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Old 01-04-2012, 03:45 AM   #13
Alberto_Italiano
Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 296
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Re: do a technique or flow into one?

My humble personal understanding of it - without any claim whatsoever to any final interpretation.

Techniques should flow out of you like water from a tap.

Whatever situation faces you, and whatever position you find yourself when facing that given situation, not only you should have already a formal techinque suitable to be placed in that specific case, but more significantly your training ought to be so complete and so tough, that the techiniques comes out of yourself by itself, without any thought about it.

It should happen so simply because the type of physical connection you got confronted with is so engrained with a related response or counter-movement that the technique is not applied but, rather, it just "happens" - it flows out of you like water from a spring. You don't think about it - it occurs, like a lightening in the sky.

In this regard the type of training you mention, namely that of trying one given technique and stopping as soon as it fails (your mistakes, or whatever reason) is actually the wrong way to train - forgive me for being so opinionated about this, for I know this is the prevalent kind of training. Yet, in my perception, any pupil who fails a techinque that is being taught, should immediately attempt (and be openly encouraged to attempt) something else whatever (caveat: that is aikido... not, say, biting uke's nose or punch him in his teeth) - and this exactly in order to achieve that ripeness of the internal principle accordingly to which you don't place a technique insofar as it is prescribed, but insofar as it is the one that spontaneously comes out from you.

safety measures must still apply, for safety must be your #1 concern.
Yet, when you fail, you should not stay there as we often do like frustrated puppies, but get used to attempt a second technique - in this latter case, the one that flows spontaneously out of you.

You may fail at both, true: but at least you get used that when in a real attack something fails, you may have no option to give it a second rehearsal and you must not stay there gaping at your opponent wondering what to do now - in a real situation, that's precisely the instant you may get maimed.

Achieving this awareness in combat is in fact, in my humble perception, even more important than achieving formal perfection in any given technical ideogram or scheme.
I don't mean I personally have it. I only mean that any training you do, no matter how, should firstly promote this type of awareness: do something.
Do some hecking something...

Last edited by Alberto_Italiano : 01-04-2012 at 03:48 AM.
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