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Old 06-01-2011, 05:59 AM   #143
crazyaikidoka
Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 1
Austria
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Re: bad technique vs. resistance

Dear Aikiweb-community,
yeahhh ... that's my first entry. First I want to make an excuse to all English native speakers ... I try my best to transfer my thoughts to more or less understandable English
Resistance is a problem I think everybody faces during Aikido training - sooner or later. I'm practicing Aikido for more than 12 years (not that long thinking of people who are practicing for several decades ...) and giving lessons on a weekly basis for approx. 6 (?) years. In the beginning of my "teaching-carrer" I sometimes had students who wanted to test me and resisted. I tried to show them, that I'm "better" then them, forcing techniques and being frustrated afterwards when they didn't work (and they worked nearly never ... One time I hurt a young student and that was the point when I changed my way of dealing with resistance. Now, for me forcing techniques is same bad habit than resisting. There is a way of "constructive resistance", but in my opinion this can only be performed by Aikidokas who are quite experienced. Teachers might give resistance within a technique to teach students, but it has to have a goal! Resistance just to demonstrate how "bad" somebody's Aikido is, is like having nothing understood in AI. For me it's much more challenging to lead Tori within the technique - WITHOUT resistance and without explanations. AND - at the same time - let tori feel the force and direction of uke's attack. The UKE is the TEACHER (I learnt from my teacher), there are a lot of excellent and a lot of lousy teachers on the tatami ....
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