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If I had sufficient skill, here's how I would teach aikido. All comments are welcome.
Stage 1: Ki and kokyu ryoku
Goal: Develop and condition internal body skills
Means: aiki taiso and breathing exercises
Explanantion: Think Mike Sigman, Dan Harden, Rob John, Akuzawa.
Stage 2: Applying internal body skills
Goal: Applying the skills of Stage 1
Means: ki tests
Explanantion: Stuff like grounding a push, push/pull someone with the rowing exercise, tenkan from a wrist grab, etc.
Stage 3: Aikido kata
Goal: Learning the martial/aikido principles inherent in Stage 2
Means: Basic aikido curriculum
Explanantion:
This is not about techniques! Aihanmi katate dori irimi nage is not a technique. The katate dori is the starting position. The irimi nage is a throwing principle: unbalance partner to the rear and cut him down. Ironically, if you fail to unbalance your partner at first contact (as learned in the Stage 2) there is little use for the actual irimi nage...
Stage 4: Aikido waza
Goal: Learning the applications of the principles/ideas
Means: More dynamic and free practice of the basic aikido curriculum
Explanantion:
Use your understanding of the principles of Stage 3 to create techniques in a more dynamic environment. Irimi nage may not look like the standard irimi nage, but the principle needs to be present. This Stage still uses the uke-tori type of interaction.
Stage 5: Randori
Goal: Learning how to use aikido waza in a dynamic, alive, resisting envir
I for one am not being an advocate for MMA. It's just that Ueshiba was...in spades. Weird huh? Since I chose it.
That really isn't what I would focus on were I in Aikido and didn't have internal skills. In many ways you're just adding even more techniques to do...externally. But everyone decides for themselves.
And yet you advised me to go off and take Judo and BJJ... Odd, that.
"The Humanity of men and women is inversely proportional to their Numbers. A Crowd is no more human than an Avalanche or a Whirlwind. A rabble of men and women stands lower in the scale of moral and intellectual being than a herd of Swine or of Jackals."
Another wikipedia quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi
However, Gandhi was aware that this level of nonviolence required incredible faith and courage, which he realized not everyone possessed. He therefore advised that everyone need not keep to nonviolence, especially if it was used as a cover for cowardice:
"Gandhi guarded against attracting to his satyagraha movement those who feared to take up arms or felt themselves incapable of resistance. 'I do believe,' he wrote, 'that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.'"[18]
"At every meeting I repeated the warning that unless they felt that in non-violence they had come into possession of a force infinitely superior to the one they had and in the use of which they were adept, they should have nothing to do with non-violence and resume the arms they possessed before. It must never be said of the Khudai Khidmatgars that once so brave, they had become or been made cowards under Badshah Khan's influence. Their bravery consisted not in being good marksmen but in defying death and being ever ready to bare their breasts to the bullets."[19]
"I must not flame. Flaming is the conversation-killer. Flaming is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my frustration. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the flames have gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
05-08-2007 04:02 PM 
