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 Make a Proper Entry for Irimi Nage
Irimi nage means ‘entering throw’. Many aikidoka are successful at the second part – throwing, but less so at the entering. What amazes me is the sheer number of aikidoka that don’t actually enter when doing irimi nage. This is one of the greatest technical pitfalls and it is actually very easy to determine why. The majority of aikidoka fail to begin irimi nage with a step deep enough to carry them behind the uke. Proper entry in irimi nage involves being behind the uke. The problem is that nage…