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Old 03-13-2006, 01:17 PM   #45
Dajo251
Dojo: Aikido Downtown
Location: Rhode Island
Join Date: Feb 2001
Posts: 262
United_States
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Re: how many times have you gotten hurt?

Quote:
Ruth McWilliam wrote:
Isn't it interesting how the majority of injuries seem to occur in the person taking ukemi?

My theory is that ukemi skills are not sufficiently encouraged in many dojo, leading to a mindset that "throwing people is the fun part" and "ukemi is a necessary evil". As a result, people work a lot on perfecting their techniques and very little on improving their ukemi.

I have had numerous disagreements with instructors about why this is allowed to happen. They say that they have to encourage beginners to come back, so they prefer to teach them techniques as they believe that beginners will not be so motivated by learning ukemi...

Personally I think that learning to fly is fun! When I started Aikido classes I was always very impressed by those students who could take good ukemi. Never thought I'd ever be able to do it myself though Those who were good at applying technique did not impress me so much, as I thought that would be easier to learn

More than 14 years later, I haven't changed my opinions a lot, although I now know that both ukemi and nagemi are difficult to learn well!

Ruth (numerous injures all caused by poor ukemi skills on my part)
During class I often have more fun getting thrown then doing the throwing

Dan Hulley
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