{"id":378,"date":"2020-09-10T07:51:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-10T06:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/remoteaikidodojo.com\/?p=378"},"modified":"2021-05-31T07:21:15","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T06:21:15","slug":"with-weapons-training-you-need-to-finish-the-technique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/remoteaikidodojo.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/10\/with-weapons-training-you-need-to-finish-the-technique\/","title":{"rendered":"With Weapons Training You Need To Finish The Technique"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Over the last number of months, as the world has been shut down, there has been an increase in weapons training. As noted in a previous post<\/a> I think this was a missed opportunity but it has revealed something else that was unexpected. The world over aikidoka are performing weapons techniques and kata. Now, more than ever, social media groups are flooded with videos of aikido weapons. Watching these videos it\u2019s almost impossible not to notice a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Failing To Finish<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It seems that when aikidoka are performing weapons kata there is a tendency for us to fail to finish the moves. It\u2019s a surprising thing to be sure, but on reflection perhaps it shouldn\u2019t be. This is a concept that may never have been explained to you before so I\u2019ll try to do it now. If you\u2019ve never been told this don\u2019t worry about it, this is the sort of thing you find out in a weapons school, not an aikido dojo. Pretty sure the concept was first presented to me in a iaido class not an aikido one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s how it works, whether you\u2019re performing suburi, or kata, you are performing a set movement. That movement has several distinct phases. For simplicity let\u2019s keep it to three. There is a start, a middle, and an end. These are pretty obvious distinctions. The start is what you do to get going. The middle is the majority of the technique, and the end is where everything comes to a stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The end is presenting a major problem for us. The primary issue here is that we don\u2019t seem to have one. Technically, we do, otherwise those cuts and thrusts would go on for ever, but they only stop because we run out of middle. They should stop because we have reached the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Subtle Difference<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Imagine you\u2019re driving to a friends house. As you arrive the car runs out of petrol. You\u2019ve ended your journey, and you\u2019ve finished at the right place, but you didn\u2019t end the trip. You got lucky that the fuel ran out there. There was no conscious choice by you to end what was happening. The car just stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same concept applies to our weapons. We\u2019re not choosing to end the technique, it\u2019s happening by default. When you end the technique without an ending, when the middle just peters out, it looks like the first video here. There doesn\u2019t really seem to be anything wrong with that, and this is what a lot of our weapons work looks like. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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