If You Want Effective Aikido, Uke Must Attack The Nage
There is a fundamental aspect of aikido that is seldom discussed and often ignored. Uke should attack the nage. This is something that rarely happens in aikido. If you look at the countless hours of online footage you’ll realise that most uke do not attack the nage. Intriguingly, Tomiki aikido represents an almost universal departure from this. An uke from the shodokan style definitely attacks the nage. The rest of us though, we have work to do. The Job of Uke There are several important aspects to uke’s job. The…
No Attack In Aikido? The First Principle Says Otherwise
There is an elephant in the room that is so large it isn’t simply a case of nobody talking about it. It’s so big that somehow most people don’t even notice it. At this point, the elephant is the room. It relates to a simple concept that you hear about aikido all the time. Namely, there is no attack in aikido. This has become a fundamental part of the art. There is even a quote from O Sensei about this in the Art of Peace as translated by John Stevens:…
One Thing You’ve Never Seen In An Aikido Dojo
There are many things that you can expect to see in an aikido dojo depending on its focus. You might have training in meditation, break falls, joint locks, weapon classes, and so on. There is one thing though, that is strangely absent from an aikido dojo. You just don’t see it anywhere, not even in the thousands of hours of video footage available online. While many people will tell you aikido is missing several key elements, very few notice this missing aspect. What is missing then? Somewhat surprisingly, it’s aikido.…
Aikido Is 90% Atemi – Revisited
The idea that “aikido is 90% atemi” is a persistent one. There’s even a post on this site suggesting that this is the most misunderstood quote in aikido. In this post, we’re going to revisit it, and consider a new point of view. One that may make it the most accurate aikido quote in existence. The previous blog entry argued that this quote wasn’t referring to atemi as striking. Rather, it was referring to a ‘hitting body’. That’s the ability to hit the opponent with any part of your body…
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…
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…
Stop Judging Old People For Moving Like Old People
Recently, the Aikikai released the 58th All-Japan Aikido Embukai to YouTube. It’s an interesting watch and, in some places, has prompted much criticism from aikidoka. Some have described it as embarrassing, others have been less kind. These criticisms are a little unfair, but they do shine a light on some of the problems with aikido embu in general. If you watch the Embukai a couple of things should become clear immediately. The first is that in some cases the standard of demonstration was lower than you would expect. There are…
To Be The Best You Have To Do The Work
The new student, after a few training sessions, goes over to the instructor and says, “You are so good, how long have you been training?”, or something similar. Another example is, “How long does it take to get a black belt?” These are common questions that crop up almost every time a new student joins a dojo. They’re important questions, but they’re not the real questions. What the student wants to know is how much work they have to do to achieve the same level. So What Is The Answer?…
The Fabulous Fantasy of Internal Power
The internet gives us the ability to find out things that we just didn’t know about before. One of those is the fabulous fantasy of internal power. To be clear, before this goes any further, I’m referring to the no-touch chi/ki/qi blasts that knock people out. I’m sure you’ve seen them because they’re all over the internet. I completely understand why this stuff exists. Somebody sold people the myth of the all powerful martial artist that can defeat armies with a gaze or knockout foes without ever having to see…
How to make your aikido dangerous again
Last month we introduced a new concept. You shouldn’t be claiming aikido is lethal unless you’ve given it some serious thought, and worked out how to do it. The first part of that is actually quite simple and easy to achieve. The second part though, how to actually make your aikido dangerous, requires a bit more consideration, and a fair bit of practice. The techniques of aikido, the ones we see in every session on the mats, are brutal. As aikidoka we have a tendency to focus on the opposite.…