Hi Aiki folks,
After reading a few threads on this site and reflecting on my own practice, I have an observation.
From the beginning of my Aikido training, my Sensei really emphasised certain elements of maintaining one's posture, head position, leg position etc when executing and especially finishing techniques, mainly to keep one's stability.
I often wondered why we had to be so precise in our body awareness and had a hard time with it, until he explained it to me during an execution of kotegaeshi.
He came with a mune tsuki and I did tenkan kotegaeshi, however, as I did the wrist twist, my back was not completely staight. On falling, instead of doing ukemi he held on to the back of my gi and in a second I was on the ground and in a judo pin.
He then explained that maintaining one's posture in technique went a long way to keeping one's balance in the event that uke reacted abnormally or in a self defence scenario, the person decided to hold on to you while going down.
We did the same technique again with that modification and the force of his weight falling was more than he could maintain with the grip of one hand, and he had no choice but to do ukemi. This is only one example of the importance of posture and body alignment to proper execution of technique under resistance.
My question is, do any of you in other styles have this sort of over-emphasis on maintaining posture at the end of a technique, and if so, how is it taught/executed/practiced on the mat? And for which scenarios?
Arigato Gozaimasu
L.C.