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Old 11-21-2005, 10:59 AM   #14
jonreading
 
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Dojo: Aikido South
Location: Johnson City, TN
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 1,209
United_States
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Re: Wining before you start.

The role of your partner is to challenge your ability. After the inital stages of training to learn a shape or movement, your partner should provide enough feedback to make the application of technique challenging. So to answer the original question, you should have a difficult time applying technique to sempai and an easier time applying technique to cohai as a natuarl part of training.

As for the mindset of training, you should have the mindset to learn aikido from whoever you work with on the mat. We all develop profiles of our partners when we train; person X is big and strong, person Y is petite, person Z is aggressive. But to let that profile affect the quality of your training is both uneccessary and unhealthy. Your partner's job is to challenge you to hone your aikido skills. Your partner's job is NOT to boost your ego, spite your ego, fight with you, comply with you or any other action that is not what will benefit your training.

When we train, I ask my partner to present a conflict for us to resolve (think of a Rubic's Cube). If my partner "thinks" he/she can prevent the application of technique while training, we are competing and this is an unhealthy mindset. If my partner makes the application of technique a challenging endeavor to test my skills and concentration, we are working in cooperation.

As a side note, I would say that a big difference in observing training is the understanding of mai ai and da ai - Sempai usually have a better sense of both. This is a supreme advantage in training.
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