What did spark your interest with Aikido?

found a book in the library a home teach book and watching Segal on the movies and went along to the club and really enjoy it.

I was a Judoka at the " Abbe School of Budo " one evening in 1957 I decided to stay and watch the Aikido class that followed..Previously, I had always left early, I had a very pretty girlfriend and left asap to meet her, this one evening I stayed late to watch Aikido with Kenshiro Abbe teaching, the only Aikido class in the UK. I was impressed, from that evening I did my judo class then went onto the Aikido class.after a couple of years I gave up Judo, I am still involved in Aikido 53 years later..

Henry Ellis
http://tadashi-abe.blogspot.com/

Thats cool, i guess you have very good training possibiliteis there?

Yeah there is a good number a dojos here and very good teachers also.

Jamie Yugawa wrote: Yeah there is a good number a dojos here and very good teachers also.

I thought so, you guys have longer history of Aikido in there, i wish i had a choise... Nothing wrong in our local dojo this far, but i would love to be able to choose from many.

And i guess, it's rather many dojo's in rather small area?

Lucky you to live in there. Nicer weather and many possibilities for your training.
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Well I used to do aikijitsu and when we moved out here we couldn't find the style. My husband wanted to do aikido and he wouldn't joing without me... so I went. I didn't really like it at all at first. I stuck with it and it has grown on me since.

If I'm honest, I'm a big Star Wars fan. My friends had been doing Aikido for some time but then I heard they learned to use weapons. Having not been interested in martial arts before yet always had an interest in swordsmanship, plus a childhood of lightsabres, I decided to watch a lesson. After that I was hooked. The way they moved and the care in which they moved was amazing to me. Then when I learned about the spiritual aspect of Aikido, I decided this was the thing for me.

I just wanted to try some thing different form the normal full contact TMA out there and Aikido hits the spot, not looked back since.

I wanted to learn a martial art all through my life. But my problematic right knee and bodybuilding background prevented that...
At every dojo i went to querry on training they would say too bulky, probably too slow, bad knee, forget it.
Then i saw an Aikido flyer my previous Sensei had issued.
The black Hakama rang a bell concerning an old Aikido video i had seen years back. I could not believe you could throw someone like that away from you and cause him no harm.
I was 29 years old back then and thought i would try it out. If for anything else, to overcome my internal fear of being unable to participate in something exciting!
It was then, a rainy evening of 2003 that the journey started.

@Stelios: The dojos you visited before sound quite strange to me! I've been to more than one Club, also Karate and Taekwondo, to visit or to train, and there were always people with all kinds of physical properties - old, young, slow, fast, fat, skinny - training together, each as they could. Lucky you found your Aikido club in the end!

Nice thread lari. My interest was sparked by the challenge of harmony, being in harmony with the aggressor. Just the idea was like a magnet to me.

Graham Christian wrote: Nice thread lari. My interest was sparked by the challenge of harmony, being in harmony with the aggressor. Just the idea was like a magnet to me.

Arigato Graham.

Your post here goes really close to my interest about Aikido too..

I saw the laserdance in Oceans Eleven movie and was very impressed and inspired by the graceful and beautiful movements. I later found out that it was Capoeira the Brazilian Martial arts of dance fighting. Then I remembered that I did Aikido before so that sparked my interest in Aikido

Truth...

My wife.
I took her to various local dojos to get her opinion, and she thought Aikido looked cool.
[Softer, not as violent, etc.]

Personally, at the time, I was not into 'touchy' arts.
The closest I felt comfortable with being was to a glove to someones face, etc.

But I tried it out anyway.
I started in Hungary with very poor Hungarian language skills.

It was at Aikiweb, and using Aikido 3D, etc. that I was able to make heads and tales of what was what.
And I started, and really relied on, feeling the techniques work.

To this day I still see confusion with people, who speak the native tongue here, Hungarian, when three different instructors go around and give conflicting advise based on theory vs. letting them 'feel it' as it were.

This is not to say their techniques are not effective...

Anyway, I have, as mentioned, and still rely on taking the time to feel the technique work.
I have people try to spin out of a technique, roll out, etc. I want to see control throughout the movement.

A lot of times the beginner help me without knowing. They naturally roll as there body has no resistance, whereas other higher ranks have their bodies conditioned to move in the correct position and dont even think of an 'escape'. [A big potential downside with Aikido if your not careful.]

After three years of training, I stopped.
I found the training sessions to be very disorganized, etc.
But its not just this dojo, its the general structure in many dojos.
[Personally I get along better with a map/plan like with the Gracie Combatives, etc.]

I stopped after my live training at the local Thai Boxing dojo.
Part of my new requirement for Aikido was to watch another art... [of course better to try it out.]
And after 3 years and some dialogue with other Aikidoka who had a similar experience as mine, I realized that Aikido took me about as far as it could without some, substantial, shift in mindset with how it was being taught.

[At the time I had three or four people come to me to train them for their exam as the course had been so random after a year they still did not grasp the basics, but quickly caught on.]

Anyway... due to health reasons. [Long cold winters here, and I was not doing anything] I did not feel the energy or desire to take up Thai Boxing again, so in Jan. I started back.

Same issues as before, and I still do what I did before, instead of chatting about right or wrong I merely show a technique and ask if they feel it. [Rhetorical, the point is they do and the light goes off]

In the process I came across BJJ. [If I did not like touchy feely arts before, I would never have given BJJ a go years back] Times change, Im getting to be an old man... or so it seems, and I have started to play with BJJ and it just 'makes sense'.

I would love to take BJJ and Aikido and mix them. [To the best one can.]
In theory I have it like this:
Aikido for distance, Judo to toss to ground, BJJ for ground and Thai Box for atemi.

This is not a new idea - its jiu-jitsu before it got split up.

For me, Aikido is a missing part of a whole.
The atemi should be replaced with something like Thai Boxing, etc.
[Now dont discount weapons, but so many dojos do very little if no weapons work, that any connection of strikes/weapons and technique are lost]

I have seen two views in Aikido and two ways of practicing.
Those who have dan rank in nothing but Aikido seem to be, from my observation, the ones who will stop someone mid progress and say "thats not right as they would do such and such". All theory.

Those who have dan rank in Judo etc., as well, are more 'realistic' and tend to be viewed as harder.
But we must all remember that the guys who were at the start of the art, pretty much had a black belt in Judo, etc.

What may have been broken down could have had certain things lost to those who did not train in anything else. Its easy to forget to teach essentials that we take for granted.
[Like those who argue that those who train in Gi Jiu Jitsu are better at no gi, etc.]

So that is the long and short of it.

Aikido was a path that led me to BJJ, and really to seeing that these arts are not really separate.
Just stages.

Peace

Dalen

I love hearing about everyone's path to "the path" so to speak. It's always amazing to see how many different people Aikido attracts and captivates. I really like the story about the horse trainer. I've noticed the same thing. It seems that most folks who are very good with animals are doing Aikido whether they realize it or not. The Dog Whisperer is another teacher/trainer that springs to mind who inadvertently uses aiki principles of non-violence and calm-assertiveness to achieve a goal with the animal, rather than trying to force his will upon them. It's fun to watch him correct the owner's posture and listen to him tell them to "relax", "keep breathing", "drop the tension in your arms (body)", etc... I swear I'm in the dojo every time I watch
I started late in life, it seems. I didn't really get in to martial arts until about a year after college. I then studied Goju-ryu Karate and Ed Parker Kempo for several years, but I had always thought about Aikido in the back of mind, but didn't know where to look. I think I first saw a clip on TV (not much of an internet back then) of the late Rev. Kensho Furuya Sensei. I eventually ran into an old friend, and former ballet dancer, one evening and she told me she was doing Aikido and invited me to a class. I was, of course awful. I basically did really good karate, but really bad Aikido for 2 hours in the corner, but I could see that whatever it was they were doing was something that I wanted to do too. I kept cross training in Kempo and Aikido for awhile, but eventually drifted toward Aikido full time, and the rest is history.
Keep the stories coming!

+ 1 for the 'Steven Seagal' crowd. Movies initially but I read up and continue to read up on him and his path. I admire Seagal Sensei as he has stated over and over again in his interviews that your Aikido has to work 'in the street'. I wish one day I could meet him to thank him for getting me started on this path without even knowing it.

It has become a lot more since then for me. The earlier post about Star Wars in the thread (for me I think Lucas dressed Jedi up too much like Japanese Kimono wearing samurai.) has a lot to do with it, Jedi philosophy etc.. maybe a little easier to absorb than Shinto/Omoto-kyo systems and practices.

I still train myself for my own harmony, peace within etc.. but I always train so that my outward techniques are martially effective, street effective. (By outward I mean that I am almost completely focused and absorbed with internal power/aiki training right now, always looking for the Aiki in my Aikido expressing it with the technique, not just doing techniques more or less 'mechanically'.)

So now I continue to train because I have a wonderful Sensei and other members at our dojo that make it fun to continue to learn, practice and develop myself and each other with.

I guess I'm a bit different from the rest of the crowd. I had always been interested in martial arts as a kid (and just about everything else girls weren't supposed to do) yet my parents had given me a hard no when it came to it. I got placed soccer instead and it worked (kind of). When I hit college I was just so ready to be free although I didn't know exactly what to try. I got involved in some clubs and the company was great but something was missing.

I was at our college gym (its soooo huge) climbing the rock wall; the one that was featured on all freshmen tours. But that took one try and bam. Over. So was I sitting back relaxing, trying to figure out what to do next and I noticed that behind the rockwall was a room. Inside were three guys in what looked like anime outfits and one was talking. Then all of the sudden that little guy (actually he turned out to be average height- the other people were freakin' huge) gets attacked by another guy and just bats his attack out of the way and tossed him across the room like he was just a cat or something.

Now, I was (and still am) a science student on scholarship to this school. I had always been too smart for my good. Basically, I was in college to figure out some magic formula for how the world works and here was some physical system that was spitting in the face of my logic. I just /had/ to figure out the secret to how it worked.

Well, here I am two years later. I haven't' figured out the magic yet but it's still there. To quote Sensei, "Eh. Give it 30 more years."