I mentioned the seminar over the weekend of Sept 18th in a previous entry and have been meaning to write a bit about it since. Well, now I finally have the time and inclination.

The sensei who taught the seminar, which was at our dojo, was Kevin Choate of Chicago Aikikai who is a 6th Dan. We followed the apparently standard 1 class Friday evening, two Saturday during the day and one Sunday morning format for ASU weekend seminars.

Frankly, Choate Sensei is amazing. Some of the stuff he was showing us confused our senseis (and one of them is a 5th dan), so you can imagine how we were doing! That said, he was very willing to help us understand, frequently stopping class to answer a question or demonstrate a particular facet of the technique we were fumbling through.

Eventually, gradually, I’d gain a measure of understanding, either intellectually or physically of what we were doing. Occasionally though, for some reason, my body and mind would both grasp what we were doing… and that was pretty amazing.

There were two things that he emphasized that really stuck with me. The first was to be aware of possible second attacks after dealing with the first (or conversely to follow through an initial attack with a second one). The second was to economize your movements – every move you take should affect your attacker, if it doesn’t it’s pretty likely you moved for no reason.