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Old 02-25-2011, 08:18 AM   #23
chillzATL
Location: ATL
Join Date: Jul 2000
Posts: 847
United_States
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Re: Ikeda's videos, my video, your video. Kuzushi on contact.

Jonathan,

IMO you need to focus on a few things:

1. relax. While you keep your hand/forearm relaxed, most everything is upper body muscle. This is not easy. The muscles WANT to kick in for you. It takes lots of slow, relaxed low pressure conditioning of the joints so that they can handle the pressures being applied to them without big muscles kicking in to help.

2. work on developing a relaxed, connected body. Right now I see you using lots of muscle and leverage to connect your body so that you can connect to uke. Watch Ikeda, he doesn't do it that way. His body is connected in a different way.

I would recommend you attend a seminar with one of the people who often post about them in the non-aikido forum. They can get you on the right path to getting a better understanding of some of the things Ikeda talks about and does and give you exercises to get you started on the items I mentioned above. You could also ask around in the non-aikido forum for people in your area who have met with these people previously and want to get together to work on these things. There are quite a few groups like this around.
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