Thread: The Leather Man
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Old 07-31-2007, 11:58 PM   #56
Al Gutierrez
Location: Colorado
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 39
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Re: The Leather Man

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Just to throw in a universal caution. All of these skills are ultimately physical skills that take training. Tohei "is reported to be able to stand in an ordinary stance and.... not be pushed over", too, but that's within limited parameters. A slow-moving 1955 Chevy pickup would run over him. So there are limits to all of these grand-sounding skills and there are levels of ability and so on. Let's keep it real out there, folks.
I've seen a video of Tohei having a pretty hard hard time keeping his center when dealing with an unskilled yet burly American journalist. In the end it wasn't ki or kokyu or even aikido technique, but rather judo technique that helped him to prevail.

I think practically speaking, that thinking in terms of fascia related training is probably just as vague and hard to visualize for most people as thinking of green-glowing magical forces.

But when Tohei talks about keeping weight underside most people can get that much with a little practice - but more importantly, when you tell soemone to keep weight underside it's not difficult to understand what that means even if they're not proficient yet. However, if you tell someone to not use muscle strength but instead to use their fascia tissues like a tensegrital structure to spread out and absorb an incoming force - who really understands what that means before they can actually do it?

In the spirit of "keeping it real", How does keeping weight underside affect the fascia? Do any of you really know?

Or, how does understanding ki in terms of fascia related structure (or forces) help to keep one's weight more completely underside than understanding ki as simply energy, life force, rays of golden light, or good old fashioned green-glowing, magic power?

Tohei is often held up as someone who was on the right track with understanding these skills - at least the baseline. My question is how many aikido instructors who learned from him can demonstrate or exhibit similar skills? In other words, make it real?

A.G.

Last edited by Al Gutierrez : 08-01-2007 at 12:12 AM.
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