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…
How To Choose The Best Course
There is a question that I get asked on occasion which tends to have a fairly standard answer, “How do you chose which course to go to?” I am asked this because the people that know me are aware that I’m highly selective with the courses I attend. I am carer, meaning I don’t have much time to spend away from home, and also do not have a lot of funds to spare, so I must spend them very carefully. In contrast I know people that go to every single…
You Need to Stand Up Straight
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.…
Why you need to pay attention at courses
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…