Wow, what a fantastic evening we’ve had. Forrest Kan, Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Michael Friedl, Chuck Hauk and myself (Frank Bloksberg) all taught. What a blast. Tomorrow Doran Sensei will teach his seminar. Be sure to come and train with us!
Doran Shihan Seminar Tomorrow, March 31!
Doran Shihan‘s seminar is tomorrow, Saturday, March 31!
Here’s the schedule:
Morning Class — 10:00 – 11:30
Afternoon Class — 1:00 – 2:30
Drop by and train or just watch. It’s going to be amazing.
There’ll be aikidoists from all over training. So this will be a wonderful opportunity to train with many new folks.
See you on the mat!
What Does the Name Aikido’Ka Mean?
I am regularly asked what the name of the dojo — Aikido’Ka — means. Written and spelled this way, it’s not a real word. We made it up.
Throughout most of the world, including the United States, the word aikidoka means someone who practices the art of aikido.
In Japan, the word aikidoka means a professional or expert aikidoist. In fact, one would rarely hear a native Japanese speaker use the term aikidoka.
Kahlil Practicing Soft Falls
Here’s a brief video of Kahlil practicing soft ukemi (soft falls, also known as feather falls). You’ll see two parts of the practice. First, Kahlil practices a stretch on the ground followed by a roll. Second, Kahlil practices that same roll off of his dad’s back while his dad is down on all fours. You’ll see that Kahlil has complete control of his body and that the fall from his dad’s back is extremely soft and controlled. Kahlil is well on his way to spectacular ukemi.
Bad Ankles: Simple Balance Exercises to Fix Your Ankle Injury
People get sprained ankles and other ankle injuries often. And once you have a sprained ankle or other ankle injury, chances are that you’ll injure it again and again. In fact, some researchers suggest that the recurrence rate for ankle injuries can be from 30% – 80%.
Back in the 1960’s, a doctor noticed that people who suffered an ankle injury, had really bad balance on that leg — even after the ankle didn’t hurt any more. He didn’t know why that was, but here’s a pretty big part of the answer: Proprioception. Proprioception is your sense of your body’s position in space. During aikido training, we improve our proprioception a lot. But our proprioception can get messed up through even minor injuries.
When you have an ankle injury, you suffer ligament injury and damage the neural receptors in the ligaments. These neural receptors communicate with your brain and tell it how your ankle and foot are positioned relative to the ground. When the neural receptors are injured, your brain doesn’t understand what’s going on with your foot and ankle and you can easily re-injure your ankle.
In other words, ankle injuries hurt your proprioception. You become less stable and are more likely to step wrong or fall and re-injure yourself.
Some people’s neural receptors heal quickly, but often the receptors don’t heal quickly. And repeated injuries follow.
A big part of regaining your proprioception and healing the neural receptors is to do balance exercises. Here are some really easy balance exercises (don’t do these until your ankle can comfortably bear your weight):
- All you need is some space, a table or wall nearby to steady yourself if needed, and, maybe, a pillow.
- Try to stand with solid balance on one leg for a minute. Once you can do that, cross your arms over your chest. When you’re good at that, close your eyes.
- When those exercises are not a particular challenge, hop on one leg. Not a challenge? Close your eyes.
- You can make balancing more difficult by standing on a pillow.
- Here’s a truly great exercise: Stand on one leg while brushing your teeth. Close your eyes if that’s too easy. If that’s too easy, do some one legged knee bends while brushing your teeth.
These super simple exercises will really, really help your balance, your ankle and your proprioception.
When you really want to work on your balance and proprioception, come to the dojo and practice aikido and kettlebells!
Here’s the link to the article in the NY Times that I based this post on.