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Old 11-25-2013, 08:29 AM   #20
Pauliina Lievonen
 
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Dojo: Jiki Shin Kan Utrecht
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 562
Netherlands
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Re: How to deal with irritating partner?

Long Trinh, you asked about others experiences, here's mine:

I often ask people simply to please not block my technique.

In my experience, most people who do aikido are basically nice ordinary people, not strange psychopaths or something. So most of the time when someone blocks my technique or gives advice, they are trying to help, just maybe not in the best way. And if I approach the situation from that perspective, I can then say "I appreciate that you're trying to help, but could you just go with it for now, I'd like to try and figure this out by myself?", and usually people are then happy to comply.

At other times, I might choose not to say anything. When a training partner first blocks your technique, then gives advice, then falls for you when you follow the advice - what they are doing in fact is teach you how they like to be thrown. That might not teach you universal truths about aikido but it can teach you something interesting.

Now sometimes people who block you are trying to play a weird manipulative power game. Then they can enjoy "winning" when your technique doesn't work and they get to explain things to you. I try not play that game with them, of course I could also start to block their technique (aikido techniques are usually easy to stop in practice since you know what is coming), but that just means there are then two jerks playing a passive agressive game, and I try not to be a jerk.* So i just practice as well as i can, and then avoid such a person in the future. But I think the people who do this consciously are in a minority, most people really are nice and if you ask them will stop blocking. So my basic rule is, talk with people. Only if that really doesn't help, maybe consider not training with that person, at least not very often.

* Except when I fail and get annoyed and start to play that game. I'm not perfect either.

Hope that helps.

Pauliina
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