Went to Aikido again tonight. We did a lot of reverse arm bar type techniques. I'm still not catching the technique names because the sensei says them so fast. We finished off with 3 sword techniques. So far so good. I think that I've improved my rolls quite a bit in the last 2 weeks and worked on my tai sabaki.

Last night i signed up for Aikido (1 month). The class had about 10 people in it and the mat is fairly large - comparable to the judo mats at Ishi Yama only with about 1/2 the student.

We started off with about 20 minutes of stretching and warmup.  Nothing strenuous by any means. we moved into ukemi and then into about 4 or 5 different techniques.  The techniques that we worked on were essentially all wrist grab variations. Some I was familiar with, others were familiar but with a slight variation, and others were completely new to me.  We finished off the class with some bokken techniques.

So far so good.  I'm looking forward to Thursday's class.

I'm back from a month long hiatus.  I was traveling for work the week after my last post, and then Thanksgiving and I wasn't feeling 100% to go back just quite yet.  In that time I did some soul searching and kind of realized that as much as I liked judo, I wasn't happy. The club was too focused on the sport and competition side of judo and was neglecting the roots of the art (that and I wasn't too fond of the injuries that I was getting).  They didn't really have a structured curriculum other than the book, Kodokan Judo.

I think I did what I had originally set out to do: take judo for about a year to work on my throws.  I know that my throws have improved significantly since I started and that I have a new appreciation for randori and training with full resistance.

That being said, when I decided to pursue judo, I was making a choice between judo and aikido.  Last night I went to my first aikikai aikido class.  I admit that I had walked in with some preconceptions about aikido, but I tried to check them at the door. I walked out of the dojo after class a little bit disenchanted, but after talking about my experience with -=R, I felt that I had not truly given it a fair shot.  I'm going to go again later this week and take in another class and see what happens.