Technical

On 14-15 November 2009, Doshu Ueshiba Moriteru held a seminar in the Netherlands. The event was (as far as I know) in correlation with the facts that the Netherlands commemorate the 400th anniversary of starting trade relations with Japan this year, and that Aikido has been practiced in the country for 45 years. This post is my personal report of day one of the seminar, day two will follow soon.

Vincent: But you know what the funniest thing about Europe is?
Jules: What?
Vincent: It's the little differences. I mean, they got the same shit over there that we got here, but it's just – it's just there it's a little different.

As there was no training in the afternoon on Saturday, the last technical training of the camp was in the morning of the 6th day. This training was slightly longer than the previous technical traininings. Elsner sensei left quite a number of things for this training, but as he had explained the basics throughout the week, and we had understood the teachings, everyone could follow what they heard and saw on Saturday, and the tempo was also quite good. The real, long-lasting training will happen during the regular trainings anyway.

So what we had in the last training:

As I wrote in the previous post, the 5th technical training planned to be about ushiro waza. So according to the plans, Sensei explained how to grab and hold the defender, what positions are appropriate. The attacker's arm should form tegatana, i.e. it should not be bent too much at the elbow because then the defendar can easily attack the attacker's head. So we practiced the appropriate positions and how to grab both wrists of the defender from a static position from the back.

The aikidoka start to look a bit worn due to the intense heat and the tiring nights in the second dojo (pub). We keep going though with not much less enthusiasm.

This training was my favourite so far. Although we always practiced these things in Fujita Shihan's seminars, I wasn't at a level then that would have allowed me to understand his teachings. As Elsner sensei explained, though, some of the information arrived at my head as some kind of enlightment. He showed and explained the same principles so clearly. But let's see what the techniques were:

Kokyunage

When doing a kokyunage throw it is very important to be stable at the moment of the throw.

In this post I am going to discuss the relationship between aikido techniques and the concept of self defence, and – finally – I will also touch upon the effectiveness of techniques.

At the very beginning of my aikido studies I read a book that contained a quote about two techniques. I think it was a quote from O-Sensei and it said something like the following: "[to master] iriminage - [it takes] 15 years; ikkyo - your whole life". I didn't really understand this statement at that time because iriminage seemed to be one of the hardest techniques and ikkyo seemed pretty straightforward, even easy with the beginner partners I trained with. Although I'm still far from mastering any technique, I'm starting to understand the background behind the above quote.

During the first years of my aikido studies I kept looking for aikido videos in the online world. I couldn't find many but there were a couple of them that made me think and wonder. One of these was a jujinage (I hope it's the correct name) I talked about before, and another one is to be discussed in this post.

Another thought that might take us closer to the understanding of how aikido techniques work. As I did not grow up in an environment where Far Eastern philosophy was an everyday element of life, and I have the standard European man's mentality, and tendency to analyse things, I would like to explain some of the mechanics of aikido techniques based on my own expericences, analyses, and my Master's teachings.