Why Aikido Plateaus Are a Sign of Progress

I've been teaching Aikido for over thirty years, and I've watched hundreds of students hit the same wall at roughly the same point in their training. The ones who got through it almost always did one specific thing differently, and it wasn't more classes.

I had a student, maybe second kyu or first kyu at the time, who went through a period where he suddenly didn't want my suggestions, completely unlike him. I'd see him across the room struggling with something I knew the fix for, offer it, and he'd make an excuse. This went on for a while. Eventually I realized something personal was going on, and I stopped pushing, though he kept showing up, early, last off the mat, polite, getting along with everyone. Six months later I found out there had been something personal happening. He was stuck on that plateau for about six months, and then he came back.

A plateau isn't a lack of progress

It's progress that isn't visible yet. You're moving into a new stage, and your nervous system is ready for it, so it feels wrong for a while, the same way moving into a nicer apartment feels chaotic at first, boxes everywhere, things in the wrong place, until it finally settles and you realize you're home.

The real danger on a plateau is deciding to retreat to what's comfortable. What you actually need to do is work on what feels uncomfortable and keep moving forward. If you retreat, that uncomfortable space will still be waiting for you the next time you try to progress. Try to celebrate the discomfort, if you can manage it: if you feel uncomfortable, maybe you're getting somewhere. Training has to keep reintroducing discomfort, or it stops working.

What separates the students who get through it

The people who come through a plateau successfully lean into the discomfort. They train what's broken, not just what already works, and they go to a new place even when their partner doesn't fall over this time. They keep showing up, and they don't skip class.

They also measure the quality of the contact during training rather than measuring progress by whether their partner fell down. When the quality is good, your partner is more likely to cooperate, assuming they're not consciously resisting. And they take every correction, even the ones they've heard a hundred times, without complaint.

What to actually do in class

Notice the technique you hate the most, or avoid the most, and do it more. If your teacher doesn't cover it in class, find a way to work it afterward. Do ten reps without stopping to analyze or discuss after every single throw; that pulls you out of your head and into your body. If you want verbal feedback from your partner, ask for it after eight or ten reps, not after each one.

Find the partner you'd rather avoid, usually because they intimidate you or are hard to throw, and train with them. When something starts to feel easy, treat that as a signal to go deeper, not to ease up. And look at your sempai: find the one whose training or ukemi you don't fully understand yet, ideally someone with a body type close to yours, and pay close attention to them. A similar body type is like having a manual for how to do Aikido in your own frame; a shorter person's favorite technique and a taller person's favorite technique are often genuinely different for structural reasons.

Seminars are a good place to find people like that. You've got a limited window, sometimes just a few days, so identify whose Aikido or ukemi you admire, narrow it down by body type, and chase them down for training time rather than waiting for them to come to you.

In conclusion

The plateau isn't the problem, it's a gift. Go back to what's hard, stay in the uncomfortable zone for as long as it takes, and don't run back to the comfort zone.

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