Thursday, July 29, 2010

Shomen Ate Reloaded

I have been playing around with the renzoku concept of continuous attack that Lowry Sensei implanted in my brain. The I used techniques and kuzushi strategies from Hussey, Matl and Juhl Senseis to reformulate my relationship with shomen ate.

I explore different entries, continuous attack, elbow connections, and leg grabs.


Here are some random video notes.


10 comments:

  1. interesting notes. subtle changes have large consequences.... the jujistu side of me sees the obi throw as a groin grab too. no fun for uke though.....

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  2. Sensei Strange,

    Thanks for the interesting thoughts on shomen ate. It's great to have someone thinking out of the box, or maybe back in the box from possible ancient teaching methods that may have been lost or diluted. We also practice leg, arm, back and obi counter resistance which works great if you make a mistake or run into someone who is able to resist or back out of your shomen ate. If you apply conter resistance to the arm it also breaks uke's posture in the direction of the arm where resistance is applied, even if the hand is applied to the front of the face. I combine this and a bit of the off-center application of my "striking hand" in my version of aigamae ate. I lock the inside foot down by applying counter resistance on the same side arm and place the knuckles of my other hand just off-center of uke's chin. As I step through I move uke toward the foot that is locked, making it difficult to resist and easy to fall. One tip that may help avoid the straight push to the face where tori can resist is to focus on placing the knuckles of the hand on the tip of the chin so as you push back uke's head it will naturally move up and back, breaking his/her posture. As you probably already know it is much harder for tori to resist having thier head pushed up and back than it is having thier face pushed straight back. Again thanks for the great post. I look forward to more in the future.

    Bill

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  3. Oh yeah seriously! Give it a try, or at least contribute in a meaningful way to the exploration.

    Seriously? right back atcha

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  4. Shomenate as it is commonly taught in Tomiki Aikido has always seemed to be lacking something. Rarely do I see traditional shomenate applications that can't be stepped out of. I agree that doing something to pin the uke in place seems to be necessary to make this work. I like to grasp the arm or lower back to keep the uke from stepping out. In our club, the focus of shomenate is to get uke's chin pointed up. Applied forcefully, this can theoretically launch an uke off their feet, but I haven't practiced this level of force. Patrick Bast Sensei points out that there is a pressure point in the nose that can be activated by mashing it down toward the mouth and this can be utilized in shomenate, but I prefer to rely on kuzushi. Sensei Strange, the elbow version in your video doesn't look very convincing and the falls a tad too willing. Maybe shomenate can be used effectively as a diversion for entry into tenkai kote hineri or ippon seoi nage.

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  5. Mark,

    Appearances can be deceiving. The elbow version comes from my judo teachers. I spent 2 hours doing it yesterday in randori and shiai with the largest Brazilian JuJiitsu guy I have ever met. I found it worked very successfully. It apparently works for me in some some harrowing conditions. I am continuing to learn more about this connection, I suggest you give it a try.

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  6. Tried it. I think your nutz.

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  7. I'm rubber you are glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.

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