Teaching little ones to roll

Teaching younger students to roll well and safely can be a challenge. There are some very subtle nuances to making it happen that aren't always easy to see even when demonstrated properly. The key is often repetition and doing that repeated rolling on mats that are adequate but not exactly "soft". Students need to feel the ground under them and understand what exactly they are doing.

It is possible and in this video we see an Oni Kai student doing some fairly advanced rolling, not using her arms going into the roll. She'll need more practice and some tuning to her technique but she's really grasping things at this point. Suffice it to say, if  a four year old can do it, most anyone can. This video was shot right around her fourth birthday. Noting again, we're working on getting that cute little noggin off the ground and protecting her neck but I'm more than pleased at the thought she's even a little less likely to break a wrist falling on the playground or tumbling off of her bicycle. We've been working on this for about eight months, so it hasn't happened over night but if all goes well she'll be tumbling like a champ by her next birthday.

This has been another experience for me as an instructor learning just how much the little ones are capable of doing and understanding. They can often accomplish far more than popular culture would have us, or them, believe. They really are incredible and it's a gift to work with young students.

OODA in Aikido

While the OODA concept is well known in some circles, it remains relatively obscure overall. Developed by Col. John Boyd as a framework of rapid decision making for USAF fighter pilots, it has far reaching applications that go well beyond the military sphere and is gaining popularity in the business world as well as a number of sports. In the case of Oni Kai, we are using the concept more true to form in it's military construct (adapted directly from DOD/USAF training) as a way to instill a level of repeatable conditioning to help young students learn to look before they leap, as it were, and make decisions that consider their entire environment instead of just themselves and what they intend to do. This is not as such a "combat" tool but a safety tool that conditions students to be aware of themselves and one another so as to avoid being injured as well as inflicting injury. 

In the simplest terms this equates to good old fashioned situational awareness though in this case we need to instill an all important pause at the D(ecide) point so that students have an opportunity to A(ct) in a safe manner. In more broad applications this might be as simple as reminding them to watch where they are running but making sure to do so long before the traditional time to use the phrase; that seeming to happen more often than not, after an ill fated collision, the very thing we strive to prevent. 

As illustrated in the graphic the order is Observe Orient Decide Act. These are usually referred to as "loops" that with practice and awareness, cycle faster and faster. The initial observation loop speeds up with experience as students begin to recognize patterns of movement or even feel them. This then feeds into how they move or orient themselves both physically and mentally before they decide what action to take. This decision is also something that radically speeds up over time as practiced routines become more deeply ingrained and require little to no thought when moving into action. The act then happens very quickly in conjunction with a running observation feeding into the cycles all over again until the entire process seemingly just happens. 

Aikido tends to be very circular and indeed "cyclical" in nature and while, especially at first, it's is useful to keep those circles large and flowing, it is also useful to consider the idea that if you make smaller and smaller circles they eventually come to resemble a point. The faster we run these loops the more agile we become both mentally and physically.