canoe seems doomed
to hit a midstream boulder:
current-swept offline.
Riverbend [Haiku]
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Category Archives: Movement
Mid-stream Tree [Senryū]
Tree that sits mid-stream
is not your average tree.
Stillness amid flow?
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Summer Lake [Haiku]
invisible bugs
ripple the lake surface;
from here, it’s mirror.
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PROMPT: Fitness Routine
More fitness, less routine. Develop a habit for movement, a love of it, and nature will take its course. Don’t leap into punishing routines, start easy, listen your body, and you’ll get to that point incrementally — but it won’t feel like punishment.
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Wind Snitch [Free Verse]
The straight-stemmed turbines
are tattletales,
telling all about the stealthy
thief sneaking overhead.
With no clouds in the sky,
the wind could slip
out over the treetops,
and no one would know.
But the turbines turn,
slow as Taiji titans,
letting no movement
go untaxed.
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Dancing Dragon [Lyric Poem]
A dancing dragon winds
through streets of Chinatown.
Head pivots, nods, and turns
as it looks all around.
I hope its golden eye
will not catch sight of me
because its big, curved fangs
do not look so friendly.
You may say its paper,
and those teeth can't do harm,
but there's life in its moves
that's cause of my alarm.
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BOOK: “Scientific Jiu-jitsu” by Will Weisser
Scientific Jiu-Jitsu: A Unified Theory of Grappling by Will WeisserMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher Site – YMAA Publication Center
Release date: June 2, 2026
This book outlines principles of positioning, alignment, and movement used to gain advantage while grappling. It is not a technique-centric book but rather is a concept-centric one. Weisser does for Brazilian Jiu-jitsu what Jiichi Watanabe and Lindy Avakian did for Judo with their book alternatively titled The Secrets of Judo or The Art and Science of Judo. Watanabe and Avakian focused more on both technique and elementary physics than does Weisser, but there is common ground in ideas of what positions make a body strong and what movements bring vulnerability. The biggest area of divergence between Watanabe’s book and Weisser’s is simply the difference between Judo and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Watanabe and Avakian direct the vast majority of their attention to how one gets the opponent to the ground and relatively little on what to do when one gets there, and Weisser’s book is the other way around — i.e. primarily assuming at least one person is already on the ground.
Weisser’s book does assume that the reader has a background in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, using terms specific to that system without necessarily providing elaboration. I say this just to point it out as (to be fair) I realized that I would have thought nothing of it if it used Japanese Jujutsu / Judo terminology in the same way. (I did have to go to Google at one point to elucidate what turned out to be a Dragonball-Z reference that went right over my head.)
Weisser’s book uses a combination of graphics, including photographs. I found it easier to see the linkage between what the author was describing in the text and what was in the photos in some cases than in others. Often, there was a single photo catching one static situation, and if the grapplers were closely entangled (as grapplers are want to be,) it was not so easy to see — even with different colored uniforms. [Note: I should point out that I was reading an ARC galley, and so that may all be sorted in the final formatting.]
As one who knows little of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, but with some experience with other grappling systems, I found this book readable and thought-provoking. The statement of ideas is clear, and I’d recommend it for grapplers looking to engage in thinking about first principles of grappling.
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Baby Monkey Wisdom [Kyōka]
the fixed boulder
makes great shelter;
rolling boulders
make monkey paste:
how do baby monkeys know?
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PROMPT: Leisure Time
Nothing that involves wearing a leisure suit, or a suit of any kind. Except, perhaps, a swimsuit or my birthday suit, or playing a suit in a game of cards… What were we talking about?
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PROMPT: Differently
Everything except fully autonomic bodily functions could be done differently. That’s the nature of human creativity.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 