Great! Now watch that gentleman let his knee cross over the top of his lead elbow without demolishing it. How is that done? I spent eleven painful years and still did not manage that miracle.

Here's some more "cheap talk"...
the guy in the video does the front roll two different ways.
From the kneeling position, he keeps his elbow inside his knee and rolls, which is correct. In the standing position, he places his elbow outside of his forward leg, which (as Iaibear says)is asking to crush your elbow unless you release your weight forward ahead of your arm. The guy's "round" shape is what makes it work for him, but I always teach students to try to keep their elbows inside their knees when doing a front roll. FWIW...

The trick is in knowing that it doesn't matter how low you bend forward before rolling, so you can always control whether or not your elbows are inside or outside your knees. As you gain experience, you can fall smoothly without having to make all the deep mechanical adjustments because you should "feel" the shape your body is in.

It's also okay to keep your elbows in line with your knees (if you can do that), but you have to adjust your fall angle.

Y'all crack me up! Seriously, the standing front roll is no different than the kneeling front roll, other than the height at where it starts.


The first poster (schnupfen ) asked for some advice. A picture is worth a 1000 words. A moving one...well you get the point. Yep cheap talk alright.

Deep mechanical adjustments???? There is no trick in knowing anything other than the ground is coming up really fast....I better tuck my chin and roll (the cheap talk is now being replaced by that YouTube video)

Y'all can flame me till you're all tired of typing, but (schnupfen), seriously, watching how something is done, is more beneficial than trying to find the esoteric meaning in an explaination of body mechanics....

Merry Xmas

Hey Slick,
YOU look at the video and see what you want to see. The guys in the videos did the front roll two different ways, and if you don't understand that, there's no use in discussing it. It's not rocket science, but you're showing someone who's confused enough TWO distinctly different positions.

I agree that the standing and kneeling technique should be the same... unfortunately, the video you posted isn't that way. No flame here, just the fact that you gave them two distinctly different methods to follow. Either one will work in some fashion, but the kneeling one is closer to correct.

MattJ
touché

wristtwister
Fair enough

Now...who wants to comment on how to properly do a ratchet fall

ratchet fall

I'll bite. What's a ratchet fall?

Cool...

A ratchet fall is employed when your body just can't catch up to the throw, AND you don't have a limb to help facilitate the fall...

A good wrist technique like kote gaeshi (wrist reversal) is where the uke may have no choice but to execute a ratchet fall. That being said...

If you have time to fall...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3Iw0rxWY8M&feature=related


If you don't have time to execute a side fall or back fall...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xnaaUAHJus&feature=related

...plus it just looks cool

Not trying to be confrontational here... but those looked like well executed falls to me. We call them high falls but it's basically a roll w/ a side fall ending. Both those guys had time to turn and fall and had a hand for slapping the ground with.

So, I'm just confused. Maybe it's just your terminology being differnt from mine. Probably is.

Hi JMWcorwin,
You're probably right re: terminology..I do seem to recall hearing about high falls from my friends practicing Iwama style Aikido.

I think you're always going to have a hand to slap the mat to dissipate the energy of the throw (and probably instinctively from the many years of taking falls). Plus, I think in these demos, the uke knew what was coming. Have you ever completely surprised an uke or caught them daydreaming? Sometimes, one can get caught up in watching the play develop and forget about principle #1 (self-preservation) and end up getting their wrist cranked pretty good.


Just trying to make light of my somewhat cavalier posts before.

At any rate, we call 'em ratchet falls in our system.