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Old 09-02-2001, 09:00 PM   #1
colinlam
Location: Hong Kong
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 23
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My First Aikido Experience

Hello All,

I would like to share some of my experience after I have attended my first 3 aikido lessons.

First, I never know you can do so much to someone's wrist! But to me I think the lessons are a bit too quick on progress. I've learnt at least 3 techniques in one lesson. Maybe I'm still too used to my old judo lessons which we just practiced one throwing technique in 2 hours straight!

Maybe I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I want to perform my technique nice and smooth and (near) perfect. I mean I just want to practice one move until I can say I can do it off my heart and feel comfortable with it.

Oh also I've had my 1st bokken training too, that killed my thighs .

I would like to ask everyone for your point of view. Do you think the classes are going too fast on progress or just right?

Cheers,

Colin

p.s. oh one more thing, I cannot really tell which technique is which in Japanese cos we learn them by their names in Kanji with Chinese pronunciation. *as you know kanji and chinese characters are pretty similar*
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Old 09-02-2001, 09:11 PM   #2
Mares
Location: Australia
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 89
Offline
Re: My First Aikido Experience

Quote:
Originally posted by colinlam
Hello All,

I would like to share some of my experience after I have attended my first 3 aikido lessons.

First, I never know you can do so much to someone's wrist! But to me I think the lessons are a bit too quick on progress. I've learnt at least 3 techniques in one lesson. Maybe I'm still too used to my old judo lessons which we just practiced one throwing technique in 2 hours straight!

Maybe I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I want to perform my technique nice and smooth and (near) perfect. I mean I just want to practice one move until I can say I can do it off my heart and feel comfortable with it.

Oh also I've had my 1st bokken training too, that killed my thighs .

I would like to ask everyone for your point of view. Do you think the classes are going too fast on progress or just right?

Cheers,

Colin

p.s. oh one more thing, I cannot really tell which technique is which in Japanese cos we learn them by their names in Kanji with Chinese pronunciation. *as you know kanji and chinese characters are pretty similar*
Congratulations you've made it through 3 classes. As my Sensei says the first 10 classes are generally the hardest. The best thing you can do for yourself is just keep turning up and don't be critical of yourself.

I train in Iwama Ryu and we do roughly 5 techniques a class. This includes tai no henko, morote dori kokyu ho and suwari waza kokyu ho, plus we do one pinning and one throwing technique.

This is generally done to guard against repetitiveness and boredom especially at the lower kyu ranks. After about 10 - 15 mins of doing the same techniques most lower kyu ranks tend to hit the auto pilot and lose interest. That is why we mix it up.

As far as your boken is concerned I'm not sure why u have sore thighs. Most beginners get sore shoulders and arms.

It sounds like u are having fun, just stick at it and it will eventually come.
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Old 09-02-2001, 09:23 PM   #3
colinlam
Location: Hong Kong
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 23
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Re: Re: My First Aikido Experience

Quote:
Originally posted by Mares


I train in Iwama Ryu and we do roughly 5 techniques a class. This includes tai no henko, morote dori kokyu ho and suwari waza kokyu ho, plus we do one pinning and one throwing technique.

G'day Michael,

wow 5 techniques !! Think that's a bit too much for me to remember !!

Is there a way I can easily remeber the moves ? cos I constantly having them mixed up .....

About my sore thighs, I agree I should be having sore arms and shoulders but somehow I ended up having sore thighs ... maybe I have some problems with my lower body posture ? Or I bent my knees too much ? hmmm something I have to ask my sensei next time ...

Cheers,

Colin

p.s. do you guys do weight trainig as well as aikido ? *weight training I don't mean body building, just normal iron lifting*
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Old 09-02-2001, 09:35 PM   #4
guest1234
Join Date: Jun 2000
Posts: 915
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I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, keep up the good attitude!

I'd guess you might get sore thighs from bokken work if you were doing repetitve cuts in horse-stance...

As for the chance to perfect the technique, just keep coming back, you'll see them again, and again, and again. In fact, make a copy of this and in three months, when you are tempted to think 'oh, no, not ikkyo again' pull this out and re-read it
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Old 09-02-2001, 11:42 PM   #5
Irony
Dojo: Aikido Center of Atlanta
Location: Atlanta, GA
Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 47
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I used to think that too, that we were going too fast, but I realize now that there is far too much in one technique to learn it in one or even three sessions. Though the basic motions may seem simple at times, there is a ton of subtlety in each movement. I remember learning ikkyo and thinking "Oh, okay, I've got it now." Then a week later we'd practice ikkyo again and I'd realize that I wasn't getting off-line enough. Then the next week I'd see that I was losing my extension.

The bottom line is that while you may want to just get it right the first time there are many concepts that are foreign to non-aikidoka and only through the practice of many and various other techniques will those concepts become clear. I thought I had kotegaeshi my first month, but it wasn't until months and months later that I realized I was doing it all wrong... from just one little thing. Heck, I'm probably still doing it wrong, or so I'll more than likely discover in a month or two. And I've been practicing a little over a year (not that that's a long time either).

Good Luck!

Chris

Chris Pasley
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Old 09-02-2001, 11:53 PM   #6
colinlam
Location: Hong Kong
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 23
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Thanks everyone for your valuable thoughts.

Well at the moment I'm attending 2 sessions per week and 2 hours per session ... see how long I can stick with this schedule, fingers crossed I dun have to work over-time often


have a nice day!

Colin
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Old 09-03-2001, 03:38 AM   #7
nikonl
Join Date: Feb 2001
Posts: 130
China
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Thumbs down

i only have one thing to say, You Have All The Time In The World...Take Your Time. I've heard of some practitioners who spent years just learning ikkyo.

Just take your time to learn,at your own comfortable pace. Rushing through things is never good.
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Old 09-03-2001, 03:43 AM   #8
JJF
 
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Dojo: Vestfyn Aikikai Denmark
Location: Vissenbjerg
Join Date: Jul 2000
Posts: 803
Denmark
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My sensei once said that the longer you train - the more bad habits you incorporate into your technique - so in a manner of speaking you will never do the techniques better/more flawless than now
My experience is, that learning Aikido one technique at the time, wouldn't be very effective. You would soon grow tired of doing it again and again - and some of the principles you need to learn are better learned from some techniques than others. I used to practice Karate, and we had a 'linear' way of thinking divided by gradings. For each grading there was a number of techniques and a kata to be done and we sort of believed that when the grading was over we 'knew' that particular technique. In Aikido I find that it is all a big circle of knowledge and understanding of principles, and we keep on expanding our insight within the circle - dot by dot covering a little more of the whole area. For a while we go in one direction - then turn around and work in another area and every new thing we pick up influence the way we do everything else. Off course we have techniques that we seldom do with 'newbies' and there are probably some that I don't know about - still being a beginner - and we have a number of techniques to show at a grading, but basically everybody practice the same, and we are judged upon 'the amount of area that we have covered'. This works well for me. I like working on my posture in Sankyu and find that it has improved my Irminage etc.
As reply to your questions: Usually we do about 6-9 techniques during a two hour training session. Sometimes it's to fast for me - sometimes it's just right
If you do it right - bokken work can be very hard for the inside of your thighs.
Those were my ramblings.....

- Jørgen Jakob Friis

Inspiration - Aspiration - Perspiration
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Old 09-03-2001, 07:57 AM   #9
guest1234
Join Date: Jun 2000
Posts: 915
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Comments about different levels within each technique reminded me of a class one of our sandans was teaching a few nights before kyu testing. He'd been doing techniques on request from those scheduled to test, and at the end was giving a few words of encouragement to them. He said not to worry at the lower kyu levels if it wasn't exactly perfect, that the same techniques would happen on all tests, but what was expected of the student varied by kyu (here mentioning what say a first or third kyu needed to demonstrate), "but for you two testing sixth kyu, well...if we can recognise in general what the technique is that you are doing..."
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Old 09-04-2001, 02:44 AM   #10
Paja
Dojo: Isshinkan Litomerice
Location: Czech republic
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 11
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When I started Aikido in the beginner class, first several weeks we didn't learn any Aikido technique. All lessons were dedicated to learning of breakfalls, proper posture, basic movements (tenkans, kihon dosa), forms of attack and that was all. Sometimes, in the end of lesson, some self-defence technique was taught, but not for us to manage it well, just for fun and for keeping us in interest.

Later we started to practise renzoku dosa (basic exercises with partner) and after we managed it (together with Kihon dosa), we started to do our first Aikido technique - Shomen uchi ikkajo osae.

I believe, it's good to set some common movement behaviour (through Kihon dosa and Renzoku dosa), to be able to better understand movement in techniques (what is not easy for beginners ).

BTW every our lesson starts with breakfalls (after warm-up of course), Kihon dosa, Renzoku dosa (mostly), and then techniques.
And number of techniques per lesson - it vary.
Sometime it can be 4-5, sometime it is one technique (for example irimi nage from different attacks), sometime it can be one attack, one entering and different techniques.
At least 1 lesson per week is dedicated for Kihon waza.

Regards,
Paja
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