The Bad Habits Thread
 

Hi,

I am just curious as to what you consider bad habits in Aikido practice and training.

cheers,

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Missing class by choice and not necessity.

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Bowing without intention.
Forgetting the secondary hand.
Losing ki extension.
Getting caught up with doing a technique.
Tension.

Loads, but those are what affects me more often than not.

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Hello,

the bad habits are manifold.

1) Courtesy/ Behaviour:
- come too often too late
- wisecracking too often and too much
- listening only superficially to explanations from others and continuing to repeat your old errors
- impatience and exacerbation when a technique doesn't work
- ignoring newbies and wishing only to train with advanced grades
- intentionally blocking the partner's techniques in order to show him how inferior he is

2) Technical:
- leaning forward and losing balance
- bending arms and breaking the direction of the movement
- interrupting a movement thinking "it doesn't work"
- trying to compensate failure with force
- anticipating a technique or a fall
- as Abasan said, using only one hand and letting the other hang down limply
- tensing up during a technique
- accelerating the technique when coming to the final
- making lots of small steps instead of clear and precise Tai Sabaki
- unprecise, unfocussed and inefficient attacks

These are (with exception of the two last under "behaviour"!!!) the bad habits I am trying in vain to get rid off; there are certainly millions of others....

And I found that being able to identify your own deficiencies is not always the first step to improvement; I observe that there are lots of bad habits I perfectly know but am unable to prevent. But maybe that comes with time?

Best regards,

Eva

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Doing a technique in "autopilot mode" without paying full attention and without full awareness to what's going on between partners.

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

flirting with the girls rather than practice aikido with them :D

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Hikitsuchi sensei says never, ever look at partner. He considers it "not good"

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

I learned something from watching Osawa sensei's shomenuchi ikkyo videos.

Once the ikkyo is performed, I have this habit for the wrist controlling hand that I grab the wrist from underneath. This probably happens because its an automatic movement for me. This is wrong as Osawa sensei points out. The wrist controlling hand should grab the top of wrist not bottom, regardless if its omote or ura. Hmmm, very fine detail but I guess very important....new things to learn everyday....I can't wait to apply it in practice.

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Practicing with ukes that don't make you realize how a _brutal_ aggression may look like and feel, thus generating the false confidence that your techniques work.

Ending up in a real fight with a relatively competent opponent and realizing only then that your iriminage does plain _nothing_ because you're used to do it on ukes that follow your movements, is the worst thing that may happen to you.

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

really? what if your partner is a super model or from the secret society of victoria, not that i know of any super model who takes up aikido, but what if? :D

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Does it count that I've seen model-esque women cause men to smack into inanimate objects? I swear it was from well-cultivated ki! Talk about your no-touch otoshi! :D

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Oh no, I have to make a confession. I contributed to the Ki Exercises thread, because I have used a few when teaching at the local Y years ago. However, the true story is the example I used back then, was not as in Phi and Matt's posts, supermodels, but Raquel Welch. In the Ki thread, I just used some vague idea of something the students wanted, like dinner, I'll have to look it up. but at least I just confessed in this thread.

It's the exercise where you ask the student to walk to the other end of the mat, thinking they forgot to turn off the stove back home or something like that. Someone pulls on your shoulder and you fall backwards, because that's where your mind is. And if you think Raquel Welch is at the other end of the mat, the person pulling on your shoulder doesn't matter, you are going to keep walking forward because that is where your mind is going....

(Hope the women aren't mad at me for confessing to using that example, but that's the way the exercise was originally taught to me, by an American male instructor, and my students were guys also...)

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

In fairness to Mario and the others, I have to mention that especially in ura, tenkan turns I had to tell my students not to look at their partner, but to look in the direction they themselves were turning, otherwise they were blocking their own movement.

There is a quote by O Sensei, I believe, something like do not look at the enemy's sword or you will be slain by his sword, do not look into his eyes .... does anyone remember that quote? I think it may have meant that you will feel trapped by them....

Or if you have Hikitsuchi Sensei's explanation , maybe you could share it with us...

Aside from the tenkan turn, I found that people from some of the striking arts tended to look directly at their partner, but I would tell them I had heard it wasn't a good idea in the case of Aikido, just to be aware of uke without looking directly at him or her...

Help! Someone please state this better than I!

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Doubting the reasons why you committed to practice Aikido honestly and unconditionally in the first place.

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

too grabby
not irimi while moving backward
not irimi while tenkan
all shoulders and arms and no hips and legs

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

I have a bad habit of being in semi-seiza when I should be in hantachi.

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

http://www.aikidosantacruz.org/osenseis.html

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Regarding not looking directly into partner. It's not only Hikitsuchi sensei that I've gotten that idea. I also got that from my Jujitsu teacher awhile back and many teachers others as well. He says there's always a tendency to look at the eyes, face, head, or shoulders, hands when sensing danger and getting into the defensive stance.

The principle IMHO is really to not focus on just a specific part of the body but looking "expansively" as Endo-sensei put's it, and the totality of the person as well as the surroundings. I have the habit of let's say just focussing on the part that's attacking or being attacked. I've applied this and I think it's made a difference on how I move and do my techniques.

Let's say for example, a katatetori technique. I have this weakness of just focussing on attacking uke's hand/arm that is the one grabbing me. Or a tsuki (with knife). We tend to focus on the knife.

Another pretty obvious weakness I have that I've just learnt recently was that I'm always concerned about let's say uke's grabbing hand. For example, any hand/shoulder grab techniques. I'm always worried about uke's hand/s that grabs. If you think about it, this is the least threatening part, it's just grabbing, it's locked and cant do much damage. What's pointed out to me was you need to worry about the other free parts of the body which are more threatening so why are you attacking the part that's least threatening and/or most difficult to put a technique on IMO ( the head for example is easier to attack rather than the grabbing hand)? Pretty obvious but I didn't realize this until somebody pointed it out to me.

Regarding Hikitsuchi sensei's habit of not looking, I got very curious and tried an experiment on some of the white belts to see how they would react. For some reason I can't explain, I can do the no touch throws sometimes. It doesn't work all the time, but the reaction is somewhat the same as what I saw in the video. Pretty mysterious to me.

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Well, I wouldn't follow Hikitsuchi sensei in this case and follow Rudolph Valentino's rules :D

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

one bad habit that I've had and am (have been) working on breaking is to turn the forward knee inward when stepping forward to finish iriminage.

I believe that years of doing that contributed to my having my meniscus operated on a couple of years ago

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

I have a habit of always looking around the dojo while taisho..

I also have a habit of having my feet adjacent after irimi to my partner's side.. I was recently told that it's a bad habit. is it true?

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Probably...but really, that depends entirely on where your sensei says they should be - things vary from dojo to dojo, technique to technique.

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Not practicing and finding excuses about it!

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Agreed. But you can always flirt them afterwards, right? HA HA!:)

Re: The Bad Habits Thread
 

Well, generally I agree and lean towards the principle that "it depends" [on your dojo], but if this is theoretically a specific art, expressions may vary widely, but principles generally do not.

Bad habits, IMO, are things that embody behaviors that violate good principles. Of course, there are many who disagree and what the principles are... ikkyo, for example, is not a principle.

Best,