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Old 02-18-2008, 08:16 PM   #45
Kevin Leavitt
 
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Location: Olympia, Washington
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Re: Daito Ryu's Aiki

On "green armies":

it is not so much the issue of "poor training of the soldiers", that is the technical training or martial training of them that causes them to not be effective.

It is the institution that fails the soldier, not the fact that they are "green". Sure there are many cases in history when "poorly trained" armies have been defeated.

However most of the time, it is the institutional knowledge/wisdom of the army that fails...also known as Organizational Leadership.

A seasoned army with poor leadership will almost always lose to a poor army with good leadership.

I think Sun Tzu covers some of this in his book right? Know yourself and know your enemy.....

Anyway, how does this relate to Aikido and Fighting.

I think it is possible to train people outside of the experience of fighting and approximate the conditions through appropriate methodology without them actually having to be in a fight.

What is important is the methodology and the institutional
experience/wisdom of the organization, AND that they can effectively transmit that information/knowledge to the person.

So, you can employ a "green army" in combat for the first time, and have them do remarkably well, IF they have been trained properlly AND they have Proper Leadership.

It is not forgetting the lessoned learned in the past.

Our problem many times in Martial Arts is that our various arts, over time, forget the lessons learned, and we simply end of doing "Dead Kata".

Know yourself and Know your enemy!

To thine ownself be true!

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