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Old 09-19-2008, 10:36 PM   #17
rob_liberti
Dojo: Shobu Aikido of Connecticut
Location: East Haven, CT
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 1,402
United_States
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Re: On Talking About Internal Training

Well, in the past, telling me that you have a method of doing aikido that is better than the norm wouldn't get my attention too much because frankly I felt from a bit of experience that did too.

Mike wrote about the jo trick. I know it was a clever way to get people thinking about stuff Osensei could do that his students couldn't, but unfortunately it reinforced the idea that he was more of a Michael Jordan type and that we could never get to THAT degree because we are the normal people.

I didn't read about aiki/internal skills giving people the ability to deliver force without committing weight. I read hints that described in some minimal detail about stability with no bracing. I never read too much detail about rooting. Just that people could do it. I think we all have met IMA types who had some degree of impressive power but couldn't seem to deliver it while moving around that much. You could almost imagine them sort of stuck in a flower pot. Just don't go near that flower pot and you'll be all right. I read ideas about it being the lifeblood of all your movements but there wasn't much description for it other than some talk about walking while someone pushed on your body. Since I never experienced anyone moving around staying so connected super connected - other than some of the better aikido folks as a matter of fact - I just dismissed that idea a bit more than I wish I had. It just seemed like some claim that was likely to be a bit more of an exaggeration and maybe a bit due to a suspected limited experience by the person making the claims.

I also never read about anyone making the basic skills learn-able in a short time like 2-4 or 5 years. Everyone else's paths seemed to be on the 25-30 year path to get to some degree of intermediate. In fact, Mike didn't have any active students at the time I was reading a lot of what he was writing a few years back. So it seemed like it wasn't very available...

This is one of the main reasons why I am writing so much, I just felt that the things that actually got my attention would be a bit more interesting to other aikido people than a lot of the stuff I had read about it in the past.

Rob

Last edited by rob_liberti : 09-19-2008 at 10:39 PM.
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