Walter Martindale

Yeah, I get that. At training we need to keep our partners healthy while we train to be very good at Aikido.

Kawahara sensei, late shihan for Canada used to tell stories about how even the best dojo sensei weren't "good enough" to use aikido for real out in the world - telling stories about sensei or others who'd get robbed and/or killed in incidents where - had they been able to actually "do" the aikido they'd been teaching, they'd still be alive.

The training - if we/you treat aikido as if it's a martial art - has to have some connection to whatever reality is, or it's "exercise with pajamas and baggy black pants".

We had an Aussie fellow teaching at the dojo I used to visit in Christchurch - he'd beat the crap out of uke in knife defenses (without actually damaging uke - pain yes, damage no) - a little bit apologetically, but he'd close it off by saying, "Yeah, it hurts and I'm a bit rough on him but he did attack me with a knife." Kawahara was delighted when people were thrown around with great vigour but without injury. Masuda would say "protect uke" - somewhere in there is a balance, because (I've said this before) we need people for practice, but we need to practice stuff that is potentially very dangerous. Izumi, in the brief time I was training with him, would teach us stuff that was off the curriculum, but that he said had kept him alive (and showed me the scars on his forearms from practical experiences).

So to my mind, if we're doing this as a "martial art" we need to ensure that we cover as many bases as we can, and in the end, do what we can to avoid ever having to use it outside of the dojo. My own situation is that I'm slow, old, and limping on both legs for various reasons, and hoping to get back to practicing at some stage.

Am I good at nikyo? Not as good as I'd like to be, better than I used to be. Does it cause pain? Sometimes - more with beginners even when I'm being gentle - less with more experienced people even though they're moving quite dynamically.
Cheers,
W