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Old 01-02-2004, 12:41 PM   #21
Goetz Taubert
Location: Germany
Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 40
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@ Paul,

its a bit problematic in my view to come with this argument where the thread is dealing with advanced ability. So I‘m not stubborn with my questioning.

I can admit freely, thats its not so easy to deal with beginners, but I would deny, that this would be the central challenge for an experienced practitioner or even high ranking aikidoka.

Beginners behaviour evolves out of different reasons/motivations, which do not need to stem from noncooperation only.

Stiffening (mostly open for atemi or not centered, attack stops i most cases)

Evading (loosing attacking spirit and trying to get away)

Self-sacrifice (beeing so smooth that they would allow atemi even to vital points)

Bad motoric skills (bad coordination with danger to injure themselves easily, bad attacking abilities)

Attack-camouflage (changing attack slightly to make a technique impossible; see also evading)

Hestitation (i.e. fear of falling, fear of attacking)

For me this are reasons to be quite carefull with beginners because there are many possibilites for injure. Sometimes this leads to bad technical performance on my side because I become hesitant too. About the self-sacrifice typus I get angry because their „trick" ist to rely totally von my (assumed) friendly reaction.

Aikido is to overcome with these obstacles of unexperience step by step, so to me it's quite natural that ability can‘t be tested best against these criteria. Surely there is a sort of standardization necessary to get the needed repetition, surely there are training partners too willingly following the technique but on a higher and equal techniqual niveau this will stop.

Taking your randori-example it's obvious to me, that most of them have certain regularies which could be interpreted as cooperative (No punches in judo and wrestling, no kicks in boxing).

But I don't think we will get on common ground on this question.
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