View Single Post
Old 11-18-2006, 03:32 PM   #72
Rupert Atkinson
 
Rupert Atkinson's Avatar
Dojo: Wherever I am.
Location: New Zealand
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,013
United Kingdom
Offline
Re: Aikido: The learning of natural movement

From another angle, I have been doing Aikido for over 25 years, and did Judo before that. In 2002, when my kid was about 2, he had a plastic sword and came at me with it while I was practising outside. Of course, I did not want to clobber him with my bokken, but he managed to hit me several times in a random kind of way. Since that moment I realised that my bokken training was useless. As as result of that, I took the bokken patterns to pieces and tried teaching/practising the basic parts with my students in Korea - with the aim of creating something more freestyle or realistic. I have no idea if what I am working with works since there is no ready battlefield nearby to test it, but it has been a lot of fun. The name I have adopted for my new creation is Assault and Battery But it is not really freestyle, rather, an attempt to reach freesyle.

My kid is my teacher!

  Reply With Quote