Warning: Watch how you train

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Rick Wilson

Warning: Watch how you train

Post by Rick Wilson »

Warning: Watch how you train

From Overlook martial Arts Reader Volume 2

From “Arts of Serenity, Arts of Strength” by Nicklaus Suino

Page 240

While this entry deals with Aikido I believe the warning is for all martial arts.

(Spacing modified for internet reading.)

“There is an alarming trend in the training session at some aikido schools towards tailoring attacks to the defensive techniques being taught. Attacks are mounted from weak or off-balance positions and attackers fall as if they had really been thrown.

Instead of practicing and refining their techniques to be effective against truly strong attacks, students learn to ward off weak, staged attacks, and thus can never improve.

This travesty of martial arts instruction is justified by the assertion of some instructors that aikido is supposed to be harmonious, but this approach bankrupts the art of its value as a teaching tool.

It also places students in serious danger of having their skills fill them when confronted with a real self-defence situation.

Real technique is technique that works, and though we try to practice safely, we must never totally remove the martial underpinnings of our arts. If a proven technique does not work fro us, we must deepen our study of it until it does.

Teachers at these schools do not seem to realize that, though self-criticism can be uncomfortable, the very process of overcoming our weaknesses is what makes u stronger – in body, in technique and in character.”
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