Tim Ruijs

Interesting replies

Over the past years I have trained in styles of Tamura Sensei and Suganuma Sensei, but foremost Tamura and one of his students Alain Peyrache is now my teacher The difference between Tamura and Suganuma is quite big, it appears (on seminars and their approach of teaching).
One might observe Suganuma has bigger movements and mainly much more displacements than Tamura. (Same goes for Kanetsuka Sensei and Fujitsa Sensei.) Both work equally well, on the surface. But martially spoken Suganuma Sensei moves around too much. Everything can be done with less displacement, less movement (i.e. more effectively).
Thing is: Suganuma Sensei has less interest in that direction, so his style/teaching is different. Better? Depends on you, what you look for.

He who has trained well can certainly judge the level of understanding of Aikido by looking at a technique. Off course he judges with his developed frame of reference and may approve or disapprove accordingly.

For me when aite(attacker) is stationary and tori(defender) moves around this indicates bad understanding of taking the center. Tori only adapts to meet the speed of aite and remains the center of movement and aite moves around like a satellite.
Like my teacher says: when I am in the center you can run around like Carl Lewis, but I will be faster, always.

babbled enough...sorry....