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Let’s consider for a moment what the standard aikido teaching looks like. It’s a fairly uniform thing and I’ve genuinely never seen anything different to this. For the record I’ve trained in at least 8 different countries, over a period exceeding 20 years. I find myself wondering if there is a better way to teach. Every aikido student learns in the same way. The instructor calls a halt to training, everybody lines up in seiza. In really big classes they may gather around in a circle. The instructor then demonstrates…

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There seems to be a strange paradox in the world of aikido. Actually there seem to be many but one in particular that we will focus on here. The specific one I’m thinking of is how long it takes you to get a black belt, and what that actually means. This is a topic that comes up with some regularity on social media. New students generally want to know how long it takes to get a black belt. They’re almost always referring to shodan (1st dan) as well. Very few people…

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One of the most difficult things that aikidoka have to do is maintain their structure. In this post I’m specifically going to focus on the importance of being upright. There are many aspects to having good posture and one of those is simply standing up straight. Many people think they are standing up straight but when you look at them it is quite obvious that their spine is bent and they’re hunching over. This isn’t always our own fault though. Almost everything around is is designed to make us slouch.…

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Last month I attended a course in Holland hosted by Ruud Van Ginkel and the Aikido Centruum. The visiting instructor was 8th Dan Shihan Shimamoto Katsuyuki. This is an annual course that is worth every penny it costs me in airfare (from Scotland), food, hotels, fees, etc. There are certain reasons for that and here’s just one of them.  When you’re at a course you’re there to learn from someone that you will very seldom get to see. This means you have to pay attention at courses. To everything. You could just…

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There is an idea that keeps cropping up in aikido at the moment. I’m not sure how long it’s been rumbling along for, but it seems to have come to the forefront of social media in recent times. The argument runs a bit like this – Aikido training is worthless because it does not include pressure testing. The first thing to address with that statement is what, exactly, is meant by pressure testing. This is where things start to diverge a little. It may not surprise you to learn that…

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A question that I get asked a lot is, ‘How do I find a new dojo?’ On the face of it that seems like a bad question to be asked. It sort of implies that my students can’t stand me and want to go somewhere else. Happily this isn’t the case (as far as I know anyway). It’s actually a natural consequence of running a dojo in a university. Every year the most senior students graduate and, in many cases, leave the country to start a life elsewhere. Inevitably this…

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The Martial, the Philosophical, and the False Division Over the last number of years I have come to realise there is a fundamental, false division amongst aikidoka. It’s an interesting one and very easy to define. On one side there are aikidoka that are convinced that aikido is a martial art. On the other, there are aikidoka convinced it is not a martial art. What intrigues me about this is that they vehemently disagree with each other. For a group of people studying a system of harmony, the depth of…

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There’s a really common idea in aikido that if it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t work. I can understand where this sentiment comes from. If somebody applies a nikkyo lock to you then it’s usually accompanied by pain. That tends to be how it works. The classic one for this though, is yonkyo. People groan when yonkyo practice is announced because it means they’re in for a lesson of pressure point squeezing pain. The catch though, is that yonkyo doesn’t hurt. None of the katame-waza in aikido actually hurt. They can…

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Aikido injury management is a frustrating thing. We all know it because we’ve all been there. Sitting in a Doctor’s office due to some random injury trying to explain to them that aikido is not like judo while they tell us not to train. That would be fine except for one small problem. None of us is going to listen to that advice; because we are martial artists and therefore never show our pain nor listen to Doctors that don’t understand the training. Over the years one of the most…

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For this months topic we’re going to take a look at one of the more advanced concepts of aikido. This is likely to be much more of a style relevant subject though all aikidoka should strive to remain calm. Some styles for instance seem to go out of their way to ignore this subject but almost everyone’s aikido can be improved by taking this idea to heart and applying it to their technique. This idea is that you really shouldn’t disturb the mental processes of your uke. For the purposes of…

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