nikyu

HI
I was wondering if it took anyone else here 4 years just to reach nikyu? I guess if i'm the only one, then i'm realy slow, or my dojo is realy stricked. Or it could just be that they were waiting for me to get old enough. i dont know... Its not like i have a problem with it, but i was just onedering if i was the only one.
thanks.

Slow? It will have taken me ten months to test for 5th kyu. If i'm very lucky i may get to test once a year after this which will bring me to nikyu in the same four years.

Our dojo is very small so we all train together, it seems that testing happens when the "most senior" test candidate is ready for their test

one of our members is testing for the second time this year, this time for 1st kyu, but he has multiple black belts in other arts and learns very quickly.

And its likely we won't test again until he's ready for Shodan...

took me 5 years to get to nikyu, where I stayed for another 3 years, had a baby, started somewhere else, then took another 2 years to get to nikyu again. So no, 4 years isn't a long time. Depends on the organization to which you belong. If it typically takes 8 years to get to shodan, then 5-6 years to nikyu isn't uncommon.

It took me over 7 yrs to reach nikyu.

I started in January 1996.

I was a slow beginner (3 months to do a forward roll)in a start up dojo, so we didn't do gradings for a little over a yr, so that's how long it took to get 5th kyu (March 97).

I changed dojo after 18 months, had to adjust to new ways of doing things, and didn't get 4th kyu until April 98. Kept at it and got 3rd kyu Oct 99.

Then the fun started. Blew my acl and meniscus by messing up an aikiotoshi in randori while prepping for second kyu. Ended up losing well over 18 months due to injury, surgery and rehab. Changed dojos.

Didn't take 2nd kyu til May 2003.

Do I care?....only things that matters is that I can get on the mat, grateful to be there, appreciative of my teachers and fellow students, and happy to train.

Must have taken me something like 4 years to second kyu, too.

I reached nikyu in yep, 4 years. Well, 3.5 if you count time off between dojos. From what I hear about USAF requirements, four years to nikyu would be pretty fast for them.

sure your not looking for oohs and aaahs?

4 years is not slow , and at nikyu you should know that.

I was wondering if it took anyone else here 4 years just to reach nikyu?

some people even only took 4 years to reach shodan.

I guess if i'm the only one, then i'm realy slow

no, you're not. my teachers in malaysia took about 9 years to reach shodan, and they have a deep understanding in aikido now. it's not you who slow, but maybe as your aikido has more progress more time required to learn the technique in more depth.

Something else to take into account is how often you train. For instance, if you train for two hours six times a week, then four years would be, in effect, longer than if you train for 45 minutes twice a week. Also, ranks mark different points and have varying requirements in different dojos and organizations, so the bar would be higher or lower in another dojo for any given rank.

I did shodan in 4 but what's the point - rank only has relevance within an organization and then only marginally.

The question you have to ask yourself is what is my Aikido like in a comparable amount of training time.