Thread: Is there more?
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Old 11-23-2005, 09:23 PM   #4
Rocky Izumi
Dojo: GUST Aikido Club
Location: Salwa, Kuwait
Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 381
Kuwait
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Re: Is there more?

If you stay in Aikido long enough and learn from enough different Shihan for long enough, you will see that there is a lot of techniques in Aikido that is never seen in seminars. We call them Ura-waza (or behind the woodshed techniques) which are not shown in regular classes. I've even learned a couple while walking some Shihan home from Hombu, right there on the street and practicing them in my head (through my drunken stupor) while waiting for that last train out of Shinjiku. I've been woken up on that concrete bench in that little koen behind Hombu when I missed that last train out of Shinjiku by a Shihan holding me down and saying "Now what do you do?" There are groundwork applications in Aikido. But there is so much to teach and so much to learn at seminars, much more basic and much more important things that the Shihan will leave you to discover these things yourself through your understanding of the basic principles of Aikido. This is, for me, what makes Aikido very different from most other martial arts. You are taught, not techniques, but the principles of Aikido (which apply to all martial arts anyways). From studying and practicing those principles best exemplified by the Kihon waza, you are then left to discover the ways of applying those principles in more complex and more different situations. It is your specific understanding and your specific practice of those basic principles in different applications which makes your Aikido unique and all your own. Thus, by the time you are Sandan, you should have started to develop your own style of Aikido. By the time you are Godan, you should have your own unique style of Aikido.

Rock
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