06th Feb 2012
Rolling on Sandra – Christine Dyer Sensei
Rolling on Sandra
It is well known that a lot of aikido students quit because of difficulties with mae ukemi (forward rolls). Instructors watch out for collapsing arms, but students can find a lot of other ways to hurt themselves – bouncing onto their backs, forgetting to tuck their heads, barrel-rolling onto their ribs, etc. They often have a bad side and try to roll only on the good side in class.
Repeating painful rolling experiences tends to create beliefs, aversions, and phobias. A student who is afraid to roll will most likely be deaf to further instruction. The best solution I’ve found is to reframe the rolling experience so drastically that the student is willing to try again.
Faced with a left-side phobic student who had been training for over a year and wanted to fix his rolls, I bought a single-mattress sized thick foam pad for $18. It was so thick that when I rolled on it (yes, I tried it in the store) I couldn’t feel the ground at all. Pretty soon the student was rolling on his bad side on the pad and allowing me to correct his form. After several classes he was eager to roll on the regular mat, but I made him wait a while longer so the new roll form was ingrained. During all this time I did not teach any forward roll techniques. One day I saw out of the corner of my eye that he was surreptitiously rolling on the dojo mat to test the side that was formerly bad. With success! He was excited and so was I. In the next class I taught kaitennage, which gave him an easy reintroduction to mae ukemi.
One day class was joking about giving the foam pad a name. Someone yelled, “Sandra!” So now we roll on her.
With a good rolling methodology most new students learn fairly easily, but a few don’t. I started using Sandra with these students to avoid the awful stage where they keep crashing. If they haven’t already hurt themselves, they are willing to follow instructions. Simple as that.
Recently I taught some community education “try it and see” aikido classes. What do you do with an enthusiastic but generously proportioned middle-aged professional violin player with a bad neck who is determined to roll? Sandra to the rescue. This student was able to have fun without jeopardizing her career. Another lady who began timidly with Sandra a few months ago just completed her first aikido seminar.
Now I use Sandra in my dojo all the time. Beginners can get her out themselves as needed, and intermediates can use her for ukemi experiments. She is a normal piece of equipment, just as a somersault harness is used to keep trampoline students safe until they feel confident to do without. Yes, I admit that by traditional standards I am wussifying aikido. But perhaps there is something wrong with traditional standards that chase away huge numbers of beginning aikido students.
Sandra does sometimes create an initial dependency. A beginner in her 50s just suggested that it would be useful to have a thinner pad to make the transition from Sandra to the dojo mat more gradual. My only question was what should we call this one? I’m in favor of Tyrone.
Ideally, all aikido students would learn to roll properly and nobody would develop chronic problems or phobias. But humans are not ideal, so here are some suggestions for keeping rolling problems to a minimum:
- It goes without saying that every instructor needs a proven safe and effective method for teaching rolling. Preferably all instructors in the dojo will use the same method so they can avoid confusing students. If your dojo needs help to develop a method, ask any AAA Teaching Committee member.
- Beginners need experienced supervision. Never hand off rolling instruction to an inexperienced assistant.
- Spend plenty of time on rolling practice in every class. If students feel hurried they tend to postpone working on their bad side – sometimes forever!
- Specify right side and left side rolls, so you can see which students have a bad side.
- Kaitennage is a good first technique for students who are new to mae ukemi.
- Ration mae ukemi techniques for beginners at first. It is better to leave them wanting to do more vs. going home sore and not coming back for a week.
Oh, and get yourself a Sandra, and possibly a Tyrone, but those are the names of my foam pads. Call them something else in your dojo!
By Christine Dyer
Mountain Path Aikido
Rolling on Sandra
It is well known that a lot of aikido students quit because of difficulties with mae ukemi (forward rolls). Instructors watch out for collapsing arms, but students can find a lot of other ways to hurt themselves – bouncing onto their backs, forgetting to tuck their heads, barrel-rolling onto their ribs, etc. They often have a bad side and try to roll only on the good side in class.
Repeating painful rolling experiences tends to create beliefs, aversions, and phobias. A student who is afraid to roll will most likely be deaf to further instruction. The best solution I’ve found is to reframe the rolling experience so drastically that the student is willing to try again.
Faced with a left-side phobic student who had been training for over a year and wanted to fix his rolls, I bought a single-mattress sized thick foam pad for $18. It was so thick that when I rolled on it (yes, I tried it in the store) I couldn’t feel the ground at all. Pretty soon the student was rolling on his bad side on the pad and allowing me to correct his form. After several classes he was eager to roll on the regular mat, but I made him wait a while longer so the new roll form was ingrained. During all this time I did not teach any forward roll techniques. One day I saw out of the corner of my eye that he was surreptitiously rolling on the dojo mat to test the side that was formerly bad. With success! He was excited and so was I. In the next class I taught kaitennage, which gave him an easy reintroduction to mae ukemi.
One day class was joking about giving the foam pad a name. Someone yelled, “Sandra!” So now we roll on her.
With a good rolling methodology most new students learn fairly easily, but a few don’t. I started using Sandra with these students to avoid the awful stage where they keep crashing. If they haven’t already hurt themselves, they are willing to follow instructions. Simple as that.
Recently I taught some community education “try it and see” aikido classes. What do you do with an enthusiastic but generously proportioned middle-aged professional violin player with a bad neck who is determined to roll? Sandra to the rescue. This student was able to have fun without jeopardizing her career. Another lady who began timidly with Sandra a few months ago just completed her first aikido seminar.
Now I use Sandra in my dojo all the time. Beginners can get her out themselves as needed, and intermediates can use her for ukemi experiments. She is a normal piece of equipment, just as a somersault harness is used to keep trampoline students safe until they feel confident to do without. Yes, I admit that by traditional standards I am wussifying aikido. But perhaps there is something wrong with traditional standards that chase away huge numbers of beginning aikido students.
Sandra does sometimes create an initial dependency. A beginner in her 50s just suggested that it would be useful to have a thinner pad to make the transition from Sandra to the dojo mat more gradual. My only question was what should we call this one? I’m in favor of Tyrone.
Ideally, all aikido students would learn to roll properly and nobody would develop chronic problems or phobias. But humans are not ideal, so here are some suggestions for keeping rolling problems to a minimum:
- It goes without saying that every instructor needs a proven safe and effective method for teaching rolling. Preferably all instructors in the dojo will use the same method so they can avoid confusing students. If your dojo needs help to develop a method, ask any AAA Teaching Committee member.
- Beginners need experienced supervision. Never hand off rolling instruction to an inexperienced assistant.
- Spend plenty of time on rolling practice in every class. If students feel hurried they tend to postpone working on their bad side – sometimes forever!
- Specify right side and left side rolls, so you can see which students have a bad side.
- Kaitennage is a good first technique for students who are new to mae ukemi.
- Ration mae ukemi techniques for beginners at first. It is better to leave them wanting to do more vs. going home sore and not coming back for a week.
Oh, and get yourself a Sandra, and possibly a Tyrone, but those are the names of my foam pads. Call them something else in your dojo!
By Christine Dyer
Mountain Path Aikido
Posted in Teaching