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Old 10-28-2010, 09:48 PM   #74
RED
Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 909
United_States
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Re: Is two Days a week enough?

I'm becoming more and more annoyed by this attitude where people want to get as much as they can for as little effort as possible.
I've been talked down to about the "real meaning of tenkan" by 2year student 6th kyu who admittedly train once every few weeks. I'm willing to respect everyone as a practitioner, but you have to be intellectually honest with yourself about what Aikido is in your life.

If you want to be successful in Aikido, or any other en-devour, you need to put your hours in, under the eyes of an instructor. (I'm not keen on the entire "but I study in my livingroom"..Aikido is an apprentice program. I do kata in my living room too, but I don't disrespect the art or my instructors by calling it serious training!)

Would you expect to get your Bachelor's degree while only making 2 out of the 24 classes your instructor teachers?Why should Aikido be any different? When you get an F in class you can't go to your teacher and say "Oh but I was reading the text book at home a WHOLE lot!!" The point is, you didn't make it to class enough to advance. Likewise, don't expect to advance in Aikido when you are absent from class."A" students show up to all their classes on time and complete the course work. Aikido is no different. It requires discipline, dedication and commitment. You have to give up time, money, other activities and some socialization to part-take seriously.

If you expect to get better and learn Aikido you have to sweat some hours on the mat.. a lot of hours!
Aikido like any fine art is an apprentice program to me. Find yourself the highest instruction you can, and commit yourself to studying it.

There is nothing wrong with taking Aikido 1 or 2 hours a week, so long as you don't fool yourself into thinking you are serious. If your life does not permit practice more than 1 or 2 days, reorganize your life. A serious person schedules their life around their training. A weekend warrior schedules their training around their life.

I've sacrificed a lot of time, money, jobs, and socialization to commit to a self-imposed minimum training requirement. I've put off a few personal goals to guarantee my body is in the condition it needs to be to continue training for now. And on bad days, I still call myself a hobbyist, because I have too much respect for my Shihan to ever be diluted enough to consider myself as serious as them.
When I say this to people I hear people complain "Well, not everyone is as lucky as you to just be able to not be able to worry about other obligations!!" The fact is I do worry about obligations, I just like Aikido a hell of a lot more.

Aikido is about love for me, being in love.
When people find their first love, they blow off family members, friends sometimes, they sneak in and out windows, sometimes skip school to meet them, just to get to them, they are day dreaming about them at work and counting the seconds in between dates. Being committed isn't hard when you are in love.

How about doing Aikido for Aikido's sake? Go to the dojo because there's no where else you rather be, nothing else you rather do. If you found out you had 24 hours to live, would you be training? Are you in love, or is it just a nice way to spend an evening?

Einstein once said "There is no such thing as Genius, only obsession."
If you wanna do that "unreachable" Shihan quality Aikido, you gotta get a little obsessed. IMHO.

AGAIN: nothing is wrong with you if you train 2 hours a week! So long as you aren't diluted into thinking Aikido is more than a recreation for you. And there is nothing wrong IMO about Aikido being some people's recreational activity.

Last edited by RED : 10-28-2010 at 09:56 PM.

MM
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