Re: conditioning routines
More strength, properly acquired, will never hinder you. The idea that muscling up will slow you down or screw you up somehow is a fallacy. Olympic Weightlifters are blindingly fast. NBA basketball players lift a lot, have huge muscles and are far quicker and more agile than most martial artists. If you are stronger, it makes using less force even easier. Duh.
I think the misconception arises because sometimes you'll find a musclehead type who seems extraordinarily rigid. This is because he has the habit of holding tension in opposed muscle groups and has not yet learned how to move properly for Aikido. You need to stabilize joints by holding opposed tension in joints while you are lifting weight or doing bodyweight strength exercises, but there is no reason you can't learn to use your muscles differently as well while doing another activity like Aikido.
I would say the best supplement to Aikido is basic weight training. Just a few big movements to build muscular strength, good movement patterns, and toughen up joints and bones. I do a simple routine of overhead presses, pullups, dips, squats, and a stiff leg deadlift exercise for active hip flexibility. I also do basic yoga asanas to round things out, which is incidentally all about stability and static or quasi-static tension - funny how you never hear people blame yoga for stiffness or brute force.
Endurance elements of fitness are also important, but more minor, as the goal is simply to make you more comfortable with the exertion level of taking classes. The two main categories that apply to Aikido are continuous aerobic exercise for getting you through class, and intense interval training, to get you through randori and tests.
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