A smattering of Aikido ukemi strength-building exercises

Some clips from the Tuesday ukemi class I sometimes teach as one of the assistant instructors at Kaufmann sensei's Open Sky Aikido (http://www.openskymartialarts.com). Each class is different, but some of the exercises are pretty common to this class. We focus on beginner ukemi, both rolling and standing. This video has a lot of standing around! It's just a reference for folks in the class. June, thanks for taping. Michael, I hope this helps!

0:00 - Log rolls - moving combination of supermen, side planks and crunches. The purpose is to practice core control. The practice is to keep your elbows and knees from touching at ANY point during the roll. Be sure to take breaks - these can be strange on blood pressure and give you a head rush.

2:00 - These are "barrel rolls to child" or "barrel rolls to down dog". The purpose is practicing coordination of the hips and the action of the back and shoulders. They're obviously "extreme" - almost purely sideways. We do them as a way to explore the partially sideways nature of front rolls and to build shoulder/back strength. For a challenge, same as log rolls, make no contact at all with the knees.

6:16 - "Get ups". Purpose is to develop relaxed movement from sitting to standing, relaxed waist and hip movements, upper body and lower body smooth coordination, using the shoulders to help stand and learning one's ideal spacing for hand and foot placement. Hips move back to meet the feet, not the other way around - this is the "end" of most rolls.

9:40 - Small forward rolls. Purpose is to practice turning on vertical and horitonal planes (turning to face nage), getting the knees and feet to coordinate (minimal "smashing" of parts against ground), finding the ideal line of movement from the shoulder (NOT AC joint, more like upper lat/trap)

11:30 - drilling/grinding the back - front roll. Just focusing on the action of the back against the mat. (Note, Beck, the student in the front, is doing more like a side-to-side action. Not quite what I'm emphasizing here, but that's ok!)

13:10 - kneeling back side falls. Sometimes called "teddy bear" rolls. Practicing putting the pieces together - coordinating the separate movement of the legs, rolling as many coordinated pieces instead of one "stuck piece. Body control.

17:05 - kneeling front side falls. "Front teddy bears". .

20:00 - tenkan, prep for tai no henko. I've been emphasizing weight returning to the front (turning) foot recently, for a few different reasons. Talking about hip, hand, body weight, projection connections.

29:40 - Kaiten nage. Talking about "turning out" as uke on techniques that start from this position, like kaiten nage, kote gaeshi, etc. Talking some about the mental aspect of ukemi - don't "solidify" the body or mind to the nage, as if you "know where you should be" and your muscles "lock." Maintain dynamic tension, ready to move at any time in direct mental/physical connection to nage.

38:00 - Kote gaeshi ukemi - Working on relaxed hips - "Spinning out" often happens when locking the hip over a weighted leg. The weighted leg should still be able to quickly move.