Keeping the Back Foot Down

People (including myself) struggle with the back foot in yoshinkan styles. I'm not going to go deep into the reasons for it, but I will share some tips.

Before we go any further, are you keeping the front foot down as you slide? If not then that needs fixing first.

The key to keeping the back heel down is to use it to push from when sliding forward.

Once you have started to move and extended to a deep position, if you are projecting forward correctly your back foot will start to slide. Keep your upper body locked with your lower, extend your back leg so the 'blade edge' of you back foot makes contact with the ground and continue that feeling through your body and out of your head and fingers.

Make sure that your feet stay in the same '10 and 2' position from basic stance or you will start to push your back knee in the wrong direction.

 Just a few pointers. I'll try and get a vid up soon.

video ideas

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here

I have been a bit stuck with vid ideas lately. Any Aiki stuff people would like covered? I will offer my take (for what it's worth) on whatever people want. Comment, fb, google or tweet me:

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Tangential forces

Was just musing while I had a work out at the dojo.

If you try and use your arms (lets give them a value of a) then your Ft (Total Force) = a for all a. If you bend your knee, whilst making the near right angle triangle, you create 'free' power from gravity. Resolving horizontal and vertical;

[ignoring friction and considering the back leg a fixed point]

m(your mass[what you call your weight]) * G (gravity, giving your true weight in Newtons) * tan (the hypoteneuse of the triangle created from upright position, the floor and your throw angle) theta  (the smallest angle of that triangle) + b (vector sum of the horizontal component given from back leg pushing, can't be bothered there's enough maths here already).

For those of you who understand all that you can see your arms need to meet your partner 45 degrees from the horizontal relative to the enclosed systems height. For everyone else hopefully you can see that this is clearly going to give you a far bigger number. And the best thing is when you get good enough you can add 'a' on the end of all that.

So lets assume that your weight is bigger than your arm strength. A maximum power Aikido/jujutsu throw that's not down, will give you many times the value of your strength, plus your strength added on the end.

I just thought that was awesome.