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Old 04-01-2007, 04:12 PM   #13
paw
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 768
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Re: Aikido, Weight Lifting & Flexibility

Quote:
One of our dōjō family is a very accomplished bodybuilder. He's incredibly strong, but his weightlifting makes it very hard to do Aiki.
I would expect that a bodybuilder would have a hard time with aikido --- to me, it would unusual if they didn't. Of course a bodybuilder would have trouble, since bodybuilding's most common training methodologies and practices are all about muscle isolation, rather than using the body as a single unit.

And...now a rant. I have a pet peeve with the use of "weightlifter". I sincerely doubt that people have trained or do train aikido with a weightlifter --- that is to say someone who competes in weightlifting (clean & jerk, snatch --- Olympic weightlifting). Weightlifters are phenomial athletes; matching gymnasts in flexibility and sprinters in speed in addition to being frighteningly strong.

I suspect when people say "weightlifter" they are referring to someone who weight trains, and frankly, that could mean anything at all.

Regards,

Paul
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