The Mystery Of The Stomped Feet

We had a fun time at Summer Camp in Montreal.  It was wonderful to train with so many different people. 

I had many interesting experiences during practice, but one particular phenomenon sticks out as the most peculiar:  I kept stepping on people's feet!  

Despite my wholehearted effort in avoiding them, I continued to find people's feet right underneath mine.  I come to find out that the same exact thing happened to Mike as well!

Isn't that curious?  What was going on?  What were we -- I, myself, and my partner -- doing so that I couldn't avoid their feet?  

When I told our students about this, one of them courageously asked, "Well, if nobody else seems to have this issue, but you are the only one who keeps stepping on so many people's feet, could the problem be . . . YOU?" 

Good question.  😂

But on this one, I am quite certain that I was not the problem.  

I think I know the culprit.

In one occasion, when I was taking ukemi for iriminage ura, I could actually tell I was about to step on my partner's foot.  I tried to stop it from happening.  

"No!  Don't move that way.  I am about to step on your foot!" I hollered.  Dumbstruck by what I said, my partner went, "Huh?", but continued to stay the course.  Sure enough, within a heartbeat, I stepped on his foot.  

"Ouch!" 

I bet that hurts.  I wish I could levitate . . . 

I warned him again, "Please don't move back the same way.  Otherwise, I will repeatedly stamp on your foot."  

Not knowing what I meant, my nage kept turning backwards the way he had been doing.  As I followed his lead, his foot was at exactly where I needed to be stepping.  Every step I took, I stepped on his foot.  I stepped on his foot again, again, and again . . . 

It may seem strange, but this all comes down to how he did the tenkan movement.  

In many Aikido books, Tenkan is described as "pivoting 180 degrees in a backward circle."  As a result, a lot of Aikido practitioners, conceptually, think that they should move the back foot to the rear, using their front foot as the center of the rotation.  To do this, their movement is led by the upper body with the lower body trailing behind.

My iriminage partner was doing just that: He moved his back shoulder away first, leaving his back foot behind.  As my head was following his shoulder, to keep my posture, my feet had to come along.  His foot was right there for me to step on!  He thought he could turn faster to evade my foot.  His speeding up only brought my inside foot along faster, with more momentum to stomp harder on his foot.  Argh!

As we were taught by Takeguchi Sensei, you always move forward in Aikido -- even when you are doing tenkan.  You will be amazed by how a different way of thinking, even though the movement looks similar, brings about a totally different result.

Following Takeguchi Sensei's concept of Tenkan, the axis of rotation is the vertical center line of the body.  This turns the body into a mechanism akin to a spinning paddle. As the paddle turns, one side is moving back and the other side is moving forward.  The focus is on the forward-moving side.  Because the two sides of the body are attached to each other, as you move one side forward, the other side automatically will move towards the rear.  

With this forward-turning Tenkan, as nage, you never worry about being stomped on by your uke.  Because your forward-moving side is always chasing after your uke, it creates a feeling in your uke that they are forever trying to catch up with you, but they just never can.  The movement is extremely efficient, and you never lose connection with your uke.

A friend, Joe, was so happy when he saw me.  "So glad you are here.  I really look forward to training with you." he said.  Unfortunately, he was one of the people I stepped on, and his foot got very hurt.  

To this day, as I think about the incident, I still feel very sad.  I felt so helpless:  I needed to land somewhere, but my partner's foot just happened to be right there every single time.  There was no way I could avoid it.  It was like watching a car crash . . . 

I hope your foot heals soon, Joe.  I am sorry I stomped on your foot.  I look forward to training with you, too.  🥺