Questions to Bode Sensei

Today I sent out a list of questions to a great many teachers of aikido that I have had the pleasure to encounter in my years of practice. J.W. Bode, who has appeared several times in my blog lately was the first to write back. He is a retired police officer that started training in Tomiki aikido in the 1970s. His work is very good and worth at least taking a long think about his words coming from direct experience using his art to survive.




Why did you start training?

Survival



Why do you continue to?

Survival



Do you have a phrase(s) that sum up your ideal of martial arts practice?

Don't take a knife to a gun fight.



What do you like to see in a practice?

Continued thought process.



What do you not like to see in a practice?

Stopping shit before it gets started. Better summed up by Benjamin Franklin "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."



How do you define aiki?

Extremely effective



What adjective would you say your technique 'feels' like?

A mental fibulation



When does a practice become not-aiki?

No



Do you have a favored technique right now?

Mine



What is your favorite practice related book?

(He previously told me he loves military strategy texts.)



What is rank? What does rank reflect?

Nothing if you don't have the ass to back it.



What principle have you been focusing on in your practice lately?

Evasion and off balance.



What is your relationship to kata?

Kata is restrictive and mindless


What is your relationship to a competitive feeling in training?

Competitive feelings are normal in Humans, deal with it.



How has your vision of practice changed as you have gotten older?

I have gotten away from kata and have focused on true tactical correctness.



Do you have another hobby or art form that you think about in martial arts terms and ideas?

I train all law enforcement use of force weapons, firearms, police baton, pepper spray, cuffing, cell extraction just like I do Aikido and I train in Aikido just like l do them.



Do you see any problems with the way aikido is practiced in the world at large, and do you have any recommendations for change?

Aikido is practiced with a mindless Uke who does whatever Tori want him to. I never use a trained Uke. I always use the guy who doesn't believe in this stuff and I get a much more realistic feedback and therefore a much more realistic idea of what will happen in a real situation. Remember you will RESPOND IN A REAL SITUATION LIKE YOU PRACTICE. If you are not practicing realistically you are playing house.


What martial art besides the one you practice do you think is interesting?

They all have their highs and lows


What inspires you?

People like you George, Daniel, Dallas, Nick, Kyle, Damon and others. (His friends and students)



Do you have any aspirations for your art, dojo or organization for the future?

Continuing training people to survive



Anything on your mind you would like to add?

Fire everybody elses god (sensei) and hire your own. To many cooks spoil the broth.
And the most important thing is you cannot hope for peace until you prepare and stay prepared for war.

I hope I do not offend anyone with these statements but you ask the questions. Thanks for allowing me to express some less than popular views.

Austin's new Aikido Judo dojo!

Here is a shot of the room. The doorway that be seen is the toilet. The tea room is to the left of that.




Tea room! It has changing areas just out of camera view. We are setting up a media center in here so people can watch videos and train privatly on the smaller mat.




The mat! Taken at a weird angle as to be artsy. The mat is hard, but works good for now!

J.W. Bode Sensei Quote

"Tradition is only important if there is a valid reason for keeping it that way. Too many people substitute tradition for an excuse not to use their brain"

J.W. Bode

Triangle-Line Strategy in Randori

J.W. Bode Sensei Sez...

After Christmas I drove up to Oklahoma to work out with J.W. Bode and the Kaze Uta Budo Kai crew. Bode Sensei started the lesson by pulling out a book on strategy. He says all his inspiration for martial arts technical work comes from books on strategy, and of course his impressive felony arrest experience. His aikido strategy is quick and effective and totally overwhelmed me instantly. So I asked him to send me a few of his favorite quotes from his sources of inspiration so I might steal his secrets and defeat him upon our next encounter.




Sun Tzu postulated two forces- The zheng element, which fixes the enemy in place and the qi element, which flanks or encircles the enemy. The two forces are fluid and as factors change and the zheng can be transformed into the qi and the qi transformed into the zheng.



"Rely on the offensive, persue a defeated enemy, trust in speed to economize on time, bring about strategic surprise, concentrate superior force on the battlefield, and until the time of attack, protect forces by a well reasoned defense."

- Napoleon



"He who gets there the firstest with the mostest wins.
A good plan violently executed today is better than a perfect plan executed tomorrow.
You don't win wars by dying for your country. You win wars by making the other poor son of a bitch die for his country."

- General George S. Patton


Professional Training Info-

You will respond in a real situation just like you practice.
If anything can go wrong it will go wrong. Depend on it.
When seconds count, help is only minutes away.

To a new Shodan/Nidan in the Tomiki Lineage.

Hello my friend and congratulations on the great accomplishment. Thus far you have proven that you can successfully accept some conditioning, learn some techniques and play nice with others.

Thus far the kata of the Tomiki system has given you some digestible bites to swallow. They are training wheels to get you going. They are like a coloring book to help you start doing art.

A warning as you progress from here though my friends, the kata system is as much of a trap as it is a way to help. Around the world people are grinding away at the kata, simply copying what their teacher taught them, rather than going ever deeper into the puzzle it is trying to help you comprehend.

The fact is we are trying to move in a way that is free and spontaneous, yet the kata tells us to move in a prescribed manner. Aikido's beauty is expressed creative movement, yet we so often are taught that there is one right way do express technique and train. In aikido the options are great yet through the kata we often learn to continually do the same thing exactly the same way.

The fact is my aikido friends, at this point of your development free thinking and freedom of movement has been trained out of you. You now have a set of rules, that work well until they fail you. You have been programmed to respond in certain ways and fall when you are told to fall. These are all important parts of the learning process.

As I develop further have come to some conclusions that acted as a major catalyst for the change in the way I train.

First, there is not a rule that can't be broken. As a young aikidoka I was bombarded with rules of motion. If you followed the rules you create aiki. if you don't it is something else. It was very eye opening to me once I started traveling around and training with many different teachers, every one of them has a different set of rules. Often one teacher's rules openly violate another teacher's. Rules vary. I highly recommend you challenge every rule you have learned and test it through the scientific method. Rules vary - principles are universal.

Second, overly structured kata gives you a very easy way to practice. It takes out everything really difficult and gives you very clean lines to play with. I urge you to remember the world is not full of pretty lines and enemies starting at correct distances. No opponent is going to give a stylized attack. We do this so the new guys don't kill each other. No longer are you a new guy. I encourage you to break down the structure in your head and find the joy and aiki in the chaos again.

Remember new yudansha something that is a common flaw in aikido training, the opponent does not explode upon hitting the ground. I see people throw a partner and end it there. The trick is that the encounter never ends. It starts the second you bow to each other to train, and never ends until you bow again to end training. The higher level you get, there should be an intensity of interconnection that never fades. Your opponent is playing the role of an aggressor, when they attack, during the technique, when they are on the ground, during the pin, when they are getting up, and when they are preparing for the next attack. They should be seen as dangerous the whole time. Attacks don't end with the person hitting the floor. The training and connection should never stop. Zanshin. Remain active and connected throughout the training. Connection and awareness is not an on and off activity.

The main thing I would like to share with the new yudansha is that aikido is just a system of play. It is a way to experiment with truth, but it is not truth itself. The simple act of training is what is important - uniforms, belts, ranks, systems, and styles are all illusory by their very nature. They are simply a game.

All that really matters is relationships with the people you surround yourself to train with. In my mind the heart of aikido is expressed in the way we treat other people. Period.


Walk In Peace,

Eric

Shaving off time and space

After Christmas I took off towards Oklahoma to train with the Kaze Uta Budo Kai folks. On the way to Oklahoma City I stopped by Lawton to train with Bode Sensei. I had quite a reality checking lesson from the hardened retired police officer.

I felt he really opened my eyes to the time and space inefficiencies that have been the basis of much of my martial work until this point. Everything was taking too long to perform, with too many steps to accomplish it.

When viewing martial effectiveness I think it is of vital importance to continue to shave off time and space from our application of principles while developing technique. Do we really want conflicts to last longer? Do we want to train in ways that require more space and time to execute?

A aikido teacher I once trained under defined aiki as "instant victory".

During tonight's practice techniques went from three steps down to one. Techniques were changed to be far more time and space efficient.

Things started working like never before. Technique that drags on too long loses a sense of instant victory. A technique that drags on no longer fits into my definition of what aiki truly is. Maximum efficiency demands time and space efficiency as well.