Quote:
Jonathan Wong wrote:
He's not my training partner, just a video partner. But, I am really surprised to see you frown on the chaos-- exploring (requires experiencing) that was the whole point, and a common aikido uke would have smothered it with collusion. I was glad to see the forces move our bodies, without us drowning that out. And, as for my history, I have done mostly Iwama-influenced aikido since about 13 years ago. But this isn't that. This is new. I started a new direction 2 years ago. Anyway I am not a good student, so my training hours in 13 years only got me to 3rd kyu. So yeah, I am only BARELY your sempai! ;p
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Jonathan,
Ikeda's doing Aikido in that demonstration and it's totally collusive as any good Aikido practice should be. If uke doesn't collude in giving nage the initial error of an attack within nage's abilities to receive it then neither person can practice Aikido. It's the basic foundation of practice and there's nothing wrong with that as long as no one has delusions about the premise. Since your video uke is untrained his center is disconnected from his own arm, what one of my teachers used to call the ‘dead squirrel' syndrome. All of uke needs to be alive, give very clear power applications, and move integrally to his center in order for nage to achieve any of the easy looking techniques Ikeda does.
Obviously nage needs to move integrally as well. Your arm and hand not being grabbed is another dead squirrel, it's important to use your whole body in every technique. In some of the more dynamic kokyunages you can see O Sensei throw both of his arms up when only one was facing uke. I'm not suggesting you do that, but it exaggerates my point that the whole body must be involved at all times, in fact Internal's preformal structures demands it. Another thing I noticed is that your posture was compromised many times. I don't recommend putting yourself in any positions however transient where you could be pushed over from any direction. To maximize my receptive alignment I rarely tilt my vertical axis in practice. I recommend keeping your head vertical as much as possible. The word resistance is used indiscriminately to mean opposite things here all the time. Uke applies power("resistance") to nage and it's nage's job to receive and throw completely without resistance in respect to nage's 90 degree phase lead over uke. Being aware of the rhythm is important too. A straight forward irimi carries a quick [And One] count where the reception and the throw happen in the same cycle, whereas the extended version usually has a [One, Long And(where uke is running back up and around nage) Two count].
Chaos is antithetical to any type of Aikido. Everything is predetermined, with less room for error in freestyle or real life situations outside the dojo.