SparkErosion

On my first day of Aikido almost a year ago, it was the flopping ukemi (forward rolls) that got me in pain the most, heh. I was afraid to go over my head, stopped mid way and flopped over. It hurt so bad. About 7 months later in a zempo kaiten nage technique, (I was still white belt), I hadn't realized I was going to have to do a forward roll, and as I put my hand out to roll, it was too late, I stopped mid air and landed in my roll straigt, vertically with all the pressure on my shoulder. I had gotten an a/c seperation of the shoulder. Was in a sling and on pain meds for a month. The major pain went away, and after 5 months there still is a bump there. However, doing foward rolls on that shoulder still does hurt a bit sometimes, even though the a/c seperation has healed. I keep wondering why I still have pain there sometimes and if it will ever go away.

Another thing that was hard to get used to was the joint locks. Those hurt so bad at first. I intially didn't know I had to kneel in nikyou, it hurt real bad then they told me to kneel to relief the pressure.

Another thing is respect for students I learned and also in how I saw things. when I first joined, I'd say the first 3 months, everything looked completely different. All the techniques looked different. I was frusterated and a bit upset we did a different variation of a technique each day. (I didn't even know they were the same techniques, or variations of them, they just looked different). I just tested a couple weeks ago for my first colored belt, Rokkyu, yellow belt.

It's amazing how things open up. Suddenly the terminology all makes sense.I understand "ki" better, energy, getting off line, redirecting attacks, dropping your center, unbalancing, distance from nage/proxmition, when to do atemi, etc.

I also am beginning to understand that those techniques are all the same. They all use circular movements. Every technique just seems to redirect the attack where it came. If someone is doing yokomenuchi strike to my head, and I do undo furi choyaku undo, I blend with the movement, becoming part of it, in a circle, instead of fighting it. All of this seems to be the same, small, big, circular movements. None of it is different really. They all use the same controls (nikyo, sankyo,kototeasa, kotegaeshi, etc) Ikkyou, iriminage, kyokyunage, techni nage, koyukdosa, shino nage, all the same techques just expressed differently.

It's amazing how my perceptions changed so much over that time period. At first each class was frusterating, I couldn't do any of the tecnhnique. Now it's alot more fun, I can do ukemi, some breakfalls, have the gross motor skills to do most of the techniques.