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Old 03-30-2008, 08:53 PM   #45
Ketsan
Dojo: Zanshin Kai
Location: Birmingham
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 865
United Kingdom
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Re: The Topic I never Wanted To Post

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Anonymous User wrote: View Post
Hello everyone. Though I have an account on here, this is the topic I never wanted to post. So I am under Annoynamus.

I have been doing Aikido for about 8 years now, and it has become a great important part of my life. There has even been uchideshi phases and lots of money spent on travels and fees, on countless videos and books.

So.. At my school I have learned lots from my Shihan and Aikido. Self Confidence is the big one. My social skills have improved alot as well. I also have broken bad habits I used to do that invalid going out lots to bars.

Aikido has been great to me, but what do you ask then is the problem?

While the problem lies here in... I always wanted to start my own school since I started.. I know it is still 8 - 10 years down the road... This is fine, but the other day I trained with a professional fighter. I did not expect to win sparing, and your right.. I lost..

But then I tried with people who were not even in martial arts, and more then often enough I am still getting my ars handed to me.

This greatly upsets me.. I cannot run a school to teach self defense and confidence if I have not faith my own abilities. :-(

I look at the black belts in my school, and they are able to do all this stuff awesome, however at brown belt I am still missing it.

In relation to this, if I work with new students who co-oporate they look at my technique with awe, and seem impressed. However after training with a few now Aikido people I am finding that people outside don't co-oporate. Even people who are in class that are really stiff make the technique very difficult. I tried to teach one friend ikkyo and he was even stiff as hell and I had trouble with it.. Tried everything to make it work, in the end I resorted to atemi for it to work.

Infact the only way I can make Aikido work for me at all anymore is by adding Atemi. :-( The lost of confidence in my abilities has gotten so bad now that even when doing my technique with others I have to add atemi. It is like a crutch I have to use. I know my teacher has taught atemi many times, but I know alot of the time we havent used it as well. WHY CAN'T I GET IT WITHOUT ATEMI!

I also want to add that I try real hard to obsorbe it, and practise all the time. I focus on every detail, sometimes too hard to the point I lose it.. And I will be honest I am A.D.D, so it is sometimes hard. Honestly I don't know if this is why other people have it by now and I do not. But I honestly feel I am missing everything. I am frustrated and after 8 years I am ready to move to something else.

Unless.............. Unless there is some sort of explanation for this, or some sort of reason that someone can bring to my attention of why I am not getting it. Please tell me there is something to get, because I know my seniors have found it, and even some of my juniors... Just not me. :-(

Any idea on whats going on? Anyone else been here before?
You've got toriitus (or nageitus). The belief that reality should conform to training and that if it doesn't you and the art have failed and/or the belief that anything that doesn't look like training isn't Aikido. There is a cure: ukeitus.

When I was going through what you're going through I was hung up on the fact that untrained people were stopping my technique. My thought process was "I can't do x against a resisting opponent, I can only do it on a co-operative uke. I'm crap, Aikido is crap."
I was so busy worrying about the technique being stopped that I didn't look to see what position uke was in.

Every time someone stops my ikkyo they have their back to me because by the time they feel what I'm doing I've turned them. They're all tense. Tension is good, you can't do much when you're tense, having their back to me is good, it means they are open.
It means there is nothing they can do when I decide to plant my feet and dump my hips into a nice big punch into the back of their head or I decide to stamp down on the back of their knee, or bring them down with irimi nage, or reach under their arm and put them in sankyo or move in and choke them out, or knee them in the kidneys, or drop an elbow on their head or......................

Maybe there are 7th or 8th dan shihans out there with totally irresistable technique, if so then we all need to work towards that. Until you get there the truth is your technique will be resisted but if you think like an uke and accept the reality of whats going on and react to it in a common sence way then it really doesn't matter.

Aikido works, everything you've been taught is valid, it's just that you've not figured out how to use it.
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