(no subject)

[yvannairie]

Tried aikido for the first time.

Holy shit I was bad at it.

For some Extended Van Lore, I practiced karate about eight years, and my style was a very stiff straight-up Okinawan style called "Shorin-Ryu". A hard-style school.

Aikido is about as soft as you can get compared to it. I was standing on two steel poles compared to everyone else. The teacher had a lot of fun tossing me around because I just. Didn't get how the redirection of motion typical to that style was supposed to work.

Nevertheless, fun was had. I had a wonderful click moment at one point, and suddenly I realised exactly what I was doing wrong.

I hope to take aikido up properly to compensate for how much sitting I do.

Comments

[shadaras]

I'm glad you had fun trying it even though it's very different from what you'd done before! And if you keep going with it, I'd enjoy hearing about how it goes for you. :)

There are a fair number of folk at my dojo who came from striking arts, and it's really neat seeing them slowly figure out how to move in the way aikido asks, 'cause it's always been clear that they know how to be in their body/do martial arts, just... a different style.

[yvannairie]

The lack of a formal teaching structure is what threw me off the worst at first. My teacher kinda just smirked and let me make a fool of myself, and then let the older students really convey the lesson after I was done Not Getting it with him.

It is incredibly different, but I also had a few delightful moments of "I did that?" in ways I've never had before, because in hard-style schools a tiny person like me can only ever hope to win in speed and I'm graceless as fuck so that never happened x'D

[shadaras]

haha, yeah; I love the teaching structure but it takes a bit to get used to. (I'm one of the advanced students at my dojo now? this still surprises me sometimes. but the teaching structure makes more sense from that angle, I think -- you're passing on your knowledge and learning more because you're needing to teach it, so it advances two peoples' knowledge at once.)

Yeah! I love that part about aikido. There's a bunch of techniques where you're gonna have an easier time and a more powerful throw because you're shorter and smaller than your partner, and it's a great feeling to have. :)