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Old 03-22-2007, 08:01 AM   #67
Ecosamurai
 
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Dojo: Takagashira Dojo
Join Date: Jun 2002
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Re: Ki, Aiki, Aikido. The 'internal stuff' that never left Aikido

Quote:
Mike Sigman wrote: View Post
This is sort of like the descriptions of O-Sensei's jo trick. In reality, I never saw a video of him fully pulling it off (he had to move almost immediately), the pushers appear to be pretty obviously adding a certain amount of fake to it, and so on. Yet, if you take the jo-trick and do it in some places, they're going to pull out 3 football linemen who will use all the force at their disposal. If you can't withstand this massive force, regardless of the fact that O-Sensei never could either, people will say "Oh, you can't do the jo-trick, so you're no where near the level of O-Sensei". If you see what I mean... and we're talking about things that are on videos.

In your descriptions, let me just be brief and say that I understand what you're getting at, but we might be picturing different forces. Any martial artist who uses jin/kokyu forces will get better and better. My comment to Ki-Society people was that I felt they could do better... at least the ones I felt.... and I encouraged them to keep looking. You considered that condescending.

In terms of "tests", they're good for learning. But after a certain point, you wind up with guys who can do the "tests" pretty well, but they have no other skills. That was the essence of what I've been saying to the Ki-Society people (but it's an encouragement... I think some of them are off to a good start, frankly). Just stopping at basic skills and "tests" is to leave money on the table, IMO. Instead of being able to hold a 30-pound push to the back, etc., why not start learning how to use the hara better and more articulately? Why not learn how to release power? And so on. The levels of testing ability can be limiting if that's what people focus on, IMO.

Regards,

Mike Sigman
I agree wholeheartedly with everything you just said. I think it's easy to collect waza and not principles. I was talking to an iaido teacher not so long ago. He told me that he and some of his friends were told by their teacher in Japan that they had now learned all the waza in the Ryu. They all seemed pleased. Then their teacher said that none of them could do them properly, they were not so pleased. It seems that some of the guys there had the mistaken impression that just knowing what these things were meant that they had learnt them. So rather than learning iaido they were waza collectors. I think that a lot of the value of the training Dan talks about a lot is that it constantly challenges you to apply principles and stops you from being just another waza collector. We make an effort to teach aikido in a similar fashion, i.e. apply the principles in as many weird and wonderful ways as you can think of.

Regards

Mike

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
-Martin Luther King Jr
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