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Old 12-22-2010, 02:49 AM   #21
Gorgeous George
Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 464
United Kingdom
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Re: Effectiveness is the key to obtaining the other aspects of Aikido.

Quote:
Carsten Möllering wrote: View Post
I don't know even one technique which is executed - in our way to practice - the way you describe?
Sounds if your hands are "fixed" like if they really had to hold a sword?
We always try to be free and have all possibilities to use our hands, feet, ... everything.

I learned: First technique is atemi. To the face or throat. If this is enough, it's finished. (So for this you have to learn atemi as a technique in itself.)
If the attacker deals with this, techniques evolve.

Is there any atemi nage in your aikido? Throwing the partner by using atemi?
What about the atemi to the neck in kaiten nage?
The atemi to the side in shiho nage?
They are a "surplus" and are not needed to apply kuzushi. They follow it.

karate, judo, aikido and most other arts have strikes.
And one reason for not calling it karate is that the (technical) way of atemi in aikido or other traditional japanese arts seems to differ from the way of karate.

puh, we don't do a hard or "combative" or very martial style of aikido. On the contrary.
But nevertheless my thinking of atemi seems different from yours.
Isn't the basis of essentially all aikido techniques weapons work - videlicet, aikido is jujutsu with the footwork of a swordsman?
And isn't this why so many aikido schools have bokken training, too?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9PTMSwr1h0

'You must be able to employ a weapon using the same movement for a technique to be considered a true martial art.'

- Shoji Nishio

I loved reading Mitsugi Saotome's Principles of Aikido because he had sequences of photos which would show, for example, shiho-nage performed empty-handed, then with a bokken, then with a jo - and the movement was exactly the same.

I guess it'd be good to have your hands free - but wouldn't you feel safer with a samurai sword in them?
And isn't that the basis (along with a preparation for ushiro-ryote-dori) of ai-hanmi techniques - someone grabbing your hand to stop you from drawing your sword, or you learning to draw your sword even when your hand is held?

I guess I see tai-sabaki as the most fundamental thing: it's no use being able to do techniques if you can't enter, or move off the line - but then, what if someone has you in ryote-dori - how would you strike them? You would have to use aikido...

I think I said previously: most or all of aikido is atemi - you just don't see it.
This video - like Saotome Sensei's books - is very informative: he talks about how you must know what you can do to a person, in order to choose not to do it to them - i.e., to choose to protect them, rather than destroy them -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bwNbWQUTxU

So do I see any atemi when I practice aikido?
Yes, I do - i'm constantly aware that I am practicing a martial art, and I am frequently meditating on what aikido means - as a budo, and as a martial art.

PS: I train in the British Birankai - Chiba Sensei's organisation.
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