Age 11 and better than me - training with children

(Warning: level of aikido jargon: moderate)

Training with kids - and especially teaching them - is an exercise in maintaining the balance between discipline, caring and expelling energy. 

I was a scout leader for many years before I moved to the UK, so I have some experience of children aged 6-7 and above. Nevertheless, I find the capacity of children to pick up aikido amazing. As I mentioned in the previous post, some children start understanding aikido, instead of just imitating it, at 8 years old - some might be even younger. 

When the gong rings, the children sit down to wait for class to start. Theoretically.

Class starts with a warm up, during which we count in Japanese (probably teaching me more than the children). The class itself takes the same format as the adults’ class, which I described in the previous post. At the end of a class we do Japanese: each child can ask sensei for a word in Japanese. We’ve heard everything from ‘sun’ to ‘sequin’, ‘chrysanthemum’, ‘insight’ and ‘Stegosaurus’. Sometimes a child will say a Japanese word - like O’Sensei or ninja - and then sensei does a reverse translation. She might also give a short explanation of something to do with Japanese culture that relates to the word - for example, ninjas used as a password the three strokes that together make up the kanji for ‘woman’ - the first ninjas were female. If there is time at the end, we play dodo, a very confusing game of tag. 

It is tough to teach children of all levels and of all ages in the same class. There are a lot of things that children don’t really get taught, but they just pick up along the way, like ukemi (rolls). Sensei will show 2-4 different techniques, so that lower ranks do an easier technique while higher ranks do a more complicated one. (Sensei also applies this to adults, but usually only with 2 different techniques.) After a few weeks I’ve more or less got my head around which rank does which techniques, but sometimes if I’ve been distracted I try to cover it up with sneaky tactics: I look around to see what everybody else is doing. If I get distracted by a restless child, I can’t really scold the children for the same.

Unless it is a bad day, it is possible to train your own aikido, rather than just babysit. Kids’ class is especially good for learning to bend those knees and drop those hips. Extensions are easier to achieve but have to be more precise and controlled. Sometimes shihonages and uchi kaiten sankyos (techniques where I have to pass under my attacker’s arm) transform into hanmihandachiwaza (meaning that I drop down onto my knees). And, of course, there is randori.

Randori (free practice, often against multiple attackers) with children is so much fun. Just watching them is great. Randori is part of every class and around their birthdays the children get an extra randori, a birthday randori. The children just love it. During randori those who have been restless or slow to do the techniques during class transform into budokas. Their concentration is obvious. Their enjoyment is obvious. And their skill is astounding. Some of them are better at it than adults. A three-year-old can take on two ukes (attackers). Red belts, who might be 10 years old, will take on four ukes. But then again, they might have been doing aikido for 7 years already.

Not every class is great, of course. On one rainy day, all of them were fidgety. Getting them to sit in line before class was a mission impossible. When class started, their concentration was elsewhere. One child I trained with wanted me to spell her name (“This is a class in aikido, not in spelling”). Another one was so slow to bow to me, get up and grab my wrist that I barely had time to do the technique before we moved onto the next one. One would slowly crawl - rather than knee walk - back to line. But when we got to randori, all that was gone. 

After class the children sweep the mat. Some of the older children try to get the younger ones to move together from one end of the mat to the other, instead of running down the mat with the broom behind them. Wielding the dustpan and brush is a position of honour.

After that is ‘go and catch Noah’ or ‘go and catch one of the bigger kids’ time. 

The real sweeping gets done after the adults’ class.  

The basics of uchideshi life

There’s a new country on my list of countries I’ve been: the United States. I’ve been here for a week now. Why am I in the United States? Let me just remind myself and everybody else why I have been prepared to have my fingerprints scanned by a country with a scary culture of control.

Aikido of San Leandro

I'm an uchideshi at an aikido dojo, Aikido of San Leandro, in California, for a month in total. Aikido of San Leandro is the dojo of Pat Hendricks Sensei, 7th dan Aikikai Shihan. For a Western woman, that is an incredible achievement. She does Iwama style aikido, which is known for its weapons work especially. I first went to her seminar (training camp) in Salisbury, UK, in 2012. I wasn't big on seminars back then, and went mostly on the recommendation of two other women from my dojo. By the first practice, I was impressed and regretted only attending two out of the three days of seminar. There are plenty of big men with great aikido, but for a woman it’s so much more inspiring to see a woman teacher. I’ve been back to her seminars every year since.

Uchideshi is Japanese and means approximately "live-in student”. l live at the dojo and train every day, usually more than once. I focus my energy on the dojo, trying to empty my mind as much as possible of things that I usually think about, like my studies or other hobbies. Training is the first priority, but uchideshis also help out at the dojo, cleaning, helping with children’s classes and doing jobs that sensei asks them to do. Only after that come rest, touristy things and other things that you yourself would like to do. There are two of us: myself and Noah, who has been here for almost a year now; he is a “longtermer”.  

The dojo.

We sleep “upladder”; that is, to get to our sleeping quarters, we climb up ladders to a space about 1.25 metres (4 feet) high. My room has a Japanese-style sliding window that opens onto the mat. I can see the front entrance and the shomen from my room. The shomen is much more decorative than shomens anywhere else I've seen; the shomen is an altar. The whole dojo is beautiful: plants, lights, wood-panelled walls, photos. A lot of time and effort has gone into building up the space. The dojo is a home, after all. 

We wake up at 5.30 on mornings when there’s training at 6.30, slightly later on weekend and Wednesday mornings. There are plenty of horror stories about uchideshi life, especially when people have gone to Japan. Lack of sleep, for example; before I came here I talked to a woman who had lived on four hours of sleep per night for two months. Here in San Leandro sleep has been plentiful: I’ve had opportunities for naps during the day and can go to bed before 9 pm. Then it’s just a question of whether I use those opportunities. During the first days sensei told me to have a good rest in order to get over jet lag. This makes sense to me: the focus is on aikido, and your aikido will be better if you’ve slept well.

Training

(Warning: this section contains lots of aikido jargon. Skip, if not interested.)

Training is tough for me. I’ve come from an Aikikai dojo to an Iwama dojo, and I’m having to reach back to memories from a few years back when I did Iwama. Everything is slightly different, so I have to turn off my autopilot and create new habits of movement in my body.

Classes always take a similar format: tae no henko (tai no tenkan ho), morotedori kokyoho (katate ryotedori kokyoho), then some techniques on the attack that sensei has chosen as the theme for a time. Last week it was kata menuchi (katadori menuchi), today we started ushiro techniques. After that come some suwariwaza kokyoho variations and after that, an exam-type situation where sensei asks to see the techniques we have just learnt. Next comes randori, then possibly weapons work. The hardest part for me is randori, because there is little time to think about what I’m doing. In Aikikai, I’ve got into the habit of going forward - here, I’m trying to learn to go back, to absorb the attack. It’s good that randori is part of every practice: I will have a chance to learn it before the month is out. 

Training with the kids. There are children’s classes four days a week, and uchideshis help out by training there. The children are aged anything between 3 and 17. They are incredibly good at aikido. Someone asked sensei at what point a child stops just imitating and starts actually understanding what they’re doing. Sensei’s reply was (obviously) that it depends on the child. Some might get there when they’re 8 years old; for others it’s later. But when it happens, you can really tell. What is surprising about the children's classes is that it is possible to work on your own aikido during them; we are not there just to keep order and try and get the children to move in the right direction. We are there to learn aikido. Have you ever tried doing a kokyoho or a shihonage on someone half your size? 

Randori with the kids is great fun; the children will really try and get you. I’ve been punched in the jaw already. She didn’t apologise, as an adult would - why would she? It was my fault for not getting out of the way. Noah said that the randori after class is where he learns the most. 

The end of winter

Ice-skating (?!) snowmen (?!) in the sun-dappled front yard of a San Leandro home.

Uchideshis do jobs around the dojo. On Friday, Noah and I took down the Christmas tree. The timing was appropriate: on Saturday there was a kagami biraki, a ceremony for the start of the new year. End of Christmas, start of the new year. For me, this has been the end of winter as well. When I left home in Finland, the snow was 10 cm (4 inches) deep and it had been between -10 and -20°C (14 to -4°F). At my leaving party, we did ukemi in the snow in our backyard (out of the sauna). Here, it’s been cool, around 15°C (60°F), but when the sun is out, it can be t-shirt weather. It’s the rainy season though, and the Bay Area has been getting much needed rain after a long drought. Nevertheless, as the locals are saying of me with benign amusement: “She thinks it’s summer."