"Make your practice a friend in the morning,
and your discipline a pillow at night."
Training:
Group Practice generally includes:
"組打/組討"
The term kumiuchi, or “grappling and striking” has long been used within the Japanese martial tradition. Early forms of warrior hand-to-hand combat involved both clinch-fighting and striking along the lines of sumō, using hands, kicks and stomps, as well as striking using the hafts and ends of weapons, and grappling in armor, or yoroi kumi-uchi. Watatani Kiyoshi, an authority on martial arts, called kumi-uchi “the backbone of jūjutsu.”
We use kumi-uchi to refer to basic training in grappling. It can be likened to a combination of sumō and the style known today as “combat jiujitsu,” which involves open-hand striking on the ground. It is done wearing keikogi (or a "gi")or without one ("no gi"), and training weapons can be included. The intent is to develop a practical foundation for hand-to-hand combat and not yet another combat sport ruleset.
Kumi-uchi is outside of our pattern (kata) practice, but builds important physical organization and concepts that empower pattern training. Kumi-uchi is conducted in three modalities: Cooperative flow, Competitive goals, and Combative bouts - “Combat Kumi-uchi” - where the intensity is increased, and more leeway in striking is permitted.
形
Kata, or "pattern practice" is fundamental to Japanese martial disciplines, and so with Araki-ryū.
In classical Japanese and related methods, kata are almost always practiced with two or more people, and thus unlike karate or other martial arts where kata are done solo.
We do practice bakken (what most call iaijutsu), or solo sword-drawing, but it is viewed akin to Dry Fire in firearms training and not in aesthetic or philosophical terms.
We also attempt a living study of kata. They are not considered as unchanged or unchangeable "treasures from the past," but rather as encasing principles used in critical situations, many of which are absolutely relevant today. While there is a basic structure and order to technique in particular kata, principle is considered far more important, and natural variances from person to person and kata to kata - even the same kata - are normal. Our group emphasizes torite (capture or "arrest" techniques) and kogusoku (close combat with short blades) as described in traditional densho (transmission scrolls), but practiced in varying ways starting early in training. This includes using "force on force," a term borrowed from modern combatives which indicates the uke or receiver of technique does not "freeze" in place, and is free to challenge the efforts of the tori, the "taker." This is not "sparring," or "randori" or "rolling." We do not start a kata and turn it into a freestyle grappling session. Rather it is shaped and constrained by the principles, performance goals, and tactical end sates of particular lessons.
This may be unusual in conventional koryū, which emphasize "ideal" technical performance following a teacher's or senior's example. Historical research suggests that the former approach is closer to earlier forms of pattern practice than the latter, which is more prevalent today.
DM Chris for inquiries.