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Eddie deGuzman wrote:
What I find odd is that you allow Mike his insight after coming to Japan and feeling this technique yet disallow the nearly 23 years I have on the mat, the last thirteen and counting of which have been here in Japan.
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Words say a lot though. And anyone that's called me out hasn't made me eat them so far
To put things into perspective, about a month ago I met an old guy that was a headhunter for my friend. He was pretty old, in his 50s maybe and turned out had been practicing Aikido for 30 some years. He'd even taken Uke for both Tohei and Ueshiba back in the day. He was telling me about Ki this, and Ki that, and immovable body this and that. Yet, he couldn't give me concrete physical descriptions of what he did to achieve these things (we were still in a coffee shop at this point.) Actually by this time I'd pretty much surmised from the way he walked that he didn't have anything, but I figured I'd feel him out anyways since talk is cheap.
Did the pushout exercise which I elaborated on another thread with him which the guy failed miserably.
Then tried to do the Kokyu Age exercise. He couldn't take my balance at all. Nor was I resisting very hard.
And, while it was probably bad manners on my part, I did the index finger parlor trick and threw him around a bit.
Of course this all ended nicely and I let him save face, but it led me to the conclusion that:
Time on mat + time with "experts" = Potentially Zip, if you have a student that just "didn't get it."
Actually my first impression of how his body was connected was only reinforced by the discussion we had in the cafe, which was then sealed by the hands on session after we got outside.