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Old 06-04-2005, 07:18 AM   #9
"Lucky Luke"
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Anonymous User
Freaky! Re: Beginners with delusions of grandeur...

Well this has turned into an interesting thread. In my initial post I apparently gave the impresssion that I was having trouble with this newbie spinning out of shihonage.

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Perhaps if you led him off balance more before you tried to go under the arm, he wouldn't be able to twist?

When I find my newbie partners can twist out it's not only because I allow them the room, but because I didn't take their balance before I entered, in deference to their newbie status. Easy correction.
Good advice, but I wasn't having any problem controlling the technique or leading uke. In fact the technique is irrelevant to the issue. My real issue is newbies stopping to lecture me on my technique with incorrect advice. Ann Marie best described this situation:

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You see each time I explained or instructed this particular newbie (but not a martial art newbie) he consistently CORRECTED what I told him. He would stop me and point to another couple and tell me that was how we were supposed to do it. THAT is incredibly disrespectful. He did THAT 10 times while we were partnered together. Unfortunately, no sharing could happened in this particular situation as each time I told him something he IGNORED IT and then TOLD ME TO DO SOMETHING ELSE. I would just try to train then he'd interrupt my training.
This is precisely the frustration I was experiencing. Some of the sugggestions I've seen include:

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The best explanation it isn't verbal explanation at all. You must do technique work efficiently without any doubt. Physically. Not let him spin away. Not to hurt him, but technique must be tight, in good control of balance and extention. In one can't do it, you must ask instructor for help.
Yep. Only problem for me is that my full intent shihonage works great on yudansha that can protect themselves with good ukemi. However, doing the same on a two week newbie that doesn't understand ukemi and is extremely stiff can easily lead to injury, at least for me. My compromise is the typical stop and go technique, so that the newbie understand the basic motion of the technique and how to adjust their body correctly when they are taken off balance. My focus is just to get the basics across to the newbie. Dynamic Aikido can come later.

Asking the instructor for help with difficult newbies is the ideal answer. However with 30 plus bodies practicing, sensei is often busy helping others on the other side of the dojo. As I mentioned in my first post, I did not have an opportunity to politely get my instructors attention.

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So yes, if I were training with them, and they were insistant on not following the practice, I'd probably just be throwing (softly as I could manage) and concentrating on what *I* could get out of it.
Yep, that was what I ended up doing. But this particular newbie never got the message and kept lecturing me at every opportunity.
Apparently this newbie did the same thing to my young son on a Katatetori Kotegaishi. My son explained that he was easing up on the kotagaishi as it can be hard on the wrist until you learn how to move. Newbie told him to just go ahead and do it, he could take it. Well, he went down like a sack of potatoes and came up rubbing his wrist. No more lecturing. My son actually experiences this type of newbie attitude all the time. He is a young teen so newbies make the mistake of assuming they know more because they are adults. He just shows them they are wrong and doesn't worry about them getting hurt. His attitude is, if you insist on taking punishment he is willing to oblige, here is the mat. I now understand where he is coming from, and I can see how it stops the now-it-all newbie chit chat, but thats not my style.

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I asked him what his aikido experience was as he was acting like he was ranked as if he really was not an aikido newbie. He said did have any aikido experience. I told him I've been doing this 6 years and asked him to please be quite so I could train. Then we went back to training, but silently this time. No thrasing, no retributional excessive hard throwing. Nothing like that.
Anne Marie, I like this idea the best. "I've trained for beacoup years and your just starting, now shutup and focus on learning instead of teaching." Politely of course.

Now that I've had my copule of beers, I'd love to hear similar experiences from others and how you handled it.
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