What Makes A Good Training Session? – Part 7
Provide As Much Feedback As Possible Every once in a while the question, “What makes a good sensei?” comes up for discussion. There are many valid answers for this question but this post is going to take a different approach to the standard responses. This month will continue the series looking at what makes a good training session. Since the sensei runs the session, a good training session requires a good sensei. The inference being that if you do these things then you will improve as a sensei. This post…
What Makes A Good Training Session – Part 6
Involve Each Aikidoka In Goal Setting Every once in a while the question, “What makes a good sensei?” comes up for discussion. There are many valid answers for this question but this post is going to take a different approach to the standard responses. This month will continue the series looking at what makes a good training session. Since the sensei runs the session, a good training session requires a good sensei. The inference being that if you do these things then you will improve as a sensei. This post…
When You See Astonishing Aikido
There are moments as an instructor when you look around the dojo and notice that your students are producing some astonishing aikido. I’ve been having rather a lot of these recently, so much so that I wanted to share it here. If you’ve been following this blog for a while you’ll have picked up that I’m not the biggest fan of the traditional teaching method (see here, here, and here). What you may not be aware of is that I decided to do something about that. For the last two…
What Makes A Good Training Session? – Part 5
Include The Behaviours Required For The Stated Outcomes Every once in a while the question, “What makes a good sensei?” comes up for discussion. There are many valid answers for this question but this post is going to take a different approach to the standard responses. This month will continue the series looking at what makes a good training session. Since the sensei runs the session, a good training session requires a good sensei. The inference being that if you do these things then you will improve as a sensei.…
What Makes A Good Training Session? – Part 4
One of the things that makes up a great aikido session is that it includes a lot variety.
What Makes A Good Training Session? – Part 3
Promote Competition Between Friends Every once in a while the question, “What makes a good sensei?” comes up for discussion. There are many valid answers for this question but this post is going to take a different approach to the standard responses. This month continues the series looking at what makes a good training session? Since the sensei runs the session, a good training session requires a good sensei. The inference being that if you do these things then you will improve as a sensei. This post will be considering…
What Makes A Good Training Session? – Part 2
Keep To Time And Keep Them Busy Every once in a while the question, “What makes a good sensei?” comes up for discussion. There are many valid answers for this question but this post is going to take a different approach to the standard responses. This month continues the series looking at what makes a good training session? Since the sensei runs the session, a good training session requires a good sensei. The inference being that if you do these things then you will improve as a sensei. This post…
What Makes A Good Training Session? – Part 1
Planned And Published In Advance Every once in a while the question, “What makes a good sensei?” comes up for discussion. There are, of course, many valid answers for this question. This post is going to take a different approach to the standard responses. This month will kick off a series looking at what makes a good training session. Since the sensei runs the session, a good training session requires a good sensei. The inference being that if you do these things then you will improve as a sensei. This…
A Better Way To Teach The Irimi Entry
People often talk about modernising aikido, but when they do this they tend to refer to adding techniques and removing others. Very few people ever talk about the techniques used to teach aikido. The closest aikidoka come to that is discussing free-style sparring. Some are against it, others just go ahead and do it. This blog post will introduce a new way to teach your students the irimi entry. The Problem At some point in their training every aikidoka will have been told to “go forward”. For a sensei to…
Why it’s important to train with stiff uke
There is something that most aikidoka hate to do. It can’t be avoided but most people do try to get out of it. Training with a stiff uke. A large number of people just do not like to do it. Understanding why is not difficult at all either. In contrast to a flowing uke, training with stiff ukes is never really fun. It’s hard to make them move, techniques don’t flow, everything becomes gummed up and clunky. Training with a stiff uke is the worst. The problem with this view…