The actual injury came about later on when I asked the class lead about something his taisabaki during the initial entry, and he showed to me. I think I was concentrating on the answer too much, as when he threw me again, I didn’t take a high fall, but rather an ushiro ukemi but had my had in the same position as in high falls. That is, a tad too far from my shoulder. That allowed the nage to execute the throw, but because of the distance my body didn’t have enough time react. The twist on my elbow was not at all bad, it just felt a bit uncomfortable and didn’t notice it at all until the next day when. The exact pain point is in the medial head of the triceps brachii, or at least that’s what I think. I don’t remember pulling a muscle like this before in shihonage, but I’m quite sure I have as this feels like something that would happen every once in a while. A harmless pull that you forget the next day.

During my 10 year aikido study, I’ve sustained two injuries that have forced for me to take a 4-6 month break, both to my knees. The first time, about the time when I had 3rd kyu, I tore my meniscus on the outside of my right knee. The details have started to escape me, but I think I tried to take a high fall from a kotegaeshi and got up with the momentum of the throw with my sideways. So it was actually the getting up that tore it, not the landing. The knee had to be operated on and I had to recover for half a year. However, now the knee is totally symptomless so it was a break worth taking.

The second time I had to take a break as just a severe pull on the tendons on the outside of my left knee. I healed on its own, but it did take some time to be pain free. That one was a shihonage with a high fall. I didn’t expect it at all and I did the worst thing you can do during an aerial exercise: I stiffened my body. That caused me to land with my foot touching the tatami first, not my side with the free hand making the initial contact. I don’t know if that mistake taught me anything directly, but it at least gave me first hand knowledge that when taking high falls you need to make like a wet dishcloth. Because you don’t always know in advance that nage is going to throw you high, I think the skill is in being able to switch from a steel spring (attack) to a wet rag (receive) without thinking. Is that then a part of trying to attain mushin no shin?

Anyhoo, ‘yey me’ is in order. Today I actually managed to execute a kotegaeshi I was happy with. A kotegaeshi that felt like uke was thrown because of correct timing and position. While I don’t think there is a single aikido technique that is ‘easy’, kotegaeshi has for the last few years been the one that is the most challenging. My archnemesis. I believe my problems with it are mostly due to incorrect timing. For ‘hard’ throws that have a sharp angle, my throw is always late. Uke regains balance and then it’s just… too late. Then, for for those forms that use more distance between uke and nage, with the contact being like a rubber band, my timing is too early and that that leads to me trying to force uke to fall. Grr, so annyoing.

What was different today? Well, I took my time. Or rather, gave uke the time they need. I think the reason has been that I don’t trust the uke to turn and return, so that I can continue guiding them down and out. But why wouldn’t they, they’ve attacked me and will continue if they can. So one should be able to wait for the uke, and try achieve the feeling of ‘doing together’ as opposed to ‘you fly through the air and I stand here’. Another key was that I positioned myself differently, so that I could guide uke right up to the moment I actually did the throw. Position and timing are always linked together, change one and you have to adjust the other to match. Today I got those to working together. Maybe there’s hope after all. I just have to work on it and occasionally remind myself of the contradictory nature of kotegaeshi: it has very little to do with turning the wrist in.

The hand and feet movement is important, you have to have that working first so that you don’t have to focus on yourself throughout the execution of the technique. Also, you should keep in mind that the power comes from your hara, kotegaeshi is not about twisting the uke‘s wrist and forcing them go down. However, right now it feels like the moment you throw is the key to just about everything; if you wait until uke has regained their balance after the initial guidance, it’s too late. The thing that I use as a guideline is uke‘s feet, specifically the rear one. If you let the uke to land the foot firmly on the ground after they turn towards you, you have either off-balance them again or simply use brute force and turn the wrist. By changing the timing to throw before the rear foot lands or just at the moment when it taps on the tatami, uke is still light and moving and can be easily guided by turning the wrist and dropping your hara.

I’ve been studing kotegaeshi (小手返し) during the last few days, and noticed that I constantly keep forgetting the basics. I can’t try and put the blame on the fast pace of the technique, as kotegaeshi really isn’t that fast—I could almost say the opposite. In kotegaeshi, say from your most basic attack of gyaku-hanmi katate-dori (逆半身 片手取), both the uke (受け) and the nage (投げ) have plenty of time and this makes it ideal to study hard ukemi (受身). Still, I seem to forget the basics all to easily. I was training with a small yudansha, and when ever I throw her she bounced right up from the ukemi. I suppose when you’re light enough, there’s a moment right after making contact with the tatami that you can use the momentum you still have to get up, bounce basically. She instructed me that I need to “cut” downwards with my free hand, with the one that turns the kotegaeshi, to block the upwards momentum and begin the osae waza part immediately after the throw, not to wait until the uke has landed and made themselves comfortable. Makes the landing a tad less comfortable for the uke, but sometimes you just have to forget politeness when it hampers with the effectiveness.

Also, I made the capital mistake of kotegaeshi, i.e. trying to execute it as a chudan (中段) techique, as opposed to gedan (下段). It’s so easy for the uke to just let their hand drop, thereby ravelling the lock, and step behind the nage to perform an irimi-nage (入身投げ) as a kaeshi-waza (返し技). It’s a gedan technique, damn it, why is it so difficult to remember. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that we try to throw the uke hard, teach them to fly and smack down, try to make the throw look impressive even though it creates openings to our defence. One should be mindful of the effectiveness, not care about how the throw looks. O-sensei’s (大先生) aikido might have looked like something stright out from The Matrix, so let’s leave astral aikido to him and demonstration aikido to Christian Tissier at Festival des Arts Martiaux Paris Bercy.

In a way related to the above, I was also reminded a few days ago about the importance of the “turn” bit in kotegaeshi. A kohai (後輩) had trouble guiding me down, her turning of my wrist just didn’t work “enough”. I asked her if she also turned my fingers inward, not just my wrist: simple anatomy, turn the uke’s fingers inward, into a fist, that way the tendons are streached even more and quiding uke becomes easier. Works like a dream when you’re executing static techniques, but makes all the difference in flowing and moving forms, too. Years ago, soon after having started the study of aikido, I was told by a yudansha to stroke the fingers inwards, just like water—I immediately classified it as being astral aikido, but soon noticed that it was not.

While writing this entry, I noticed that I used the word “force” when describing what happens in a kotegaeshi, when I should have used the word “guide”. You don’t turn the uke’s wrist with force—that only stiffens the both of you—instead you simply guide the uke. Who wanted to learn something easy anyway