View Single Post
Old 02-28-2011, 10:02 PM   #23
tarik
 
tarik's Avatar
Dojo: Iwae Dojo
Location: Boulder Creek, CA
Join Date: Jun 2000
Posts: 568
United_States
Offline
Re: static vs. dynamic waza

Quote:
Chris Hein wrote: View Post
When I first started teaching, I got the difficult class where only like 3 students who didn't know Aikido would show up. I never had a good uke to use. Every time I started a technique the uke would give the wrong energy, often ending in disaster.

So I started letting the uke pick the technique I would do. I would not say what the technique was, have him grab, katate or what ever, start my technique, and whatever his response was, I'd go with it and that would be what we did next.

It worked out really well, and taught me that what nage does is dependent on uke's response instead of the other way around. I used to think that my technique had to be so solid that there was no resisting it. Then I realized that it works much better (and is more realistic) to change based on the attacker.
This is the difference between doing and learning/teaching. Technique HAS to fit to uke's attack and response. So many problems (injuries, etc.) come from trying to force a technique on an inappropriate attack or uke response.

Another problem with that is that you may not be teaching a beginner what they need to be learning. At the beginning, I start by teaching a new person how to learn to pay attention to their body and how to walk. Until they start to get that reasonably correct and can take it on as homework (and they won't get it totally correct for a long long time), I don't even start in on techniques.

My sense of static vs. dynamic is simply one of scale. If you're breathing or resisting, you're certainly not really static. I believe a beginner is better served with very mildly dynamic attacks which can be escalated into very energetic attacks and made impossibly tiny so that tori can learn the extremes. But that is only once they have a reasonable handle on how to solve a simple, middle of the road sort of problem.

Best,

Tarik Ghbeish
Jiyūshin-ryū AikiBudō - Iwae Dojo

MASAKATSU AGATSU -- "The true victory of self-mastery."
  Reply With Quote