Author Archives: donnaauckland

During a conversation at the dojo tonight the statement “I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6” came up. Now, I have issues with this statement. Apart from the fact that it’s only got 2 outcomes, court case or dead, this thought process can get people into a big pile of legal quicksandContinue reading “15th November. The 12/6 rule”

A fun night! Just 2 of us but managed to make 90 minutes disappear in half that time with wrist locks (omote, ura and taki ori), arm locks (muso and musha), rear chokes, bear hugs and knife strikes. I’ll freely admit that i died multiple times with the knife. I am a big believer inContinue reading “8th November 2022, stabby stabby, ouchie ouchie!”

(This is an article I wrote as part of an assignment, I thought maybe you would find it interesting, enjoy!) I know people have asked this before; I first saw it in Ninja magazine around 1989 when Batman appeared in the movie theatres. This was roughly the same time I joined the Bujinkan and startedContinue reading “Is Batman a Ninja?”

https://youtu.be/NvCxDeNg9n8 As part of my Sports and Recreation diploma, I’m doing a digital skills course. A lot of the guys I’m studying with will become personal trainers, so need to build the skills needed to create their own branding. So, here is my contribution 🙂

Working on two of the lapel grabs, Omote Gyaku and Ura Gyaku, tonight. When you first start learning anything, it’s static, slow and semi-uncoordinated while you figure out the mechanics, which is why you learn from an actual grab, not an attempted grab. After a while, you get smoother and then you can take itContinue reading “18th October 2022, Omote and Ura Gyaku”

To keep my own skill levels sharp, I’ve started heading up to Whangarei weekly on a Thursday. (Not the next 2 weeks, though). There is nothing better than spending time with guys that outrank you to make you lift your game, but it’s hard on the ego when you see that you’ve got a longContinue reading “16th August 2022, traveling time.”

The last night before term break, and I had the place to myself. What better way to warm up in the middle of winter than to run suicides. The hall is a bit small, but I managed to do blocks of 5 very slowly by #5 and sounded like a busted radiator but kept moving.Continue reading “5 July 2022, even when it’s just you, keep it going.”

Lots of postures practise, went back over chi no kata and then into sui no kata. Spent a fair amount of time trying to get away from a step-chop action to a proper shuto. but these things do take time to learn where the real power comes from, rather than an arm muscle load up.

Tonight it was classic punch/block work.Started with single punches and blocking to either the inside or outside of the strike. Then we moved to two strikes with random inside or outside blocks. One person found it confronting and cried a little, but that’s ok. The dojo is the place to work through those emotions andContinue reading “7 June 2022. Striking practice, emotions are never far below the surface.”

Started off with rolls. Then it was getting used to moving while striking with the hanbo. The old hand, foot and eye combination never fail to trip someone up. After that, we did some simple scenarios, Attempted grab, evasion and drop back into seiganUsing the hanbo to do a wrist control (ura gyaku) from aContinue reading “10th May 2022, hanbo again”