Blog Profile / AikiThoughts
| URL : | http://aikithoughts.wordpress.com/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Martial Arts / Aikido | |
| Posts on Regator: | 71 | |
| Posts / Week: | 0.3 | |
| Archived Since: | March 5, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
Training when injured
One of the most amazing things about Kokikai Aikido is that we have a very low rate of injuries. In fact, in my 10 years of teaching, we have only had 5 serious injuries that occurred on the mat–a record that I doubt many other martial art styles can match. That said, we do have [...]
Trust Your Training
(Reprinted from www.everettaikido.com) It seems that every month or so, I get asked about whether aikido is “effective” as a martial art. I don’t particular care for this question, because you can define “effective” in so many ways. Effective on the street? Effective on the field of battle? Effective in a school? Effective because anyone [...]
Aikido and Sample Code
The other night, I decided it was time to work on tsuki kotegaeshi again. This is not an uncommon thought that runs through my head when I’m teaching. In Kokikai Aikido, we have four techniques that are part of the first test a student might take: kata-tori ikkyo, katate-tori shihonage, ushiro kubishime kokyunage, and tsuki [...]
Acknowledge
Those who have read my blog for a while know that, for the past several years, I have been trying to find ways to improve my level of physical fitness. While there may be many who think it strange, even insulting, to think of a martial arts instructor being in less than peak physical condition, [...]
When it’s time to move on
Before you begin reading: This is, probably, a terrible post to write after such a long absence from this blog. So allow me, if you will, a moment to say that I am still here, and I still deeply enjoy my aikido training and my dojo. My absence has had more to do with work [...]
Day 10: Fight!
An unexpected bonus today on the mat: not one, not two, but three guest instructors arrived on the mat! The first two were not unusual. Greg and Shari are two instructors who live in Yakima, WA. They are great folks, and deeply knowledgeable about aikido and martial art training. Greg, in particular, has over three [...]
Day 9: An Old Friend Returns
Earlier in the day, I got an instant message from one of my friends/instructors: B: You teaching tonight? Me: Yup. That’s the plan. B: You might have a visitor. Me: New student? B: No. Some guy. I think he used to train with us. Stopped by looking for you. Me: Hm. Okay. I’ll keep my [...]
Day 8: Don’t get hit in the face
Don’t get hit in the face. One would think that this is a pretty basic, intuitive idea. You don’t have to train in a martial art to realize that getting hit in the face is a bad idea. One would think. On the mat we were studying defenses against shomenuchi. Shomenuchi is your classic sword strike. [...]
Day 7: Warm Ups
Warm ups in Kokikai Aikido have two phases: general warm-ups and ki exercises. I’ll get to ki exercises some other time–it’s a broad topic that just about any Kokikai practitioner has thought through any number of times. Today I’m thinking more about warm-ups. In our dojo, our warm-ups start with some ballistic stretching. Ballistic stretches [...]
Day 6
Today we had a prospective student get on the mat. She’s a student, and was very upfront when she arrived with her friend (who is a current student at the dojo.) “I want to try aikido, but I don’t think I can afford to train until I graduate.” I found that interesting, because most people [...]
The Invisible Role Model
When I train in aikido, I rarely get a chance to be with my peers. This is the downside of being an instructor; you spend more of your time teaching than you do training. Compounding my role is the fact that there are only a handful of dojos that study my style of aikido. To [...]
Day 5
Several months ago, I had the honor of training with Sensei in a small seminar in Hanover, PA… (Let me take a quick aside here. As a long-time resident of the West Coast, and of the Northwest in particular, I was a little surprised at just how many cities in the Northeast are named Hanover. [...]
Day 4
Tonight, one of my students asked us to work on kata-tori ikkyo tenkan. This technique brings back a lot of memories for me. When I first started teaching on my own, one of my students was a police officer. One evening, we worked on kata-tori ikkyo tenkan. It’s a fundamental technique, which I define as [...]
Day 3
Resistance with purpose. Sometimes, it takes me a few days to finally articulate what I’ve been thinking about. For the past few days, we’ve been working on how to resist, when to resist, and the consequences of resisting. For many students, this is a different way of thinking about how to train. To quote from [...]
Day 2
On the way into the dojo from home, I saw one of those electronic signs that businesses use that display the time and other information. The relevant information this time around was the temperature: 91 degrees. For the Greater Seattle area, 91 degrees is hot. Very hot. Since most homes don’t have air conditioning, the [...]
Day 1
I love coming to the dojo on Saturdays. There’s something about stepping into the dojo when classes are already in full swing, the sound of people shouting kiais, the reverberation as people practice their ukemi. I especially love Saturdays this time of year–when the sun has already climbed high into the sky, fighting a valiant [...]
Aikido and the Sick Child
A few days ago, my son Max came down with a fever. I can’t think of many things worse than a sick child–especially a young child that has limited means of communication. Poor Max was probably tired, achy, and generally miserable–but the only way he could express it was by screaming at the top of [...]
Changes
As I alluded in my last post, I’ve been thinking a great deal about this blog and what I would like to do with it. My original intention was to have a means of articulating some of my thoughts regarding aikido. My hope was that, by writing these thoughts down, I would spend less time [...]
Welcome, Little One!
Once again, I’m a little slow in updating Aikithoughts for a very specific reason: Jakob (Koby) Simon Shevitz was welcomed by my wife and I on Wednesday, July 7th. Both he and my wife are doing well (as is the rest of the family). As you can see, there are some other changes happening with [...]
No reprieve
Inevitably, as an aikido student, you find yourself wondering why you continue to fail to master the techniques you have been practicing for years. Why do you continue to use more muscle than you need? Why can’t you relax more? In an earlier post, I mention one of my instructors, who pointed out that you [...]