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Old 02-20-2009, 03:23 AM   #10
grondahl
Dojo: Stockholms Aikidoklubb
Location: Stockholm
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 601
Sweden
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Re: Preparing for Test Outside of Regular Class Time

Quote:
Dalen Johnson wrote: View Post
- Names on a sheet dont teach you the technique.
But doing the regular classes will teach everything that you need, itīs just that if you want to make sure to climb up the ranks as fast as possible you need to do some extra training. Some waza are maybe done only once or twice per year (but we have a schedule to make sure that we cover everything annually).

Quote:
- you missed the point completely, but thats fine...not sure how to explain it otherwise. Aikido truly is an individual art.
Maybe, but I like to think that I simply disagree. IMHO rank in aikido isnīt a indicator of skill in the same way as in for example bjj and having or not having rank does not really make any major impact on your training. Mudansha trains with yudansha, everybody does more or less the same waza during training etc.
So I see that the primary reason for rank and examinations are the opportunity for the instructor to push the student a little bit out of his comfort zone and also force the student to ask him/herself the question "what do I really know". Ideally this should happen anyway but having the ranking system makes sure that it really does. So in that sense, the examination and the preparations for it constitutes a learning opportunity in itself.
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