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Old 10-17-2013, 07:41 AM   #25
jonreading
 
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Dojo: Aikido South
Location: Johnson City, TN
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: "IP/IT/IS" vs technique?

Quote:
Dan Richards wrote: View Post
People can demonstrate "techniques" and someone like George can come right in and pop them, because they don't know what they're doing. And the reason so many people don't know what they're doing is because they try and frame things in terms of "techniques" rather than gaining and internalizing an understanding of forces and directions.
For me, technique is a small thing, a building block of interaction. "I see. You are standing with Crane technique. I shall break your crane technique with Tiger technique." WTF? Ikkyo is not technique. It is kata; or if you get into that argument, principle (ikkajo the kata). Whatever. My uke grabbed my wrist and I controlled his arm. Ledyard sensei does this tricks where his exposes our over-committal to kata and lack of attention to the technique (i.e. the why does my partner's arm fall under my control). This usually looks like, "what happens when I don't let you to control my arm?" Then he whacks the top of your head or walks you back. Then, he steps back, puts his hands on his hips, licks his lip and pushes his glasses up and looks down at you. Oh, and you feel dumb. He then breaks up the kata and scrutinizes why it makes sense to construct the kata. Then you feel better cuz its George. Technique is a tactical movement designed to solicit a response. Maybe its twisting a finger, maybe stomping a toe, maybe throwing a punch. The action is designed to cause a [logical] response. You put together an interaction of tactical movements and you get a kata.

Jon Reading
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