Interesting story. It seems you got lucky and found a good matching sensei.
When I started aikido, I knew no one and I was a complete stranger. In the first few classes, two things stood out the most to me: being very direct (which I still sometimes hesitate to do but still working on it!) and flowing movements. I stayed on initially because I loved flowing movements, and ikkyo ura was lovely to do at the time (later progressed to loving kokyunages much more). The directness is something I will always have to work on. My sensei has been very accepting and similarly to you has also shown me the more useful aspects in fighting too. My sensei likes hard training, and I sometimes do as well. Similar to you, not injurious, but hard satisfying training. He had a judo background.
I am sometimes concerned about the effort, energy, and time I have put into aikido, but the biggest concern for me is always injuries and I have done my best to be as aware as possible to prevent them as well as dealing with them.
Yes, there are certain times when aikido just doesn't work. It's not sad or upsetting, but I do think it is imperative to know when certain things work, and when certain things don't. Like everything else I have come across, there are limitations somewhere; we just need to find them.
I somewhat partially disagree regarding taiso being the single-most important thing to remain healthy. I believe habits are the most important things to being healthy. I suppose that if taiso practice is a habit, then that'd be imperative to be healthy.
Interesting thoughts regarding losing. Most people don't like to lose. I also don't like to lose, but I do believe that by losing more, we are able to learn more, and as a result, we eventually improve (assuming we keep trying). The most important thing I've done is to just keep trying, and something will eventually come through; sometimes it won't be what I want or what I'd expect, but something will come. This is why I just keep going for practice; there are many times when I don't "feel like going" but I go anyways. I vaguely remembered Michael Jordan saying what you summarized.
Competing against yourself is a common theme I've seen in non-American shows and movies. It is a good motivational tool for sure. For me, this by itself isn't enough.
You are right regarding the poison apple when training for social reinforcement. I used to have a really great friend to practice regularly together with and for extra "training". When he got too busy and left when "life gets in the way" a few years ago, I was really deeply saddened, and still am. I almost wanted to quit afterwards (I still think about it), but I still wanted to practice flowing movements so I stuck around. So yes, it's not great to solely depend on others, but it's also not great to solely depend on myself entirely either. I need both to make it through.
Social reinforcement can work against me too, because I have been deeply hurt by someone I have considered a friend. It's really sad, but I am willing to stick around and continue living to see how it progresses.
Quote:
Jon Reading wrote:
Training your body to move in unison is both athletic and proper body movement and that is why I say that taiso is aikido. Someday, you won't care how you grip someone's hand because when you move with your whole body it won't matter. So we learn our grips while we train for that moment. This is the concept of using form until you don't need form.
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These are super interesting bold statements and I believe to be true, but it took a long time to realize the results! I had the experience of having possibly the strongest man I ever encountered with the strongest grip to try and hold me down; do some aikido, and I was just as shocked as he was that I could still move to eventually lead into a technique.
I never thought of whole body movement in unison as an athletic endeavour. We might be moving away from the traditional definition of "athletics", and I think this is mainly an artificial limitation of words, meaning of words, and language.
To me, pain and discomfort are signals from the body telling you something is wrong and needs immediate attention. You ask the right question, why? It could be anything(s) and should be addressed when what the origins are. Everyone chooses to deal with it differently: fix it, ignore it, or let someone else deal with it. Like you, I really strongly prefer to fix it. Thank goodness for medicine, medical care, and technology to help with that.
Athletics is important, it is great to keep as a habit, and for improving health. For me, I have chosen aikido as one way to keep some athletic abilities as a habit, and hopefully for improving health too despite the relatively high amount of time, energy and effort costs!