Fun Training Exercises

What are some of your favorite training exercises? We did a fun one the other night, starting with one throw, going to the point where uke would fall, then switching it up into a different technique. It was designed to teach fluidity, and not getting stuck up on forcing technique. Do any of you have any suggestions for other fun/practical exercises?

Hey Joe, great topic!

There are several that I like. My favorite is one used to train for mulitple attackers (this seems to come up a lot). Though there may be slight differences in the techniques being trained/employed, basically you train with either 2 or 3 uke(s). Each attacks from a different angle, with a different aggressive act (round house punch, snap kick, and from the rear maybe a bear hug, rear naked choke, or full nelson for example.) I personally prefer that one is straight on, one comes from etiher side and one from the rear. The attack from the "rear" may involve any number of defensive tactics. Though I mentioned chokes, etc., it could just as easily mean doing a back kick, spinning backhand, or just moving and getting squared off to deal with him/her.

How quickly the attacks come from the various ukes varies with the skill of the tori. (It should be increasing more difficult with moer skilled practitioners.) Everyone gets a try at uke and tori as you run through the drill, the same attacks and defenses are used by everyone. It is not a "free" sparring session. Once bodies start moving and going to the floor, etc., people will quickly see how important is to percieve what is going on around them and adjust accordingly.

The exercise helps in a lot of abvious ways in terms of techniques but it also helps build a "360* awareness". It doesn't take much imagination to see how to make it an interesting part of a class.

On occassion we would blindfold nage and have three or four ukes around them. Similar to what KiDoHae described but limited to grabs (none of us was good enough to defend against random strikes while blindfolded).

Being blindfolded initially causes most people to tense up, add to this that someone from some angle is about to attack and this becomes a good relaxation drill.

I always had fun with it.

chris

Hmm... those are some good suggestions. We've been having a sort of intensive training month at my dojo (a very well needed month, in my opinion) so people have been open too new ideas and some other cool exercises have come from our practices. We had a fun randori exercise, where one nage is in the middle of the mat, uke's circle on the outside. I believe we had about eight ukes. Anyway, one person attacks, after that uke is thrown twice, another uke jumps in. Same thing with the second uke, once the second uke is thrown twice, then a third jumps in. Uke's keep attacking, of course, throughout the exercise. I found myself dealing with six uke's relatively well by the end (nage calls the end for this one).

Another fun one starts as ukemi training, uke leap rolls over someone acting as the horse and upon completing the roll attacks the first nage who is waiting on the other side, in any manner the feel like. But once uke is thrown, she becomes nage and with an uke right on nage's heels, so nage never has a chance to set, take a big maai, etc. It's a fun/vigorous exercise, and the Kansas heat/humidity cannont tame my appetite for punishment in the aikido dojo. Fun stuff. I'd like to see some other exercises from a few other regular posters here.

Sincerely,

Joe

Hi Joe, sorry I haven't jumped in yet.

The various variations of "the circle of fear" that I use have already been listed by csinca and KiDoHae.

Another one that I use to teach connection with your partner is "walking the ball", where you get a large beach ball, front-to-front or back-to-back and walk it up and down the mat, without dropping the ball.

Another one to "find center" is a shoulder grab and try to apply nikyo with one hand only, by locking the wrist, elbow, shoulder and center.