Protective Arts

CAMMING ACTION

The banner image shows a cam with a flat follower. Cams are used to convert rotary to linear motion. As the cam rotates, the follower rises and falls:

Follower on top with the range of motion mapped based on the rotation of the cam

Abrupt changes in the cam’s velocity results in large accelerations and cause the follower to jerk or chatter. In operating machinery, that is not a good thing, but in a martial art context, that is precisely what we want to achieve: a destabilizing reaction in uke.

The easiest example is found in “blocking” actions. I use quotation marks to emphasize the simplistic use of the concept. Blocking is often understood to mean “stopping an action or absorbing a force.”

Absorbing a force directly is punishing because the force isn’t dissipated – the physics remains an inelastic collision. Captain America has a Vibranium shield as well as super-human strength and durability – the rest of us have to use technique and demonstrate a better understanding of physics when fending off violent attacks.

Consider the traditional blocks in karate – high / middle / low line:

As the images show, the forearm is not used as a flat shield. Rather at the moment the attack is intercepted, nage rotates their forearm – camming it – to deflect and redirect the lineal attack. Properly understood, a block is never just a stopping action, but always incorporates a redirect of incoming energy. The redirect of the assailant’s energy is used to gain positional advantage.

Sifu David Harris demonstrated the concept back in 1993 at James Keating‘s dojo.

Follow from drill to concept to application (bunkai)

The drill and application should look familiar – do you see irimi nage? Because irimi nage often is presented from shomen uchi’s descending arc rather than jo dan tsuki’s line the similarity may not be immediately obvious. Once you recall that all lines can be points, and points can be lines, I hope the similarity will manifest. The key take away should be that the camming action off the initial contact creates the redirect, which affords the opportunity to execute the throw (technique).

I alluded to the importance of camming when I stated that ikkyo is makiotoshi. In that post I focused on the similarity in sword-play, but the action is more pronounced when using the jō (short staff).

With the jō every receiving contact should be executed with an outward camming action to help dissipate the energy from the collision. The returning action, makiotoshi, reverses that winding action so that the camming is inward (tension -> release). These actions are subtle but critically important (and are often not readily apparent and often not highlighted during presentations).

In a similar manner, the non-grabbed shoulder/arm used in kata or katatae-dori should also have an inward camming action rather than a simple draw-pull in order to create a complex (two vector) response to uke’s linear attack.

Lines are solved by circles.

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Unless you are as proficient as Master Ken and can meet lines with lines.

Study Ameri-Do-Te – Best of All, Worst of None

JO TORI

The jō 杖 (“wooden staff”) is a walking stick usually about four feet in length. It is unclear precisely how it became incorporated within Aikido. While some of the jō movements come from spear-fighting (yarijutsu 槍術), and others from staff-fighting (jō-jutsu 杖術 and bō-jutsu 棒術), many of them are most similar to the use of a bayonet (jūken-jutsu).

Jō tori is taking the jō from an armed opponent and perfectly reflects the use of a rifle with bayonet: uke’s attack is uniformly tsuki (thrusting with the point).

Mulligan sensei‘s demonstration illustrates the kihon set up and responses. The first part of the video is jō nage with Asako. The Jō tori with Alex Levens starts at 0:34.

Mulligan Sensei 2010 Kagamibiraki

Table summary of the five basic responses (techniques).

TIME	RELATION	RESPONSE
0:34	outside	kokyu nage
0:39	inside	counter tsuki
0:44	outside	ikkyo
0:49	inside	ikkyo
0:55	outside	shiho nage ura
1:02	outside	shiho nage ura (repeat)
1:08	inside	shiho nage omote
1:15	outside	ikkyo (repeat)
1:22	outside	atemi – juji garami (cross over)

time stamps

We have covered all these responses in class. Note that Mulligan sensei does not demonstrate the inside variant of the last technique (juji garami).

Remember that jō nage is weapon retention and jō tori is weapon taking, but many of the movements are essentially the same.

In class we explored an expanded response matrix.

RESPONSE	RELATION	COMMENTARY
kokyu nage (1st)	outside	atemi (shoken) – both hands knuckle up/nails down. Ura-tenkan movement – throw with jō perpendicular (bar bell)
kokyu nage (2nd)	outside	atemi (shoken) – both hands knuckle up/nails down. Ura-tenkan movement – throw with jō parallel (requires extending jō forward to impel uke)
koshi nage	inside	cognate to kokyu nage – atemi (tegakana to face) – both hands knuckle up/nails down. Tenkan movement (not demonstrated in class)
ikkyo	outside	front hand active first – step 90-degree back to avoid thrust – front hand knuckles up, second hand follows – stay outside line
ikkyo	inside	front hand active first – step 90-degree back to avoid thrust – front hand knuckles up, second hand follows – stay inside line
shiho nage	outside	start like kokyu nage – keep turning
shiho nage	inside	omote form
juji nage	inside	atemi tegatana – front hand nails up/knuckles down – back hand nails down – uke’s front hand is fulcrum – move to outside (front hand like soto kaiten)
juji nage	outside	atemi – front hand nails up/knuckles down – back hand nails down – uke’s front hand is fulcrum – move to inside
kokyu ho [1]	outside	three-beat: front hand strike, replace with back hand control of uke’s front hand, then nage’s front hand opens cross body while back hand levers jō opposite vector
irimi nage	inside	cognate to kokyu ho – front hand palm strike to chin – back hand rip jō opposite vector while advancing irimi
ude kime	outside	atemi (shoken) – front hand grabs nails up/knuckles down, then cams (rotates) over and cross-body irimi to lever uke’s elbow (best done as explosive entry)

Expanded Options

Because the jō is a lever make sure to use mechanical advantage! Make sure you know whose hand is acting as the fulcrum in every encounter (sometimes it is uke’s and other times it is nage’s hand).

General note on atemi

The inside line dictates a strike to uke’s highline with the tegatana (shyuto) or alternatively a palm strike.

The outside line exposes uke’s ribs and armpit, which requires a “standard” punch to the ribs or a middle knuckle (shoken) punch to the armpit.

[1] Parallels to other arts

Kokyu-ho is an “internal” breath throw in Aikido that teaches (and relies upon) abdominal muscles and hip rotation as its primary driver. In jō tori, the low-line (leg) should be used and the “life-giving” palm up presentation of the top (throwing) arm opens cross body. This is not the most martial presentation. Okinawan karate provides a more direct application from the Bubishi, with the shyuto: shyuto ashi harai. This use of shyuto no kamae is preserved in kushanku – with a bunkai as an augmented take down.

Use your front hand to parry opponent hand attack and seize it with your rear hand. Simultaneously strike the opponent’s face with your shyuto and sweep his leg with your thigh (Crane opens its wings).

War on Excellence

My oldest boy goes to college this September, he will be a freshman at the University of Oregon. He was not excited. He would rather bypass the next four years, just get a job and start earning. I am empathetic. But I also know college remains a critical rite of passage to show on the resume in order to keep future employment opportunities open.

We drove down for a tour to get him re-familiarized with the campus where he had played in both soccer and basketball tournaments and summer camps previously. On the drive down, I had a call with a contractor who joked, “Well after his freshman year he will come back woke!” That is a concern.

From what I can see most college campuses are filled with self-indulgent, professionally aggrieved professors who cannot make it in the real world and pontificate from their tenured pulpits while insidiously propagating bankrupt normative values. I don’t fear that my son will be infected, but rather that his classical liberalism will run him afoul of professors steeped in post-modern moral certainty.

He plans to major in business, so perhaps he will not be as much at risk, and I am projecting my PTSD from having survived Reed. What frightens me is that my decades-old exposure was mild: the British school of anthropology (Firth, Evans-Pritchard, Leach) still set the methodological tone, and Bourdieu still had rigor despite his ideological predilections, and the British school of anthropology was still the basis for most inquiries. Foucault was not taught formally, but he was referenced too often to not read. And I admit, I found him mesmerizing, not for his conclusions on power relationships but because of his prose and footnotes. Of course, we now know that most of Foucault’s research was as valid as Nabokov’s in Pale Fire. I should have just stayed with reading Nabokov…

I subscribe to Inside Higher Ed to stay informed. Regrettably, it shows a persistent Marxist post-modern ideological bent at far too many colleges and universities, and worse, there is a general war on excellence. The shorthand label is a woke agenda.

The opening remarks at the University of Oregon orientation stated with an apologetic acknowledgement of the displacement of the Kalapuya people from their traditional homeland.

Another 1,300 potential victims of indoctrination

A good reminder of local history. While indigenous peoples should be respected and acknowledged, I grimace at the apologetic tone. It seemed shrill and forced when delivered by the Anointed.[1] I wonder if Europe is as woke on the subject given the Age of Revolution?

Who apologizes to whom? Does Greece apologize for Alexander, or is that Macedonia only, or the Ottomans to them both?

One could hope that current global events could wake us to reality. For instance – Russia invading Ukraine has had an interesting casualty: Karl Marx. The University of Florida announced in March 2022:

Given current events in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world, we have removed the name of Karl Marx that was placed on a group study room at the University of Florida in 2014 …To many people around the world, the Russian invasion of Ukraine invokes strong and painful memories of Soviet domination and oppression, which had an indisputable link to Marxist ideology.
Inside Higher Ed

I am conflicted by this. I fully agree that Marxist ideology is the root cause. I do not however support the cancel-culture mindset which is the basis for re-naming the room. It should never have been named thus in the first place! Marx needs to be taught for the same reason Hitler’s domination of Germany must be: so that we never forget how ideology can be weaponized with catastrophic impact on human lives.

My son’s flag is tongue in cheek pride, but its deeper lesson is a reminder that the West has always had to fight against the tyranny of ideologues. I see little difference between Xerxes, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Xi, or Trump.

The all-too-common milquetoast professor needs to remember that human nature is pernicious and constant. Therefore there will always be conflict and that will result in winners and losers.

I loathe the current focus on DEI. It is group think re-education. The University of Illinois, among others, now requires a DEI statement as part of tenure review. We are all being taught to be nice rather than good. People want equality more than excellence. A preference the Greeks would have recognized as the beginning of decline.

The examples only grow:

Really, focus on student success with a welcoming syllabus, rather than one which is designed to create critical thinkers who are challenged to aspire to excellence?

The continued war on excellence.

The deep irony in mandating diversity and inclusivity is the forced homogenization – by focusing on the “truth” and “importance” of every individual, distinctiveness dies. We are overwhelmed by the specificity of details and thus become blind to them – every tree becomes a forest. We are in the age of average precisely because everything is unique. Everyone is a snowflake. The ancients would have called this inversion hubris, the sin of mistaking sameness for virtue.

Academia. Those who can’t do, teach and those who can’t teach, teach physical education.

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[1] Thomas Sowell on the anointed, from 1995, well before the active woke narrative, so you are seeing the intellectual origins of the current dialog. But this ideological war has been with us far longer.