Strategy and Aikido

What is the essential strategy in Aikido technique?

Uh... Aiki?

What do you mean by it?

I suspect that 10 people will give 10 different answers. I would like to hear what folks have to say.

Of the technique?

To free yourself so you can use your weapon.

For most I suspect it would be neutralization through harmonization.
My strategy is "get him before he gets you". This is why we practice kamae.

Enter the maelstrom and become one with its center.

For me, it is to immediately seize control of the outcome.

Forgive my query. If it is too invasive, please say the word.
1. What exactly do you mean by neutralization? What happens to a person that makes him neutral?

2. It seems that allot of folks feel like they failed in a technique if uke does not end up in some wonderful ukemi. If ukemi is the escape from the technique, is it part of this neutralization you talk about?

3. Is it important to have uke fall?

becoming one with someone's center is certainly part of the package. But does this complete a technique?

Seizing control of the outcome. I like this one alot.

How do you seize control?

To free yourself so you can use your weapon.

Great pragmatic answer... for aikijujitsu.

For you, does Aikido have the same strategy as Aikijujitsu?

Why?

Chris Parkerson wrote: What is the essential strategy in Aikido technique?

Survive.

I'll play it safe here and stick to what the founder said:

"Not get involved, and get the hell up atta' there"

i never was too good at playing it safe.
i find it quite gutsy and risky to irimi with blades drawn.

Chris Parkerson wrote: Great pragmatic answer... for aikijujitsu. For you, does Aikido have the same strategy as Aikijujitsu? Why?

You need to include the first part of my answer:

Of the technique. The techniques strategy is similar, if not the same.

As for my oppinion of the strategy of Aikido as a complete system, my answer is a bit differnt: to develop and understand yourself, through martial practice. But that's also my answer for any martial art ending in "do".

Chris Parkerson wrote: Seizing control of the outcome. I like this one alot. How do you seize control?

That is a loaded question with no finite answer. But I suspect that you already know this. When someone asks "How long is a string?", how do you answer?

Every situation is different, and the permutations for seizing control will run the gamut. You feel for the proper response. Maybe the answer is simply to be elsewhere. Maybe it is to talk. Intimidate, perhaps. Swell up and turn green. In practice, it may be to absorb, blend, redirect, evade, stabilize, destabilize, preempt, lead, follow.

The commonalities (and there are few) are to decide and implement, as quickly as possible, based on the situation, your skills, and your limitations. Not everybody brings the same dog to the fight.

IMHO, my goals is to control the situation/threat with the least amount of damage in the shortest amount of time, with the least amount of effort to effectively and efficiently achieve the goal.

My strategy is to enter and blend, redirect and unbalance, and throw or control using a circular path.

My tactics are the techniques and principles of Aikido (or whatever else is improvised and available) with enough intent and intensity to get the job done.

You know what you need to do. Don't hesitate. Do it.

Love where you are going Clark...

Seizing control... You mention common factors in the different tactics you scribed; the ones you employ to seize control? These are things that tori experiences as "Different dogs going to the fight".

Is there a common factor that happens to uke no matter what tactic is applied?

Lynn has definitely helped the definition...

Enter, blend, redirect, unbalance and throw - efficiently (without excess effort) without hesitation.

Uke gets unbalanced. How? Is balance the same as being unstable?

Clark and fellow seekers,

I apoligize if the question seems loaded. I have no definitive answer either. Only wanderings along the way with small "enlightenments" that appear satisfying from time to time.

If I did have a difinitive answer, my art would probably be dead.

But the journey is a blast.

Chris Parkerson wrote: becoming one with someone's center is certainly part of the package. But does this complete a technique?

I said become one with the center of the maelstrom, not one with the center of someone.

As for technique, well, techniques are what you train. What happens when you enter the maelstrom depends on what shape it takes. You asked for "the essential strategy". IMO, techniques fall to a level of granulation even below that of tactics.

Irimi is part of every aikido technique. And while at a very basic level there's a distinct omote and ura, at a certain level of proficiency the distinction breaks down, the movements are flowing and circular, and it appears that uke revolves around tori. This seems to fit in with Ueshiba's writings, hence my answer. "The" essential strategy of aikido? Enter into the center of the conflict and become one with it. Everything after that is tactics, technique, and "expedient means".

Enter the mailstorm.

Thanks for the clarification. This is definitely different than joining centers. I think I imposed words that were used in another discussion yesterday.

I envision you entering a hurricane (dynamic sphere) where your centripital force makes the uke revolve around you. Is this what you mean? If so, how does a technique like nikyo fit into you definition?

Re the question:

What is the essential strategy in Aikido technique?

Chris Parkerson wrote: If I did have a difinitive answer, my art would probably be dead.

IMHO, if the answer is a goal/destination, then yes your journey dies when you arrive/get-it. But if you hold your answer as only a point in time that begins a direction/journey, it is alive and well.

That's my strategy for today and I'm sticking to it, until I further refine it or discover it is completely wrong.

"You can't learn what you think you already know."

In a past life (age 30 and below), I was trained as a systematic theologian. Sometines it is a curse. Other times, it greatly assists in deconstruction, reverse engineering and testing concepts.

I suspect the most creative thinkers (Socrates, John Calvin, Rene Descartes, Morehei Ueshiba), lived very comfortably without closure to their system of thought and without fear of inevitable self contradiction. The systems folks, the bureaucrats that want to take every seminal thought and codify it, package it up and dole it pout to the masses, somehow miss the "tao" that was originally in it.

Nevertheless, the great thinkers did dissect, reverse engineer, and and otherwise test their thought in order to refine it, deepen it and find new avenues of inquiry.

I really enjoyed the part in the movie "The Last Samurai". where Tom Cruise is getting his ass kicked and the young prince says, "you have too many minds".

Because his mind was split, he was being defeated.

Does this have something to do with Aiki? I tthink so.
The Chinese have a formula called : I, Li, Chi.
As the mind goes, so follows the body, energy follows the body.

For me, Aiki is about taking the mind through technique. Some techniques require physical touch. Some require pain. High level technique can be done from a distance with presence, wrods, intent and posture.

So where am I taking the mind? To a point of instability. Then I attack balance.

I would differentiate balance and stability. Mifune and Tohei's videos show how someone can be uprooted (lose balance) and land like a cat on both feet. Webulls wabble but they don't fall down.... Why, they keep their center of gravity inside their base.

At the same token, we have all worked out with the uke who takes falls for us without any resistance at all. They are actually controlling the encounter with their ukemi. Perhaps we feel cheated but we are not sure why. It is because we never were satisfied that they were unstable before they fell (succumbed to the loss of balance).

Stability, in my opinion, and as taught to me by John Clodig, has to do with placing weight on the spine and making it go slightly out of alignment. Doing this on first touch gives tori physical control. The lighter and more subtle it is, the better.

Even if uke tenses and fights back, he just causes himself to become more unstable.

As for strategy, the mind-split I work for in technique has allot to do with a prime directive that all bipeds have in their DNA.

You must "Protect the Head". When someone is unstable and knows they they may soon lose balance and fall, they want to protect their head from the fall. Their mind goes there naturally. They, thus, have "too many minds" and cannot focus as well on attacking me.

This is the prolegomena to any and all technique. Does the fall necessarily need to occur? No just the splitting of the mind. There is where I gain control. From there I choose my options on how I intend to follow through and how the encounter should end.