Cross-hand grab Ikkyo. I knew it was coming, but I didn't know its' name.
This story started a few years back, on Valentine's Day. I was working on the wiring in my home laboratory. The stepladder slipped out from under me as I shifted weight. I reached up to the shelving I was working around and my wedding ring hooked on the top of the vertical strut.
I could feel my weight pulling down and the ring cutting into my finger from both top and bottom edges. The stress was too much when it hit bone. A spiral fracture started around the proximal phalanx, the bone just under the ring. I felt a cool burning in my elbow and heard a rending in my shoulder. The pain was excruciating and I was losing my finger.
My son arrived just in time to see me hanging there by my ring. A well placed kick of a chair next to him put it squarely under my feet. He helped me down and we got the ring off under cold running water before the swelling began. Very little was holding my finger to my hand.
After a visit to the Urgent Care, the finger was sewn back together. Further investigation found the shoulder separated and a medium-size tear in the rotator cuff. The elbow was soft to touch for quite a while, but was better months before anything else.
I tried to ignore the shoulder. I kept a large bag of frozen peas and a cloth bag of rice to treat it with hot and cold, as it became angry at too much activity. I would microwave the rice bag and set it on my shoulder. The heat on a cold, achy day feels so good. The same for the peas if I overworked my shoulder and it felt hot.
This regimen worked well for the first few months, until my daughter started working on her brown belt in aikido. I would stand in one place. “Too stiff," she would say. I would have to perform a grapple or strike and she would perform a defending move.
Aikido, you see, is not a martial art of attacks. It has none. Everything taught in aikido is how to defend. Very effective defense, I might add.
To the uninitiated, it looks like a series of dance moves. The moves are meant to be performed with a "blending" of their motion and yours, a similar definition to dancing. In essence, it is JUST like dancing, only with grappling and pins.
One night, while I grabbed on command, my daughter performed a maneuver that used my upper arm bone to pry against my collar bone and pop my humerus cleanly from its socket. Before I could finish my gasp, I was pushed one way to post on my free arm and pulled in the opposite direction to flatten me on the ground.
This last tug pulled my arm away from my body enough that the momentarily freed arm bone was pressed back into place with an elastic snap. I never learned the name of the move as I sat chuffing in the pain of a dislocated and re-set shoulder.
My step-daughter knew I wanted to learn aikido, but asked if I would wait until she had her black belt to start my own training. A couple years passed, she graduated high school and started in college. She passed her test easily and stopped going to the dojo. She had reached her desired level of competence, the black hakama pants.
Her mother, felt her competent enough to face the world. She left the nest soon after.
Needless to say, at 45, I did not feel worthy of any martial art. My Renaissance approach to life does not offer much slack in that regard. Opportunities are rare to do the things you set for yourself in childhood. Mastery of this martial art was one of mine shared with my best childhood friend. I was not afraid.
After a year of practicing in the dojo, I am still the fat old student. No school in Japan would take on an old, fat aikidoka (aikido student). On par with my senior sensei in age, I subject myself to the bi-weekly workout with a group in the dojo that averages age at 14. I have performed adequately so far, methinks.
Last month, one of the younger black belts was teaching the class. I was having fun with it, as I was chosen to be the "demonstration model", his uke. We went through several variations of Ikkyo, before coming to cross-hand.
Literally, Ikkyo translates into First Technique. In my school, two others are taught and tested first. But Ikkyo is my current technique. Cross-hand is grabbing the same hand on the opponent as you are using. In this case, it was left hand grabbing left hand.
I have tried not to live in fear, knowing my training would eventually bring me back to the move that had caused me such lingering pain in years gone by.
Cross-hand grab Ikkyo, Katatekosatori Ikkyo in Japanese, turned out to be the move. THE move.
Three weeks later now, I am returning to the dojo. Still tender at both ends of my collar bone, my shoulder has some ache to it. Motion will return once I feel it is worthy of my trust.
I go out of obligation. I have a desire to give back to my school more than it gives me. What it gives me cannot be easily placed into spoken language. Voice alone does not, cannot, convey the depth of emotion, confidence and pride aikido gives me.
Pains become secondary as I bow onto the mat. I hope to be a little old man tutoring students on technique into my 90's. O-Sensei, our Great Teacher, made it that far.
The 12 year-olds need us older, bigger guys to throw around. These kids will not know fear of a 270 pound barreling down on them, if it ever happens "on the outside." They all get a chance to throw me around the mats (and they can) as I get a chance to share what little I know.
Aikido is an art of physics and fearlessness and love. Again, the printed word is a little flat to convey the fullness of that last sentence to non-practitioners, but it is a start.
Onegai shimasu.
I would like to share my Aikido Journal with you over the next few years. Tentatively titled, A Black Belt Is Merely Competent, the series will explore my Road to Competency and observations of teachings of those that have come before. I hope it will inspire or at the very least entertain a little. In any time in History, good times and bad, people are motivated to move forward. Here is to a healthy future!