Ai Uchi is one of the drills Professor King shared with us during the seminar today.  It means “mutual kill“.  One version of the drill goes like this: two students salute in and prepare themselves mentally for an exchange.  Once they are both ready, one student (doesn’t matter which one) throws a technique and the other immediately follows suit.  The attitude both students are supposed to have is one of not caring about what happens to them but rather thinking about what they are going to do to their partner.  Often, this attitude gets summarized as: “Today is a good day to die.”

The purpose of the drill is to build courage.  With courage the door to training competency is open.  The courageous student can keep their eyes open, can face the incoming threat and no longer has to charge directly into the jaws of death (though they can still do that if they choose) but can instead think thoughts like “Today is a good day to use the least amount of force possible in the face of the given threat, avoid injury and stay out of jail.”