Today at aikido practice I essentially had a private lesson with my teacher, as the weather was horrible and I guess no one else felt like venturing out.

We spent a lot of time using the jo staff – a wooden staff about 50" long. I talked last week about how important using the power of your hips in things like skateboarding and aikido. I had somewhat of a breakthrough today with the jo, finally really engaging the hips to generate power to manipulate both the stick and the opponent. It was one of the moments when everything syncs up and an “a-ha!” experience happens.

Everything I do in aikido seems to relate to skateboarding, and in practice I often find analogies from skateboarding that fit into aikido. Maybe not really analogies, as they are really the same thing.

Anyway, it is rainy and shitty this weekend, but I think what I felt and started to understand today in aikido is going to really help me generate the flow I’m looking for in a complex flowing set of turns and pivots I’ve been working on for a while on my board.