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Your frame of reference has been changed during the seminar. Next you start working and explore what this new perspective has to offer... For you to progress you must be aware that you very likely have made assumptions in the past that made sense so far, but now may be the time to reconsider them. Problem is off course to know/remember/recognise such an assumption. Seminars/workshops, back to basics, may all help. Play some go with beginners and you may be surprised what they may come up with. You will very likely beat them easily, but still perhaps there is a surprise move/tactic in there that makes you think, what if? |
Re: Experience
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What is it worth if you have trained aikido for 30 years, but your aikido is bad? I interpret that as 30 years experience doing bad aikido. What about 5 years experience in good aikido? Learn 5 years of good aikido, then practice it for 25? Now we are talking. I sometimes find myself getting jealous of my friends who train directly under my instructor or some of the other wonderful instructors I have met through the years. I think "man, I just have a revelation after 2 classes with this guy and that lucky SOB gets to train with him all the time." I think aikido gives us significant latitude to alter our training to fit within our abilities. I think that latitude is sometime abused by those who would be less dedicated but for the expectation of progress to earn their stripes. Of similar abuse is the margination of those with less experience (but possibly greater skill) because they are not so long in the tooth. The learning cycle should continue to advance through phases of learning, practicing, evaluating, and refining technique. The number of years you have trained simply indicates how many opportunities you have had to train, not if you trained or how well you trained. If you tell me you've been training for 20 years, you bet I am going to use that figure to judge if you took advantage of that time or not... And that may tell me more about your training than you think. You cannot hide who you are on the mat. I think it prudent to monitor your intensity to match the physicality your body can safely assume in training. Over the duration of many years that should assume a fluctuation, often in correlation with your life challenges. I will say one thing though (experiencing this myself) - the number of days that you feel like a spry young chick decline over the years, I do not advocate squandering those days. |
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"Some folks have 10 years of experience. But most folks have 1 year of experience 10 times." |
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Then, in the twenties, the training would get more intense. The kihon waza of joint locks, atemi waza, break falls, etc would be introduced. Hopefully, some emphasis on proper relaxation and aiki principles too, but intensity of training would be important. The intensity of the physical training could continue up until about aged 40 as long as it was uninterrupted. After that, it is better to use weapons work to continue to "push the envelope" since that is far less impactive on the body. By the time one hits forty, one has a good twenty to thirty years under ones belt. By that time, teaching becomes an important part of the training and ukemi becomes less important, at least it should be less impactive, otherwise one hits fifty and is completely beat up. Teaching becomes increasingly the focus, although one never stops looking for new information and inspiration. So this, in my opinion would be the ideal. It is, however, not really the way things work. Very few of the kids on a Children's Program will actually continue training as adults. Now, with young men wishing to fight, interest amongst twenty something males in traditional martial arts is at a new low. So the average age amongst Aikido practitioners is rising steadily. This has huge implications for the art. The majority of my new students are already past the age at which they can physically train to their limit without being injured. I simply cannot duplicate the kind of training I went through with my students because they are too old already to do it. Most Aikido folks do not do much weapons work or, if they do it is remedial and does not have the depth that will carry ones advancement forward nor is it technically solid enough that they can "push the envelope" using the weapons as a tool for continuing to advance their understanding as their bodies need to go easier. Aikido is becoming an art that folks do either because they want to avoid the intensity of other martial arts or because they have done other martial arts and now wish to go easy because they are already physically trashed. In either case, the training is adjusted to fit the students and the art becomes something quite different than what it would have been in the ideal model. With the majority of folks being older and / or less inclined towards hard physical training, those rare young, athletic students who could train hard are held back because in most dojos they have very few partners that can train with them. I had a couple of acquaintances leave a dojo because they were perceived as too rough because people were being hurt training with them. The fact was that they were in a dojo full of people who simply couldn't train with any intensity and these guys were trying to train as they had done in their earlier dojos as they had been taught by their previous teachers. They were simply in a dojo in which you couldn't train that way. More and more dojos are like this. So, in terms of experience, years is just one indicator. But it makes a huge difference when you started, how you trained, etc. Twenty years starting at age 10 - 30 is entirely different than 20 years starting at age 30 - 50 (which is becoming more the norm). Folks starting later not only cannot train as physically hard, but they are at a stage in their lives in which they typically cannot train as frequently. Once your career takes off and you have family responsibilities it is rare to see one training every day. Two or three times a week is a serious student. So that student who has twenty years of training but started when he or she was thirty may have half as many hours on the mat as the student who started at twenty and went through a ten year period when he or she trained every day. This is why, when I look around, I don't see many teachers who have any students at all who look to be as good as they are or better. As critical as I am of the teachers themselves, it is also a matter of not having the "material" to work with. The people of my generation who are running dojos with whom I am familiar all spent a period of a decade or two training 5 to 7 days a week, often several hours per day. I have almost no students who can do that. Most of these folks are training three times a week for between 1 1/2 and 2 hours each day. Do the math... half as many days for 30% to 50% fewer hours over twenty years is a huge differential. Does anyone think that any of these dojos will close when their current teachers retire? Of course not... The teacher will hand off the dojo to one of the seniors to carry on, despite the fact that that senior isn't anywhere near that retiring teacher's ability (due to having trained a fraction of the time and with less intensity). There was a fellow up in Canada years ago who had been in his dojo for well over a decade. If you chatted with him, you'd have thought Aikido was the center of his life and that he must be very experienced and skillful. Aikido was almost all he talked about... Except that he actually seldom was actually in class. His attendance was very sporadic. He was one of these folks who always complained of some physical ailment that caused him to miss class this week, the job related event that took priority, etc. We used to joke that he had been pretending to train longer than anyone we knew. This is not unusual. Ask someone how long they have been training, they'll often give you a figure that has nothing to do with how many hours of training or the quality of that training. In their minds they really have been training for fifteen years despite the fact that one of us from my day had the same amount of mat time in four or five years. I know this sounds like the old guy bitching... "In my day..." But I think I am simply reflecting a fact. I look at the teachers here in Seattle, most of whom I know very well, and the vast majority trained as I have stated. Kimberly Richardson, Joanne Veneziano, Pam Cooper and I all trained together under Mary Heiny for years and we trained minimum five days a week plus seminars on the weekend more often than not. Bookman Sensei trained seven days a week in Japan with Chiba Sensei. Chuck Clark and Aaron Clark trained seven days a week, in several arts. I am not directly familiar with how the other teachers trained but I doubt it was different. When I talk to these teachers, virtually all say that they have VERY few students who train as we trained. So, I don't think this is just a matter of the crotchety old guy remembering an idealized age that really didn't exist. Just as with your Go experience, if you lay down a foundation of intensive experience early on, that will stay with you for a long time, even when you might cut back a bit on frequency or intensity. It won't carry you forever, but it allows you to get the most out of any subsequent training. With a good foundation one can keep progressing, albeit more slowly perhaps, with fewer hours of less intensity. But the folks who don't have that never really make up for it. My take on it anyway... |
Re: Experience
I count my experience in the number of break falls I have taken.
Assuming 50 (at a low end) falls per class, I have come up with this number: 62400 Seriously, to me experience is something I can see in the person I'm training with. It's in his eyes, his distance, his timing. Does he focus? Does he reach? How does he walk? How does he react to a blow? These things tell me more than anything about a person. |
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Of course, the myth was that Black Belt meant you were some sort of expert. Many folks set that as a goal for their training... When they accomplished that goal, they moved on to other things. Fourth Dan was always presented as the limit for the amateur practitioner. You might have a guy who had trained for many years but he'd top out at 4th Dan if he wasn't teaching. Ranks above 4th Dan were considered teaching ranks. So you'd actually lose people after all those years because they would drift away when they realized that they'd never go any higher without more commitment and effort. 5th Dan meant you were on the Shihan track. You wouldn't get a 5th Dan if Sensei didn't expect to move you to 6th Dan eventually. 6th Dan was a Shihan and meant you were a professional teacher. Of course all that has changed now. The bar got raised because so many folks were getting 5th and 6th Dan that it simply didn't mean the same thing. So now Shihan is 7th Dan. People will get 5th and 6th Dan just because of time in grade. Since we don't have competition, and one doesn't lose his grading just because his performance degrades in competition, as in Western fencing for instance, people after a certain point in their progression in rank simply plateau and stop trying to get better. They "retire" only in the sense that they no longer work hard enough to get better, and they devote themselves to dispensing whatever knowledge they gad previously acquired. That would be fine if they had been really excellent when they plateaued but more typically, they were simply mediocre. So they teach and don't progress and become the limiting factor in the development of their students. It might have been better for the art and those students if they had "retired" instead. Now if the teaching issue weren't so intertwined with the time in grade and years in the art issue, none of it would matter. It wouldn't matter whether one quit or didn't, whether one was getting better or wasn't. As I said in another thread, if we had a teacher certification such as Menkyo Kaiden in the Koryu or some such that actually had nothing to do with the Dan ranks, and perhaps had re-certification requirements associated with it, then things would be a lot more clear and the training would be better, I believe. But that's not likely to happen. |
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I think it is harder to train aikido for many hours because aikido can only be trained in a dojo with a teacher and other students. I long for spending more time in the dojo than 3 hours a week, but I just can't because of family and job. But in go also, progress slows down considerably when people get involved in family and career. Most strong go players were already very strong in their late teens. Some of them become uchi-deshi. I tried to become uchi-deshi in Japan 20 years ago. I stayed for a year, but I was just was not good enough for my age. And my progress was too slow to catch up. Teachers are usually strong players who enjoy teaching, but teaching is not that prominent in go. You learn mostly by competition and studying. But I can see to the difference between ability and teaching ability. Finding both qualities in one person is rare. I am not a very good go teacher. I know many go players of lower rank who do much better. Physical effects from aging is not much of a problem in go, but aging has a mental effect too. As one ages it takes more and more time to absorb new stuff (like learning a foreign language). That is also a major reason to start young. |
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I can accept that my potential progress in aikido is limited by the age at which I started (though I wish I had started earlier). I still enjoy doing it.:)
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I think it is a mistake to think you can substitute solo training for paired work. There's no question that internal power training will condition your body and ones Aikido will be far more powerful with less effort. But there is far more going on in Aikido than just that. Most of what we do absolutely needs to be done with partners. It is important to remember that, while off the charts skillful at what they do, the IP guys are not actually Aikido guys. One will not be a great Aikido practitioner by following their examples to the exclusion of more traditional Aikido training. I think it is very important for those of us who are embarked on doing alternative training to really try to understand what O-Sensei had in mind as he was creating what later became post war Aikido. Why did the movement get larger? Why did the Kihon Waza become what it did? Why did he not teach the internal power exercises to the post war folks in the way he had in the thirties when it was Daito Ryu? I think that, while trying our level best to improve our understanding of what we now have access to in terms of IP training, Systema, Daito Ryu, aikijutsu, Ushiro Karate, whatever, we always need to come back and look at what makes Aikido, Aikido. Otherwise we risk throwing the baby out with the bath water. |
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I'd agree with George. You need both solo work and partner practice. Of course, what kind of each is still important. :)
And recently I had some preconceptions shattered that touch on this subject. I've yet to really dig into things, but below is a general overview. Ueshiba really didn't spend a lot of time training with Takeda. Shioda, Tomiki, Mochizuki, Shirata really didn't spend a lot of time training with Ueshiba. With Ueshiba, I think Takeda gave him specific things to train. I think Ueshiba did a lot of solo training, but I think he also trained with other people when not training with Takeda. There was the training with the Oomoto followers, for example. Regarding Shioda, Tomiki, etc, I think they were training with Ueshiba at a critical time where Ueshiba was still working things out. So, by that very nature, they were exposed to specific exercises and training methods. And they had each other to train with. But, it is hard to deny that each student spent a lot less time with their teacher than they did training either on their own or with other partners. At some point after learning aiki, it was their responsibility to take it further. And several of Takeda's students were quoted as having said they took aiki further or in a different direction than Takeda. Note the training listed below. Note how there really isn't any lengthy training periods of student-teacher. Even though there were 4-5 training sessions per day, Ueshiba was not always there. He had a busy schedule and was gone quite a bit. We're looking at 10 years at most for students and even then, it wasn't "extensive" training with Ueshiba. I think people would find it surprising just how many days Ueshiba was gone from his main dojo. Now add to that all the students stating that he never really explained. That he only showed things once. And when he talked, it was spiritual things that they didn't understand. Sounds a lot like the training in post war. :) I think the difference between the two was that pre-war, Ueshiba was still working aiki, building aiki, changing his body with aiki and it showed through in certain ways that his students could pick up on. Post-war, he was beyond that point and what he was working on was more completely internal and couldn't be seen. The whole point about experience though is that these martial giants didn't need "extensive" training with a teacher being there all the time. They needed "extensive" training with what they were taught, yes. They needed specific training, yes. Those came from being taught specific solo exercises and partner practice. And at some point, they no longer needed the teacher. Where, then, is the explanation for Modern Aikido? === Ueshiba learning from Takeda: 1915 20 days in March. 10 days in April. 1916 All of February. 10 days in March. 1922 Might as well say from April to September. 5 months. 1931 10 days spanning Mar-Apr. Shioda learning from Ueshiba: 1932-1941 Fom 1941-46 was not training with Ueshiba. Supposedly spent a brief training period (month?) of training with Ueshiba in Iwama sometime after the war. Then started teaching in 1950. Tomiki learning from Ueshiba: 1926-1936 In 1936 he moved to Manchuria. Awarded 8th dan by Ueshiba in 1940. Part of teaching staff at hombu until late 1950s. Mochizuki 1931- few months of training. 1932 - Trained with Ueshiba when Ueshiba travelled to Kyoto. Awarded 2 scrolls by Ueshiba. Spent 8 years in Mongolia. Aiki News Issue 054 Mochizuki Sensei: That same year my brother and some others had built a dojo in the center of town and I guess they were afraid that if I went back up to Tokyo I would die. Anyway, we decided that when I got out of the hospital I would start out slowly by teaching the young people in the town as I recuperated. When word of all this reached Ueshiba Sensei, he, Admiral Takeshita, General Miura, Shun'nosuke Enomoto Sensei, Yasuhiro Konishi Sensei, and others all were kind enough to come down for the dojo opening ceremony. After that, every month, when Ueshiba Sensei went go to teach at the dojo of the Omoto Kyo religion in Kyoto, he would stop in on his way there and on his way back. There were times when he would stay for two or even three days. Anyway he really liked me. Sensei would tend to stay on and not go home so at times (his son) Mr. Kisshomaru would have to come get him; that's how much he liked my place. It was about that time that he gave me the scrolls for the menkyo kaiden (master teacher's license). === Shirata 1933-1939 Aiki News Issue 027 From 1926 until the outbreak of World War II, O-Sensei maintained a heavy teaching schedule centering his activities in Tokyo. His students were primarily military officers and person of high social standing and his teaching services were in constant demand. He was obliged to travel extensively around the country and made almost yearly visits to Manchuria, then under Japanese political control. === Aiki News Issue 033 Saito: In the pre-war period he taught without explanation. Students couldn't ask questions. He only demonstrated throws. === Aiki News 047 Editor: During Ueshiba Sensei's training sessions in what way did he explain the techniques of Aikido? [1933 time frame] Kunigoshi Sensei: No matter what it was that we asked him I think we always got the same answer. Anyway, there wasn't a soul there who could understand any of the things he said. I guess he was talking about spiritual subjects but the meaning of his words was just beyond us. Editor: How many training sessions were there everyday back then? Kunigoshi Sensei: There was the 6:00 am class and another morning practice at about 10:00 am. Then for people who worked in the daytime there were three other periods in the evening. Then the uchideshi could train anytime in between those hours, too. Akazawa Sensei: No, there was nothing like that. He would say, "O.K.", and show a technique, and that's all. He never taught in detail by saying, "Put strength here," or, "Now push on this point." He never used that way of teaching. Akazawa Sensei: O-Sensei never taught exactly how to become really strong or about such things as that. === |
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as far as understand O Sensei's intention for aikido, i don't have that goal. he was a product of another time, another place, another culture. i don't presume to understand him nor do i waste my time to try. i got better things to do with my time. if other folks want to do that, then good for them. |
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David |
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When people talk about the training of Ueshiba's students, they seem to focus on the time they spent training with him, but ignore the time spent training with each other. But does that really match our own experience? Don't *all* of us spend more time training hands-on with our peers than we do with our teachers? And isn't that time valuable, too? I would guess that the uchi-deshi learned a *ton* from each other, and that part of their excellence was due not to Ueshiba, but to their peer group. Katherine |
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I began with aikido with almost 47 and I used to think what a pity not have known before about aikido, so that I would begin before. But now I know it was just the time, before my children were to young and more things. Everything comes at the right time in your life:), |
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