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Old 07-05-2011, 11:15 AM   #40
George S. Ledyard
 
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Dojo: Aikido Eastside
Location: Bellevue, WA
Join Date: Jun 2000
Posts: 2,670
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Re: Open Letter to My Students

Quote:
Demetrio Cereijo wrote: View Post
Today's people is not lazy, they are putting similar effort in MMA, BJJ, Kickboxing, etc, because they are receiving what they are paying for: intense, hard and functional martial arts training.
I think you are absolutely correct that it isn't that folks today are "lazy". Clearly, they are willing to train at certain things quite hard and take it to the limit i doing so.

My generation pioneered the spread of Aikido. We were coming off the Viet Nam War and that infused my generation with a certain sensibility. I truly believe that the reason Aikido spread so quickly and so broadly was that people really did find O-Sensei's message of a Budo that was about creating Peace, that was non-violent (whether correctly understood is another thing) to be very compelling.

I think it is interesting and perhaps just a bit distressing that the young folks today are more interested in "fighting" and less interested in the content of an art. It isn't just Aikido that is hurting. All traditional training has experienced a decline of interest as MMA has caught the imaginations of the younger generation.

I could see it coming way back when Brad Pitt was in "Fight Club". It was a sensibility that was largely absent from much of my generation. It wasn't that there weren't fighters around. If you did martial arts in one of America's urban areas, especially back when the crack cocaine epidemic hit, you were probably most interested in functional self defense. That meant poking, gouging, breaking, and finishing things quickly and brutally. The whole beating the crap out of each other as recreation simply wasn't part of the zeitgeist.

The Koryu have taken care of this problem by keeping their numbers really small. There are arts in which the total number of practitioners in the country number under fifty or so. When you are that "exclusive" you can usually find enough folks willing to be really serious about an art that the training can be kept at a high level. Folks are simply expected to meet a certain standard of commitment and skill or they don't get promoted. The standard doesn't get adjusted to the preferences of the students. And the shifts in demographics simply do not have the same effect in the koryu because they simply do not require o even want the kinds of numbers we have in Aikido much less the kinds of numbers one sees in MMA etc.

There are folks who have set up smaller sub communities within the larger Aikido community and treat what they do almost like a koryu. I think a teacher like Chuck Clark Sensei is a fine example. His network of dojos isn't huge but the quality level is uniformly strong and consistent. He has a methodology that is demonstrably effective in passing on what he wishes to pass on. he has created a "transmission" that has ensured that after he passes the process will continue. Once again, it's quality over the numbers.

I really believe that, if we do our jobs properly right now, today, those young folks who are off pursuing their "fighting" arts will eventually return to us. For one thing, doing what they are currently doing, they won't last more than ten years before they are physically trashed. I have friends running dojos who are already seeing young men coming in with knees and shoulders blown out. It's taken them seven to ten years to do what it took me 35 years to accomplish.

Anyway, I think that as these folks mature, they will start to see what depth there is in an art like Aikido. They will want to keep training but will need to find something less physically destructive. If there is an Aikido that has quality and depth waiting for them, they will return to the art. But they won't come back to an art in which they cannot find that depth, in which they walk in to a given dojo and know just from looking at what's going on that they could take the teacher and not break a sweat. They may come around looking for an art that won't trash them the way their "fighting" has done but they won't be willing to pursue something that is simply wishful thinking taught by folks who don't know what they are dong martially.

George S. Ledyard
Aikido Eastside
Bellevue, WA
Aikido Eastside
AikidoDvds.Com
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