I had a conversation one day about aiki and aptitude where I stated I thought a lot of the success someone could have with learning aiki depended upon their natural aptitude to understand and learn the particulars required. The person I was talking to thought that it was more a matter of attitude or perseverance and work that made a major difference. IMO, all are important, but if you have two people putting in the same level of effort in training, it will be the one with the better aptitude that will excel over the other. Now if you take someone with great aptitude AND extreme attitude coupled with extreme perseverance, you just might end up with an O Sensei or a Sagawa

Greg