked me one at a time.  A couple of the locks I did were things from Hapkido that just came natural.  We went through the rest of the students being in the middle.

All in all, besides being frustrated in having to do techniques a little differently than I'm used to, it was a good experience.  It's caused me to contemplate jointlocks and the differences between our methods.