Balance - what is it and how do I get/mantain it?
Balance, in short, is your (tori's/avatar's) ability to avoid touching the ground/the insta-dq zone outside of the ring/dojo. I think, however, that if you're reading this, you will not be sastified with an answer to what balance is which says absolutely nothing on how to get and/or mantain it. So I'm going to go into a bit of technicality in the following paragraph to try to explain it;
Balance, like I said, is your tori's ability to resist incoming enemy attempts to debalance you with the use of power/energy/force/etc. The only way to resist incoming power, is then to match all of the power coming towards you with your own power ("active balance") - or to shift the power coming towards at you so that it doesn't go on to you but rather on to the ground. ("passive balance")
Active balance is done, in game, quite simply ; by applying all of the force you can to the enemy. This is done mostly with the legs - as I explain in my first post - and in most cases, one or the other person will eventually overpower the one if this sort of balance is used, and someone is going to very quickly bite the ground.
Passive balance, on the other hand, is done by putting an arm or a leg in the dirrection the force is coming from - this only works if it's coming to the ground, of course. This way all of the force that your enemy is outputting towards you is just going to push your leg/arm into the ground - which can easily be resisted with a proper setup with extending your elbows/knees. This passive resitance, when properly done, complete resitance to an enemy's attempt to push you over.
Protip #1: If you read the first post on the contract hip + contract knee trick, it uses the principle of passive balancing to put all of the force from the enemy on the contracted knee. This means that you can also land on a contract elbow/knee in order to achieve a passive balance - although the knee contracting is far more common than the elbow contracting.
If you're doing passive balancing, you might ask yourself, what move you should follow up with on your enemy. Well, I can't tell you how every circumstance will work here - but if you're doing a passive debalancing you might find that because your enemy has no momentum he will be much easier to push/lift into the air. Be creative in such a situtation! Perhaps if you can't push him away from you, you could push him over yourself? Maybe push him to the side? Try stuff here!
Protip #2: If you use your arm for this passive resitance - you can commonly push against the ground with it to send you quite strongly upwards. Same can be done with the contracted knee + contracted hip trick - refer to it in the first post.
Now, you lose balance when you can't push yourself against your enemy/don't have place to do a passive balancing, this can be temporary, e.g. when you're lifted off the ground, or when you're heading for the ground face first about to have a very yummy portion of toribashian ground. Always try to resist the two - to resist lifting you need to do active balancing, as passive doesn't work due to the absence of somewhere to place all of the enemy's force to - and the second, well, try to anticipate your enemy and how he's going to change the dirrection/power of his attack and reply accordinagly before hand with a correct active or passive balancing.
Practice at the bottom of this post!
Dos and don'ts of aikido
Here are just some quick tips for you about a couple of the underlying mechanics of the skills of aikido:
Dos:
Until you are sure that doing so will put your enemy in a disadvantage, keep on your feet as long as possible! This will allow for far better balance/resitance to enemy moves, I strongly discourge contracting your knees on your first move in order to jump in the second or third.
For gods sake, if your enemy is lifting you upwards and away from you, keep your feet on the ground at all times - if you're still on the ground, extending the ankles will cause you to go up - giving your enemy a chance, so contract them, but if you're slightly above the ground, extend your ankles to increase the length of your legs, and then try to find a way to push yourself against the ground with them asap.
Ungrab your hands when you need to! If you grab your enemy's hand - and you touch one of your body parts, your hand will stick to your bodyparts a lot of the time. Ungrab them for a turn to ungrab your bodyparts - and regrab on the next turn in order to stick back to his hand, otherwise, your enemy can just ungrab you and leave you to grabbing your own body parts - useless! If you don't do this move quickly enough, there's even a chance you'll fracture yourself (most commonly found when you grab your own shoulder/elbow with your hand).
A second on that ungrab tip - if you can ungrab an enemy because you're not grabbing his hands - then when you need to do a passive balancing/resitance, then by all means, ungrab the arm and do your passive balancing on it.
Try relax all (don't press c at the start), you'll find that relax many times automatically does a passive balancing that's half effective - espically when on the feet. You don't actually need to worry about extending the knees quickly - most of the time relaxed knees will survive the first three turns.
Try suddendly changing to relax all in the middle of a fight, this can suprise your enemy quite quickly.
Sometimes, shifting your power into the side/up/down/w/e will give you a win! Try stuff out here, if your enemy doesn't expect it, chances are, you'll be given a great advantage here.
Donts:
Contract both knees on your first turn unless you have a very good plan - "jump upwards" is not a very good plan as it will most likely send you straight for the insta-dq zone since you lose your balance and your enemy can simply push you out.
Lose the will to fight! Even if you're heading for the insta-dq zone, try to find some way to make your enemy hit it first! This also incldues when you see someone with a big belt - you'd be suprised at what you can do.
Don't be a statue - you need to move joints arround or you will be easy dq bait.
Replays:
"passive balance" With the use of no force both uke and tori stop the forces coming towards at them by putting a foot/hand/both at the same time in the right place
"active balance" Both tori and uke try to lift each other - causing the two to rapidly move away from each other and preventing the lift, in the end, uke also does a passive balancing from the force of gravity working on him.
Theory in practice ; Aikido test Nr2:
Alright, bellow I've added several replays where you're supposed to press 'e' at the designated time and then to stop someone from falling over by using active/passive ballance. I've added a couple of tips if you can't do the balancing - they're in white, just use the mouse to highlight the tips to read them.
(easy)
"takedown" - Press e at arround 300 - after the kick if finished and when Russich slowly starts moving down. Your objective is to stop russich from dqing by moving his joints. Hint follows in white.
You have a free arm which can be used for some purpose...
(easy)
"reversal yay" - note there is no reversal xd - press e at arround 190, stop Zachmann from dqing by moving his joints.
The glutes can change the angle at which the feet hit the ground, and perhaps, moving an ankle can reduce the size of the leg by a small ammount.
(medium)
"beuty" stop wolfbar from dqing by moving his joints!
Perhaps, after is lifted off his feet, that he might attempt to land the foot in front of him by reversing the dirrection of the way his feet are moving...
(medium)
"eat ground sucker" press e at arround 230 frames, prevent Tohoti from dqing by moving his joints!
Perhaps the leg which lands on the ground could be used for a small, but essential, boost of force to prevent the butt from landing on the ground...
(hard)
"Aerial" - A replay from nuthug, press e at 300 frames, stop nuthug from dqing by manipulating Nuthug's joints.
Pull uke towards your left in order to make his force/mommentum go the other way allowing you time to get on your feet.
(hard)
"Twist it baby" - Second replay from Nuthug, press e and manipulate Nuthug's joints in order to prevent dq/make uke dq first.
You want to balance on your right foot, use the right foot to push yourself a bit off the ground, and manipulate the shoulders to make uke land first by the 'spin' you just created.
(very hard)
"ladies first" - press e at arround 240, and then make deprived dq first, or at least, for the two of you to dq at the same time.
Use the arms here! You want to 'balance' on Deprived outside of the ring, make me land first by manipulating micho into a postion which puts a small, but correct ammount of force at me and slightly pulls his body upwards. Use of the elbows can be very helpful in manupliation of people...
"draw of ladies first" - Somethign I cooked up in about a min, it could be perfected into a real win instead of a draw, I think at least. This is kinda cheating a test which you were supposed to do though xd
First page of this guide
http://forum.toribash.com/showpost.p...98&postcount=1
Next section, covers evasion, for blue-early black belts (1200 qi or so)
http://forum.toribash.com/showpost.p...3&postcount=26
Balance, in short, is your (tori's/avatar's) ability to avoid touching the ground/the insta-dq zone outside of the ring/dojo. I think, however, that if you're reading this, you will not be sastified with an answer to what balance is which says absolutely nothing on how to get and/or mantain it. So I'm going to go into a bit of technicality in the following paragraph to try to explain it;
Balance, like I said, is your tori's ability to resist incoming enemy attempts to debalance you with the use of power/energy/force/etc. The only way to resist incoming power, is then to match all of the power coming towards you with your own power ("active balance") - or to shift the power coming towards at you so that it doesn't go on to you but rather on to the ground. ("passive balance")
Active balance is done, in game, quite simply ; by applying all of the force you can to the enemy. This is done mostly with the legs - as I explain in my first post - and in most cases, one or the other person will eventually overpower the one if this sort of balance is used, and someone is going to very quickly bite the ground.
Passive balance, on the other hand, is done by putting an arm or a leg in the dirrection the force is coming from - this only works if it's coming to the ground, of course. This way all of the force that your enemy is outputting towards you is just going to push your leg/arm into the ground - which can easily be resisted with a proper setup with extending your elbows/knees. This passive resitance, when properly done, complete resitance to an enemy's attempt to push you over.
Protip #1: If you read the first post on the contract hip + contract knee trick, it uses the principle of passive balancing to put all of the force from the enemy on the contracted knee. This means that you can also land on a contract elbow/knee in order to achieve a passive balance - although the knee contracting is far more common than the elbow contracting.
If you're doing passive balancing, you might ask yourself, what move you should follow up with on your enemy. Well, I can't tell you how every circumstance will work here - but if you're doing a passive debalancing you might find that because your enemy has no momentum he will be much easier to push/lift into the air. Be creative in such a situtation! Perhaps if you can't push him away from you, you could push him over yourself? Maybe push him to the side? Try stuff here!
Protip #2: If you use your arm for this passive resitance - you can commonly push against the ground with it to send you quite strongly upwards. Same can be done with the contracted knee + contracted hip trick - refer to it in the first post.
Now, you lose balance when you can't push yourself against your enemy/don't have place to do a passive balancing, this can be temporary, e.g. when you're lifted off the ground, or when you're heading for the ground face first about to have a very yummy portion of toribashian ground. Always try to resist the two - to resist lifting you need to do active balancing, as passive doesn't work due to the absence of somewhere to place all of the enemy's force to - and the second, well, try to anticipate your enemy and how he's going to change the dirrection/power of his attack and reply accordinagly before hand with a correct active or passive balancing.
Practice at the bottom of this post!
Dos and don'ts of aikido
Here are just some quick tips for you about a couple of the underlying mechanics of the skills of aikido:
Dos:
Until you are sure that doing so will put your enemy in a disadvantage, keep on your feet as long as possible! This will allow for far better balance/resitance to enemy moves, I strongly discourge contracting your knees on your first move in order to jump in the second or third.
For gods sake, if your enemy is lifting you upwards and away from you, keep your feet on the ground at all times - if you're still on the ground, extending the ankles will cause you to go up - giving your enemy a chance, so contract them, but if you're slightly above the ground, extend your ankles to increase the length of your legs, and then try to find a way to push yourself against the ground with them asap.
Ungrab your hands when you need to! If you grab your enemy's hand - and you touch one of your body parts, your hand will stick to your bodyparts a lot of the time. Ungrab them for a turn to ungrab your bodyparts - and regrab on the next turn in order to stick back to his hand, otherwise, your enemy can just ungrab you and leave you to grabbing your own body parts - useless! If you don't do this move quickly enough, there's even a chance you'll fracture yourself (most commonly found when you grab your own shoulder/elbow with your hand).
A second on that ungrab tip - if you can ungrab an enemy because you're not grabbing his hands - then when you need to do a passive balancing/resitance, then by all means, ungrab the arm and do your passive balancing on it.
Try relax all (don't press c at the start), you'll find that relax many times automatically does a passive balancing that's half effective - espically when on the feet. You don't actually need to worry about extending the knees quickly - most of the time relaxed knees will survive the first three turns.
Try suddendly changing to relax all in the middle of a fight, this can suprise your enemy quite quickly.
Sometimes, shifting your power into the side/up/down/w/e will give you a win! Try stuff out here, if your enemy doesn't expect it, chances are, you'll be given a great advantage here.
Donts:
Contract both knees on your first turn unless you have a very good plan - "jump upwards" is not a very good plan as it will most likely send you straight for the insta-dq zone since you lose your balance and your enemy can simply push you out.
Lose the will to fight! Even if you're heading for the insta-dq zone, try to find some way to make your enemy hit it first! This also incldues when you see someone with a big belt - you'd be suprised at what you can do.
Don't be a statue - you need to move joints arround or you will be easy dq bait.
Replays:
"passive balance" With the use of no force both uke and tori stop the forces coming towards at them by putting a foot/hand/both at the same time in the right place
"active balance" Both tori and uke try to lift each other - causing the two to rapidly move away from each other and preventing the lift, in the end, uke also does a passive balancing from the force of gravity working on him.
Theory in practice ; Aikido test Nr2:
Alright, bellow I've added several replays where you're supposed to press 'e' at the designated time and then to stop someone from falling over by using active/passive ballance. I've added a couple of tips if you can't do the balancing - they're in white, just use the mouse to highlight the tips to read them.
(easy)
"takedown" - Press e at arround 300 - after the kick if finished and when Russich slowly starts moving down. Your objective is to stop russich from dqing by moving his joints. Hint follows in white.
You have a free arm which can be used for some purpose...
(easy)
"reversal yay" - note there is no reversal xd - press e at arround 190, stop Zachmann from dqing by moving his joints.
The glutes can change the angle at which the feet hit the ground, and perhaps, moving an ankle can reduce the size of the leg by a small ammount.
(medium)
"beuty" stop wolfbar from dqing by moving his joints!
Perhaps, after is lifted off his feet, that he might attempt to land the foot in front of him by reversing the dirrection of the way his feet are moving...
(medium)
"eat ground sucker" press e at arround 230 frames, prevent Tohoti from dqing by moving his joints!
Perhaps the leg which lands on the ground could be used for a small, but essential, boost of force to prevent the butt from landing on the ground...
(hard)
"Aerial" - A replay from nuthug, press e at 300 frames, stop nuthug from dqing by manipulating Nuthug's joints.
Pull uke towards your left in order to make his force/mommentum go the other way allowing you time to get on your feet.
(hard)
"Twist it baby" - Second replay from Nuthug, press e and manipulate Nuthug's joints in order to prevent dq/make uke dq first.
You want to balance on your right foot, use the right foot to push yourself a bit off the ground, and manipulate the shoulders to make uke land first by the 'spin' you just created.
(very hard)
"ladies first" - press e at arround 240, and then make deprived dq first, or at least, for the two of you to dq at the same time.
Use the arms here! You want to 'balance' on Deprived outside of the ring, make me land first by manipulating micho into a postion which puts a small, but correct ammount of force at me and slightly pulls his body upwards. Use of the elbows can be very helpful in manupliation of people...
"draw of ladies first" - Somethign I cooked up in about a min, it could be perfected into a real win instead of a draw, I think at least. This is kinda cheating a test which you were supposed to do though xd
First page of this guide
http://forum.toribash.com/showpost.p...98&postcount=1
Next section, covers evasion, for blue-early black belts (1200 qi or so)
http://forum.toribash.com/showpost.p...3&postcount=26
Last edited by Deprived_OLD; Sep 17, 2009 at 01:39 AM.
tl;dr: deprived is spergin'
wow this is a very impressive tutorial. this should become manditory to read before playing your first game of toribash. this should help all the newcomers become much better players faster. very good job.
Nice tutorial. Hardily average, more like advanced. Though, in regards to it becoming a mandatory read - No. People sometimes want to find their own ways about the game, like everyone who got by without this tutorial. I'd say it should be an optional read, like it is now.
collect snots from the nose
