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Old 01-20-2012, 03:57 PM   #29
Maarten De Queecker
Dojo: Aikikai Gent, Brugse Aikido Vereniging
Location: Bruges
Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 139
Belgium
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Re: "The goal is not to throw"

Quote:
Dan Harden wrote: View Post
Interesting
  • I have never once seen a judo guy voluntarily over extend and leave his other hand behind and half launch himself at someone. Everyone I have met had to be thrown.
  • Ueshiba went to the Kodokan in his old age, post war, fully developed Aikido days and he had to throw people.
  • He built his reputation on uncooperative non-participating opponents during the post war years who had to be thrown.
  • Shirata, Shioda, Tomiki, Mochizuki, and many many others were incredibly damning of it. To the point of saying cooperative aikido was not aikido in the first place.
  • Apparently many in aikido are totally un-impressed by cooperative Aikido.
  • Come to think of it...other than a certain sub-group within aikido that most other people in aikido call dive bunnies... I have never met anyone in aikido who was overly impressed by cooperative training.
  • If someone can't throw a non co-operative person intent on keeping his center or effectively stop a motivated attacker how and why and by what standard should that be considered a budo?
Dan
I'm in this camp. Most aikido seems to consist of a single, generally overextended attack followed by Uke gracefully following Tori's lead instead of doing what an Uke is supposed to be doing: trying to regain his balance in order to attack again and again until he is on the floor. Working like that creates a way more interesting dynamic, in which tori can never be ahead of uke but has to be aware of and respond to uke's every move and improvise accordingly. Trying to regain balance (and thus potentially breaking free of a technique) also allows uke to find holes in a technique which he can then try to avoid when he's Tori. I find being a good uke way more difficult than being a good tori.

Last edited by Maarten De Queecker : 01-20-2012 at 03:59 PM.
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