View Single Post
Old 05-17-2006, 01:15 AM   #23
batemanb
 
batemanb's Avatar
Dojo: Seibukan Aikido UK
Location: body in UK, heart still in Japan
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 1,031
Offline
Re: Big Aikido vs Small Aikido

Quote:
Christopher Li wrote:
My guess would be that this is the result of influence from Kisshomaru Doshu. One of the major modifications that he made to Aikido, IMO, was to make many of the circles larger and more open. It's hard to say why, since he's not around any more, but my guess would be that it was done in order to make the techniques clearer and more accessible to the masses when he promoted the spread of Aikido to the public after the war. This is one of the things cited by Daito-ryu folks when criticizing technical execution in Aikido.

In my experience, the older shihan at hombu (Arikawa, Yamaguchi etc.) would teach larger movements to beginners, while teaching smaller and smaller movements to advanced students - of course, the movements in their personal execution of technique was usually quite small, small enough that it was hard to tell what they were doing on any significant level unless you were actually holding on.

For myself, I would say that you'd want to shrink things in size and close the circles down as you go along.

Best,

Chris
I know where you're coming from Chris but he is ex Yoshinkan, and a student of Tanaka Shigeo sensei, he only switched to the Aikikai a few years back.


Quote:
Fred Little wrote:
I would suggest that there's a huge difference between "small" and "compressed." The benefit of "large" movements is that it is much easier to see any places where you cut corners. If the "line" of the large sweeping movements isn't clean, then the same holes in technique that result in large movement will be there in small movement. As other posters have reported their teachers remarking, it's much easier to make (clean) large movement small than the other way around.
When you do Aikido technique, it should always be an interaction with uke's movement. I think "compressed" is a good word. We should be practicing to move with uke, over exaggerating our movements, which helps to create simple but powerful techniques (and as Fred said, highlight where things are not so good). As time goes by, we are able to compress that power into smaller movements when required. If you only make small movements from the start, in my experience it is a lot harder to expand that movement into something bigger if required.

Compressing big into small is a lot more powerful than stretching small into big. At least that's the way I look at it.

regards

Bryan

A difficult problem is easily solved by asking yourself the question, "Just how would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
  Reply With Quote