Just Do the Technique, Part 1

[Much more on the Aikido Rift is in the pipeline, but I have a few other topics to write about in the interim.]

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How many of us are perfect? I was told a few weeks ago that Barack Obama is perfect, incapable of making a mistake; messiah-like. So I know there are people who believe that a politician can be a perfect human being. Such a belief may be an imperfection in itself, but it does exist.

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I was raised Christian, and I understand that Christians view Christ as perfect. There exists the belief that Christ was the only human being who ever lived with no imperfections, none of the human flaws that plague the rest of us. These days I’m a practicing Buddhist, but I don’t believe the Buddha was perfect. I believe that he made mistakes, just like the rest of us – mainly because of the poor state of the store of human knowledge during the time in which he lived, but his imperfections were his own, nonetheless.

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I see a lot of imperfections in the dojo (mostly in the mirror). My first sensei told me once that the mat is where all your flaws come out, where your true person is shown. You can’t train with someone for any length of time and not know what kind of a person he or she is.

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I have a lot of imperfections. I’m overweight, slow, talkative, and often lazy. Sometimes I’m quick to anger, and other times I’m slow to react. I don’t look like an aikidoist, and sometimes I wonder if I really am an aikidoist. My ukemi is labored at times, and at other times my footwork isn’t as good as it should be.

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Sometimes I just don’t pay attention. I yawn at inappropriate moments; probably because I seldom sleep more than four hours a night.

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But enough about me. You have imperfections too, right? How about on the mat? Are you perfect there? And what happens if you’re not?

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Let’s say, for example, that you missed a technique. Maybe we’re working on ushiro-ate, and I’m your uke. I attack with the standard shomen-ate. You step off the line of attack, locate and redirect my outside arm, and step in behind me. You know what to do: with both hands on my shoulders, you’re supposed to reach in toward the front of my shoulders and execute a drop, rearward, assimilating your movement with the body rise at the end of my forward step. After my attempted attack, my lunge forward and subsequent subtle off-balance, I need to recover my posture, and it should be this recovery that effectively throws me.

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But what if I, being imperfect, give you a poor uke performance? What if I don’t lunge forward, but rather walk at a leisurely pace, making it difficult for you to gauge the necessary timing? Or, what if you, also being imperfect, simply miss the throw? What if you step off on the wrong foot, fail to locate and redirect, or miss my shoulders?

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Here’s my point, for those of you who are wondering: I've noticed a trend in some aikidoists, an annoying tendency to react to a blown technique by increasing speed, muscle strength, and resistance. This is sometimes part of an even-more-annoying "get-uke-to-the-mat-any-way-you-can" mentailty. When you miss the technique, you’ve missed the technique. You don’t need to correct yourself by transitioning into something else, unless specifically instructed to do so. And even then, you should transition into a technique.

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If you miss the technique, slow down, reset and try again. Stick with the technique that’s being taught. Examine where you went wrong and correct it. If necessary, ask questions.

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Here’s what you don’t want to do: If you’ve missed the technique, don’t grab uke’s hair and pull him or her to the mat. Don’t throw a punch to the kidney, or a kick to the shin. Don’t transition to MMA and try to hurt your training partner. This is an aikido class, not a UFC match. Some aikidoists seem to think that, whether they’ve done the technique properly or not, they’ve failed if their uke doesn’t always end up prostrate and groaning before them. But you don’t have to get the technique right every time to be a good aikidoist.

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You don’t have to be perfect. It's not perfection you're working toward, anyway; it's proficiency. It's improvement. It's a-gatsu. It's not something you can achieve by pulling your uke down by the collar, just because you've missed the technique you were working on.

Comments

[James]

It could be a stylistic difference, but I'd say be a little more flexible.

If you are in the wrong position to finish a technique then either adjust your position and finish it, or use a technique that's appropriate for that position. Do it better next time.

For the uke's own safety they need to be able to adjust and receive what's happening, not just what they're expecting (working within their limits of course).

Besides that, work with your uke:

- If they don't want to be hit (kicked, strangled, elbowed, arm-locked etc) then don't do it.
- If they're happy to be hit then hit them and don't complain when it's their turn.
- Most of all: be respectful.

[scruffysmileyface]

I don't know anyone who's happy to be hit, strangled or elbowed, especially in aikido.

But I do take your point. Maybe I need to be more accepting in this regard.

Most of the time we practice one specific technique at a time. It's not like free rolling in BJJ, for example, where if one technique doesn't work you just transition to something else.

I've just been noticing a tendency for some folks to get a little overly aggressive when they don't hit their techniques perfectly - and too much aggression is a bad thing in most martial arts that I've seen so far. Not all, but most.

[nick lowry]

i think renzoku waza is extremely valuable --learning to operate from the conditions of failure on to the next application to the next...-- it is something undertaken with prior knowldge and consent-- at the same time i know exactly they type of abrupt and abusive energy you are talking about because i have both suffered and enacted it myself-- some of this goes toward a piece i wrote recently called "meditations on violence" http://www.kazeutabudokai.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=655

[scruffysmileyface]

Absolutely brilliant piece, thanks! Love that site, by the way.

[nick lowry]

glad you like -- feel free to poke around -- some of the discussions that are going round are stuff i think you'd like