View Single Post
Old 01-04-2012, 07:42 AM   #16
Alberto_Italiano
Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 296
Offline
Re: do a technique or flow into one?

Quote:
Hugh Beyer wrote: View Post
Not only that, but it assumes you can throw a decent left hook. The trouble with Alberto's approach is that it assumes anything that flows out of you naturally is any good when you're a beginner. It's not. The beginner's first task is to learn to move in ways you find profoundly unnatural, because you've never moved that way before. That's why kata exists.

Once you've made the previously-unnatural movement patterns natural, then maybe you can get creative with them.
I invariably find somebody who disagrees with me lol but i am fine with that, it may have to do with two things:
1) i am a very bad aikidoka
2) i am a bit unconventional and creative in my points of view, so i can seem what i am not, namely a bit challenging.

My bet is that both apply.

However, I see no contradiction and both positions, in my own perception, are true.

You need obviously to attain mastery in one technique first, so you focus on that technique until a decent level of proficiency is attained. I perfectly understand this, so I don't contend it.
What I suggest, however, is that if you want to start seeing your techiniques flow out of your hands, you must train in a way that is consistent with that goal.

Such a way may be to let the pupil (even encourage) to place something else if what he was prescribed to place failed.
It is paramount, indeed paramount, in order to build up any really combat savvy psychology, that the trainee never gets ingrained into the habit of staring at his/her adversary as a frustrated puppy if his/her technique fails.

I found the more common way of training we use in dojos a bit too starched. Do this, you fail, stop start over. In my humble opinion, this is wrong because it does not educate to combat, and I feel that education to combat should be as early as possibile in Martial Arts.

A way to accommodate both positions could be: do this techinique, and if you fail keep doing it in a flux, in a permanent motion, trying to reposition yourself instantly - do not stop everything and say: now let's start this over. No, that's not good.
Your uke is making things difficult for you, keep repositioning, keep trying - make me see at least 3 or 4 consecutive tries. Make me see... the flux.

The boxing jargon that has been brought in however is a metaphor that is not really appropriated, but this is in the nature of any metaphor so no one is to "blame" for this.
In boxing, in fact, you never train to learn one blow at a time.

You will never find in a boxing gym guys throwing uniquely hooks until their hook is "good", or uniquely uppercuts until their uppercut is smashing and penetrating enough. Rather, you always see them training with combinations of blows (say jab jab, right, left uppercut, right, left hook right hook, now hurry step away - that's a good combination by the way).
Besides, since unlike aikido boxing includes competitions, the training on the ring is never accomplished focusing on one type of hit only. Boxing wants you to be "multitasking" nearly since instant one.
It's a different schooling - which has not to be the Aikido schooling, I am not advocating this.

However the pupil that, upon failure, stops and looks for mummy to tell him what to do now, should be encouraged never to behave so. Mummy will intervene when mummy sees that fit. Until then, keep fighting. You just learn so much just as much as you err.

I like it that way. I'm not expecting everybody to feel the same way anyway.

Last edited by Alberto_Italiano : 01-04-2012 at 07:46 AM.
  Reply With Quote