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Old 04-18-2002, 11:14 AM   #26
Erik
Location: Bay Area
Join Date: Jun 2000
Posts: 1,200
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Quote:
Originally posted by Andy
You mean you didn't realize that reading comprehension isn't one of Bruce's strong points until now?

Bye, Bruce. Maybe you'll get better reception of your "revelations" at e-budo?
Either there or at www.randi.org.
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Old 04-18-2002, 01:18 PM   #27
Keith R Lee
Join Date: Dec 2001
Posts: 219
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Exclamation A couple of things

1. Bruce, I just can't understand you sometimes. Not a diss or anything. Is english your first language? Your lack of grammer skills, and odd punctuation is similar to that of someone who does not speak english well. I mean no offense at this. I really have probelems following your posts because they don't follow proper english language structure.

Example:
Quote:
Bruce said: Third) with so many people having positive thoughts on smaller people training with bigger people, I see negative advice to bigger people while smaller people have fifteen to twenty positive posts?
That is not a complete sentence. I wouldn't get on to you about it, I mean we're not all english professors here or anything, but your posts are constantly like this. I think some of the antagonism people show towards you comes form this.

2. Some quotes from Bruces various Posts below:

Quote:
If you could practice Aikido at the greatest intensity you could muster, with absolute intent in every move

Posing of the question is, for me, a totally letting go of restraint to allow the Aikido to carry to its FULL effect ... not the 10%-40% of effort that I use in practice /opposed to not modifying throws

If you use your 'better to best' effort, surely even good ukemi will barely keep your partner safe ... so you always hold back.

Not trying to break Aikido's leads, circles, or trying to induce another style.

But reaching the level of 100%
I may be wrong (always a viable option) but isn't this why ukemi was developed? So we could throw people at full intensity? Sure, if I'm with a beginner, or someone who is not physically "fit", or just someone whose ukemi is not up to par I tone my throws down. But you better believe that when I train with the other yudansha at my dojo who really are into training I throw them at 110%. I mean I try to take their arms off, or throw them as far as I can and they do the same thing to me. Their ukemi is up to it. If someone wants to train at 100%, they don't need to have a "theoretical space" in which to do it, they and their training partners just to step up to the plate, stop talking about it, and just do it.

-my 2 cents

Keith Lee
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Old 04-19-2002, 03:13 PM   #28
AikiAlf
Join Date: Nov 2001
Posts: 47
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Straight Face No

If I read the original question (you're right it's hard to figure out from the language)
as

would it be quicker/faster/more effective to apply aikido technique at the utmost strength level possible (as opposed to %x used by Bruve)

No, and staying out of the morality of it

Technique happens at an appropriate energy blend. In my practice If I apply more force than is necessary I usually short-circuit the technique. Usually Uke can regain balance at the point where I started putting too much energy; or Uke is able to let go, or Uke (if experienced) is able to apply a counter.

Might is not always right. Aikido is about that, in a _practical_ way.

Now, how about starting a new thread

"Aikido vs. Frankenstein" or
"Aikido vs. Dracula and Billy the Kid"
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Old 04-20-2002, 05:39 AM   #29
Bruce Baker
Dojo: LBI Aikikai/LBI ,NJ
Location: Barnegaat, NJ
Join Date: Sep 2001
Posts: 893
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good bye to thick heads

I say goodbye to thick heads ... truly it is you who do not get the benefits of Aikido.

The old guys, who have surpassed youth, ambition, and muscle ... get it.

It is the innerstrength that makes you excel.

It is not the physical, muscular effort of youth ... this will fade and lesson in time as the body grows old.

When youths gunslinger quickdraw fades, will there be something more to the person, or a hollow shell of faded youth?

To those who persist in youthful chest thumping fashion of seeking physical strength/skills benefits of Aikido, I say good bye. (been there, done that, my time was fun, but now that time has passed.)

To those who seek to find the moral, gut wrentching internal fortitude of will power that can withstand and conqueur the physical strength ... I will see you down the road.

To those of youthful ignorant bliss ...

Continue your insults, and thick headed
comments, that is the perogitive of youth, but I will not talk or comment to any such persons ... only to threads questions.

Hence the meaning of good-bye.


(Maybe. if I could spend a few days with each person, who comes on so rough and tough<especially with the "DON"T GET IT" attitudes?>, to practice on the mat I could change some of the tunes and attitudes? But this cannot be. So I will rely on lessons of life to come to soften your intent to have everyone be just like yourself. Learn to enjoy the different experiences of other Aikido practitioners, even if they are slightly different from your own?)
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Old 04-20-2002, 05:53 AM   #30
Bruce Baker
Dojo: LBI Aikikai/LBI ,NJ
Location: Barnegaat, NJ
Join Date: Sep 2001
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two strengths of body

I guess many people have been pushed into a way of thinking ... trained to function within a box.

Physical strength at the conscious level has limits.

Unconscious strength, for better lack of simplicity hypnotized strength, is a lot stronger than conscious strength.

Finding or controling the unconscious strength is what we refer to as Ki/chi power strength.

Say you pick up a twenty pound brick everyday for a month? Soon it becomes light, easy to move. You move up to a thirty pound brick, then eventually to a forty pound brick.

Consciously, your effort decreases to lift the original twenty pound brick ... at least at a concious controlling level.

This is the problem of big people training with small people, and the effort of Aikido techniques.

They think they are moving the twenty pound brick while using more force than needed for a forty pound brick.

I will get back to you, gotta go to breakfast with the guys and get back to Aikido.

Today is my one morning class, the only one I can do.

Think about this and tell me if it helps to clarify the question?
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Old 04-20-2002, 08:01 AM   #31
Kenn
Dojo: looking for a new one
Location: Simi Valley California
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SIGH,

Once again, your arrogance shines through loud and clear, Bruce. I suggest you take your own advice. Turn that magnifying glass you use to disect others on this forum inward and use it to look deep within yourself and perhaps wonder why so many others make the comments they do to you. Perhaps YOU can learn from them.

As I have said to you before, when I can sift through the idiocy of some of your threads, I learn some things occasionally, perhaps if you sift through some apparent malice in some responses to your posts, you too can learn from what these people are trying to tell you.

I ask you Bruce, please, before you respond, take a moment or two to wonder why more than one person has responded to you the way they have. And also, WHO has responded this way. From what I have seen, you seem to get this type of response from those who IMHO are some of the most intelligent, wise, humble and kind people who post on this thread.

Just my opinion, you are entitled to yours, however wrong you may be.

Peace, Kenn

Kenn

Remember, the only way to be happy always, is to be happy always, without reason.
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Old 04-20-2002, 12:16 PM   #32
Bruce Baker
Dojo: LBI Aikikai/LBI ,NJ
Location: Barnegaat, NJ
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Aikido with hurting others

I was just reading a post in another thread by Jun. He was telling the story of Terry Dobson being poked in the throat, then cranked pretty hard into an arm bar or pin.

Basically, Terry thought that O'Sensei would disapprove of such harsh treatment by his teacher.

One day, O'Sensei came through the dojo, watched the Sensei perform the poke to throat, and crank even harder than before.

O'Sensei remarked how good the practice was, and said to carry on as before.

Is it that the perception of being able to protect yourself from the poke in the throat and getting the rust out from joints by excessive pins was his goal, or merely the lesson to be learned for later techniques and studies? Was that practice Aikido while hurting Western students, or a wake up call to dull minds blindly assuming something that was not what they expected?

I have been uke for some demonstrations where injury resulted from spectacular demonstrations, and I learned not to volunteer any more. I also learned, how to inflict the same pain to others by feeling it from being uke.

Lackluster might be fine for beginners, and inflicting pain to a fine degree of not injuring your partner might come as you gain skills through practice, but not understanding sentences ... can't help you with that.

Maybe it is time for voice programs that record and play the text the way it was spoken might help?

The world is a big place, and not everyone thinks or speaks the same.

Especially in Neww Joisey.

When you have people from South Jersey who have Alabama Type Accents from their Ancestors of the 1800s ...

Are you confused now!

Oh well, that's life.
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Old 04-20-2002, 01:06 PM   #33
jimvance
Dojo: Jiyushinkan
Location: Mesa, AZ
Join Date: Dec 2000
Posts: 199
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Intensity is not Pain

Quote:
Originally posted by Bruce Baker
If you could practice Aikido at the greatest intensity you could muster, with absolute intent in every move while knowing you could never hurt your partner/partners no matter how intensely you trained .... would you master Aikido quicker? ...Literally, your partner/partners would be impervious to harm/injury in this theoretical moot point of conjecture?
I think one of two things would happen (maybe more, just haven't thought of them yet).

1. We would be like Aiki-lepers, not aware of what is happening to uke, just flailing around hurting everything. I know a couple of people like that, they don't think they could hurt anyone, and they do. They just thought that they were beyond hurting people, and the pain they inflicted was good for those who felt it. This is called schizophrenia, and you could master aikido, it would just be in a place no one else would ever get to see it.

2. You could do this right now. The question says "no matter how intensely you trained". It doesn't say training at peak aerobic levels, or training at full strength levels. To me, intensity is created by the mind. So I could train very intensely and be moving very slowly, with the least amount of force necessary. If it takes 15 pounds of force to break an elbow, then it is harder to apply 14.5 pounds precisely than to apply 115 pounds. My training partner is under no threat because my intent is not to harm, only to control. This is one of the hardest forms of training anywhere, and I don't like to do it because it is boring/hard/frustrating/honest. I am also one of the chest-thumping, thick-headed youngsters and my hormones, muscles and spiritual infortitude get the best of me, so I go faster than I should most of the time.

My question for the forums would be "what happens to the old guys who have had youth, ambition, and muscle taken from them... and didn't get it?"

The obvious answer: Nominate themselves the next yonkyu shihan and take over Aikiweb.

Jim Vance
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Old 04-20-2002, 02:42 PM   #34
Bruce Baker
Dojo: LBI Aikikai/LBI ,NJ
Location: Barnegaat, NJ
Join Date: Sep 2001
Posts: 893
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high school kids?

DAMN!

None of you seem to get it?

I guess we should have kept corporal punishment for you bad wabbits? Then you would understand the difficulty of the old verses the laws we use today?

Sigh?

One Day...

ONE DAY...

Never mind.

Keep practicing.

It will come to you.

Adults talk, children whine, and Aikido practice ...

Never ends.

For those willing to learn.

Enuf said!
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Old 04-20-2002, 02:57 PM   #35
Johan Tibell
Dojo: Aikido Dojo Gamlestaden
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Join Date: Nov 2001
Posts: 56
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Re: A couple of things

Quote:
Originally posted by Keith R Lee I may be wrong (always a viable option) but isn't this why ukemi was developed? So we could throw people at full intensity?[/b]
I agree and disagree. Yes, ukemi was most likely developed so we could practice techniques who would be hazardous to common people. But there's quite a few ways you could throw or perform tecnique on uke so he couldn't take ukemi. Some hand-in-the-face pushing the back of the head into the mat comes into mind).

Best Regards,

Johan Tibell

Pour your spirit and heart
Into daily technical training
To approach the many through a single principle
This is "The Way of the Fighting Man"
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Old 04-20-2002, 04:29 PM   #36
shihonage
Join Date: Sep 2001
Posts: 890
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Re: high school kids?

Quote:
Originally posted by Bruce Baker

One Day...

ONE DAY...

Never mind.

Keep practicing.

It will come to you.

Adults talk, children whine, and Aikido practice ...

Never ends.

For those willing to learn.

Enuf said!
I read a science fiction novel once. It was about Earth astronauts from the distant future landing on another planet which was a lot like Earth, only many centuried behind.

During their stay on that planet, one of the astronauts came up to a shopping-mall-type-machine which was called "IQ tester".
He tested his IQ, and the machine ended up with a conclusion that he's a total imbecile who's mental ability was barely sufficient to clean toilets.
That's because his IQ was off-scale.

I think it's best that we all pretend that Bruce is the astronaut, and we're all that machine, and let this thread go away quietly.
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Old 04-20-2002, 07:34 PM   #37
lt-rentaroo
Join Date: Jul 2000
Posts: 237
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Look, I'm using a pressure point right now.


LOUIS A. SHARPE, JR.
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Old 04-20-2002, 07:43 PM   #38
akiy
 
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Re: Re: A couple of things

Quote:
Originally posted by Johan Tibell
Yes, ukemi was most likely developed so we could practice techniques who would be hazardous to common people.
I remember George Simcox sensei saying that we learn how to take ukemi so others can learn aikido...

I also remember a story where a student asked one prominent aikido shihan that he wanted to undergo "hard training." This shihan looked at the student and told him, "You want hard training? Go to the corner of the mat and stand on one leg for one hour." My interpretation is that "hard" or intense training doesn't mean there needs to be physical "wham-bam" happening.

Another shihan for whom I was doing translation during an interview was asked about what his college days training in Japan were like. He said that they were a lot like how a swordmaker forges a sword -- he takes a lump of steel, puts it into a fire until it's red-hot, pounds it with a hammer, plunges the pounded metal into cold water, then repeats. His feeling was that because he went through the intense, hard training (which he explained was, sometimes, more mental than physical), he was able to continue on in aikido decades later.

Personally, I get pounded into the mat pretty darned frequently. At the same time, I very much enjoy the subtle practice of using kuzushi, musubi, and timing to affect my partners with the least amount of force necessary. In my mind, these two coexist in the same practice -- mine, at least. In my experience, subtle throws do not necessarily mean they can't be strong throws, and strong throws don't necessarily cause injuries...

-- Jun

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Old 04-20-2002, 08:12 PM   #39
guest1234
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Quote:
Originally posted by lt-rentaroo
Look, I'm using a pressure point right now.

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