Quote:
Peter Rehse wrote:
Final point - is I never felt that the Yoshinkan people I trained with were locked into their stance and were never as robotic as legend would have it. Good strong aikido.
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I say then, that those people you trained with were not doing Yoshinkan. They are always in that stance. Always. A post above said the stance was to teach beginners. Well, they are still doing it at 3rd Dan and above. Once you get out of Japan, people have more varied experience and they include stuff that just ain't Yoshinkan. Yoshinkan is defined by that stance and the kind of robotic kata they do. But that is in fact, a strong point. I really enjoyed my time doing it - I learned a lot about every technique in so much pedantic detail. I have never learned so much in any other place. But I prefer the freedom Aikikai allows me. To me, if it is not regimented, it is not Yoshinkan. Senior practitioners do loosen up, but they will still do their basics over and over, and will loosen up within the confines of those basic elements. It is the essence of Yoshinkan. The only person I saw within Yoshinkan who was free of this system was Gozo Shioda himself. He did whatever he wanted as he often did demos, but even then, he would produce many standard 'shapes'.