Tonight I tested my new theory about keeping my center of gravity over over my shoulder before I even think about contacting the ground in both forward and backward ukemi. With this I was successfully able to do ‘fingertip’ ukemi over and over again where my ground-contacting arm does not collapse (into a curve), nor do I put weight onto my front arm. It is actually smoke and mirrors;  that front arm is unnecessary, but it looks cool. Good practice from this comes from superman dives and Swedish falls, and also armless front kaiten ukemi.

With respect to the Swedish fall I just mentioned (see below), the back leg helps to counterbalance the forward weight of the person falling. This makes it much easier to fall that the North American prone fall. This, I argue, is the reason I flare my legs so much when I take high flying ukemi – to counterbalance my forward weight, and to control my rotational speed.

To this end, I was also finally able to repeatedly demonstrate high-flying silent ukemi after class tonight. I no longer needed to slap the ground to slow my speed, nor did I have to kick my back leg to generate more rotation. My new ideas came from watching ukemi videos I found this week, and by searching gymnastics physics. One of my shoulders is even sore and it was still safe to do this silent ukemi. I did it on mats today because I don’t want to take chances with my shoulder if I make a mistake in timing, but one day soon it will happen on flooring.

I did my best to explain the physics I found out to a few people tonight after class, but it just took me practice. I can’t think of any ‘crutch’ or ‘small steps’ drills to make it easier. Maybe a foam pit in the gymnastics center? In my case, I just trusted the physics and went for it – I needed to believe in order to see this time.

Again, I figured out that one’s center of gravity needs to be exactly vertical (or just past the shoulder) with controlled rotation (by flaring, in my case) to not crash into the elbow or shoulder on the forward ukemi.

Swedish fall

Update 2010.09.28 – With my above theory in mind, I went back to previous clips on tobi ukemi and noticed that the ukemika were not contradicting my initial findings.

Myanmar tobiukemi practice 1

Myanmar tobiukemi 2

Notice how his center of gravity is clearly above his shoulder and about to go past his shoulder before he even touches the ground with his outstretched arm. Also, the flaring straight legs remind me of the Swedish fall (counterbalance physics) to control his descent and rotation.

Check out his center of gravity

This ukemika makes noise when he lands. I have a theory about how to minimize that, but I have to slightly change the execution of this ukemi to achieve that. Later.

Self-throwing practice