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Old 08-18-2004, 05:26 PM   #11
Aristeia
Location: Auckland
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 971
New Zealand
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Re: To resist or not to resist

Well first of all we need to be careful about what we mean by "resistance".
Often people bring up, and encourage people to reist when they're wanting to get a reality check on their Aikido. Which is admirable. But the type of resistance applied doesn't always match that goal.
I'm sure that we all are aware that if you know the particular technique that is to be applied it is reasonably easy to resist it at some point. You may leave yourself wide open for something else, but you have successfully resisted that technique.
We sometimes get so caught up in the mindset of "nage should be able to make this work even if I resist" we lose sight of the fact that we are now acting in a very unnatural way.
And of course there's nothing worse than someone who has a "pet correction" for a particular technique. i.e. someone who has decided that there is something that everybody does wrong on technique x, and will block the technique just so they can point it out, whether nage is doing it or not.

So I perfer in general not to tell people to resist so much as to be sincere in their attack, and continue to attack sincerely (which may include tying to extracate themselves from a bad position).
This is much more helpful in letting people work out the lines to their techniques, and getting that reality check than just clamping on and thinking "if I keep pushing this way it'll make it really hard for him to perform shiho nage".

"When your only tool is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail"
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