I've been doing Aikido for about forty-five years, and I've never trained another martial art, so I'm not going to compare it to anything else. What I can tell you is what Aikido has asked of me, and it turns out to be a specific and demanding list. Two students taught me this clearly: one soaked up everything I offered from day one, the other tested me every single night for a year before I saw him really land.
In this episode I get into why there's no scoreboard in Aikido, why you can't measure progress by how many people you defeat, and why your partner's well-being isn't an ethical add-on, it's a technical requirement. I also talk about why the cooperation built into training isn't a limitation, it's the entire point, and why the hardest thing there is isn't overcoming someone, it's moving with them.
I also get into the qualities Aikido demands beyond skill: patience, sensitivity, the capacity to fail without shutting down. I talk about why ego is a technical problem in Aikido, not just a personality flaw, why you can't hide it in your hands or your timing, and why this is part of what lets people keep training into their sixties, seventies, and eighties. And I'll tell you what one of my students said when a friend at the pub asked him which technique would take over if he ever got in a fight.
Thanks for training with me this week.
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