Class

So I've been teaching about three weeks now.  It's strange to be doing aikido on a college campus again.  When I first started, not so long ago, it was through a program on campus, and the feel of class is different then when you go to a dojo.  Also, I'm the first faculty member to be associated with the martial arts umbrella group that my class practices under so that's a little strange also.
I've only had one regular attendee, a judo guy, we're everywhere!  A great first student.  So far we've spent the last 15 min of every other class rolling, and he is one of those rare young guys that can practice ground work without going crazy trying to kill you.  It's been awesome.
He's learning the aikido techniques very quickly, but I've been in a bit of a quandary as to the rate of introduction of new material.  I always struggled when I was a lower belt over how much to shine up what I already knew and how much to work on adding new skills.  The awesome thing about the 23 and the releases is that the later techniques help your earlier techniques get better, so I think I think that we should cover as many techniques as possible and worry about getting any single one of them "right" later. 
But, we all want "to get it right" before we move on to new stuff.  So, I"m not sure how well that will go over.  I'm thinking about adding the first chain, which is an impossible amount of technique to learn, just so that he will be forced to do it by feel instead of rote memorization, as a tricky way of throwing a bunch of techniques at the poor guy.  The down side to this idea is that of course I'm the only one who can uke it, since the point would be to avoid mesmerizing the order of the techniques.  Still, it's worth giving a try.

One of the things that makes teaching on a campus unique is the increased volume of drop by folks and short time attendees.  Since I don't have a someone that can take the new folks and work on falling and such, I'm worried about how class flow is going to go once I have a few folks that know some stuffs.  But, I'm probably getting ahead of myself.

First Class

As everything in my life is a strugglefest, so was my first class.  I'm teaching as part of a larger "Martial Arts" club and my class wasn't listed so that folks would know that they could show up.  So, it was only me and two other folks.  However, I have to say, it worked out to my advantage since I could spend a lot of time with the both of them.
One of the students showed up late, which was cool because the on time student was also a judo guy.  We had a chance to work on rolling, and since he already had a good grasp, we could do fun stuff like making it rounder and increasing surface area during a fall.
Once both students were there, we covered the first release as an excuse to talk about following uke and timing.  I'm not real sure how many techniques I'm going to make it through, so I've been thinking about what the "vital" stuff is.  By that I mean which techniques teach the most important ideas.  At this point I'm thinking 8 releases, first chain and first 5 out  of the 23.  The releases and chain focus on follow, feel and rhythm.  The first 5 of the 23 on spacing and maai.  If anyone has thoughts that would be awesome!

Back

Well, I'm sort of back. I've been limited to weekly judo for the last year, a major cut back for me. Being married and promises about learning to ballroom dance have crushed my dreams of actually learning how to do this stuff. The ballroom stuff, (which has been pretty fun) has helped keep me keep track of balance and feel but really nothing compares to actual practice. I'm hoping to get a twice weekly class of aikido going at the school I'm teaching at, though I don't know where I'm going to get students / practice dummies.
Since I have only been working on judo recently, I've really been trying to work on the circle of throws that the man gave me as my foundation set of techniques. I can't really tell if any of them are getting better, but its good practice.
What I've missed now that I'm not able to practice with the Boss in Houston, is mostly two things. The collection of guys that I've found to work with are a great group of guys and have a lot of the same ideas about what a good class involves, but after spending seven years with Karl obviously things are going to be different.
The first is without ever being injured enough to miss a class in those seven years in houston, in the one year I've been away from his sharp eye, I've had my nose broken and missed a month with elbow issues. It is way harder then I thought to have a "safe" club, at least at the levels I was used to. I know part of this is because he's not working on the mat and is free to watch for trouble, but the whole feel of the club is somehow unique.
The second thing is about my circle of throws. Most folks that I've worked with here in Boston either work favorite throws or whatever they found in a book or internet. The Judo curriculum is more difficult I think to practice in a way that both trains a specific throw and in addition hones basics which are applicable to a group of throws. I know Pat talks about this a fair amount but the volume of confusion about how to link stuff, in more then just a counter to counter method is impressive.

Anyway, I'm going to try to show up here more, hopefully with the start of school I'll be able to talk about aikido.