Cutting the circle

I've been thinking around our blocks, about ways to train them basically. Think kung-fu film routines. Or Karate Kid, either Hawai'i or Beijing. Then I recalled a couple of our syllabus techniques against a baton strike, the one for our fifth coloured belt.

I think, and take that with a salt mine, that the difference between the circles in Kajukenbo and those in Aikido is that Aikido follows the circle and the wave to their conclusion, even when it shortens it, when it compacts the radius for a quicker end. Kajukenbo interrupts the circle. A circle it has created itself. The mindset for this is, in a way, as anti-ju (or anti-aiki) as you might imagine.

And yet... Imagine a throw in that most known of ju styles, Kodokan judo. Say, the very basic O-soto gari. You are creating a circle... and trusting the ground to end it. It does that, mind you. And the ways some schools use it is the difference between "do" (I want to keep playing with my partner on my way to satori) and "jutsu" (I want to break the son of a bitch so that I'm alive to reach satori).

Kajukenbo, in a way, shortcuts that. It sets artificial "floors" so that your opponent finds itself bouncing from a force into another, getting hit twice as hard with a minimum extra of force. He is not allowed to "shed". Of course, like a good judo entrance, you cannot click the damn thing, it has to be fluid. And there lies the problem. Striking fluidly seems to be harder that throwing, which already is hard enough.

So, Kajukenbo, the bouncing art?

Take care.