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Old 04-18-2008, 11:23 AM   #12
charyuop
Dojo: Ponca Aikikai
Location: Ponca City, Oklahoma
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 131
United_States
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Re: improving footwork

After more than one year I still have some footwork problems. Slide, step, switch feet without influencing Uke, Irimi, Tenkan....
the basic movements are a few, but combining them gets you infinite combinations.

You are new, some discomfort with footwork is more than normal. I have seen it on me and my dojo mates this happening over and over. Take a step and then you get stuck for the next movement. Can't figure out what is wrong and why your feet don't answer the way you expect. Try to look for many different reasons, physics come into play...and maybe the simple reason is that you took a step and the back foot is 3 miles behind you coz you didn't geather it. Or else your Sensei sees you are doing something wrong and getting stuck. He tries to help you and tells you to move forward the right foot...right? What is right? Personally for the first month I moved the wrong foot for 500% of the times, felt a complete idiot.

Truth is you are not learning Aikido now. You are re-learning how to move. You are putting your brain literally in a "tilt" situation. Your brain has years of muscle memory of experience to count on. You need to move, the body knows how to do it. But when you tell your brain stop, what you have been doing so far is wrong, now do it this way, you create a little short circuit...in addition those information don't come from you, but from an outside source and that needs more processing from the brain.

As someone said above, give time to time and you will get there. Some more slowly, like me hee hee, some faster, but you need to give time to yourself to adapt to this new situation.

Just my 2 cents.
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