00;00;00;00 - 00;00;24;11
Unknown
I've been doing Aikido for about 45 years. I've never done a martial art and that is a deliberate decision. So I'm not going to compare aikido to other martial arts, I genuinely can't. What I can tell you though, is what Aikido has asked of me, and it turns out that that's quite a specific and demanding list. Let's jump in.
00;00;24;12 - 00;00;52;04
Unknown
First of all, let me tell you about a couple of different students I had. I had two students who came to me with a background in another martial art, and they approached the training with me very differently. One of them was there to really, really soak up all I had to offer, and he watched my class one time from from just outside the door, actually.
00;00;52;08 - 00;01;06;06
Unknown
And so maybe he was skeptical then, but something told him to get on the mat and train. And there was another guy who had a martial arts background, and
00;01;06;06 - 00;01;23;06
Unknown
he wanted to test me every single night. At least that's how it felt from my side, and I grew from that experience. He didn't. So that was so interesting. So let's let's take a look at this.
00;01;23;06 - 00;01;29;11
Unknown
The one guy actually, maybe I'll go into to this story. The one guy,
00;01;29;13 - 00;01;53;13
Unknown
I found out like a year after he had been training with me that he I already knew that he had done karate and a good deal of it. What I didn't know until about a year later was that he was that guy who started fights in bars and usually supposedly according to other people, usually won the fight.
00;01;53;14 - 00;02;11;02
Unknown
So I never got that sense in my class. He was really a sincere student, so that was very interesting. He set his karate aside and came into my dojo. As I said, the other guy,
00;02;11;02 - 00;02;22;05
Unknown
I really got the feeling all the time that he was testing aikido and testing me. And like I said, that's okay. And I did grow a lot from it.
00;02;22;08 - 00;02;36;23
Unknown
And I did get to a point with him, though, where I started focusing my attention more and more on the other students because I thought, well, you know, they really want to take what I have and run with it.
00;02;36;23 - 00;02;54;12
Unknown
So again, I didn't see much improvement in him. And in Aikido and I paid the same amount of attention to him, if not more than the other students, for about the first six months or a year.
00;02;54;12 - 00;03;08;25
Unknown
And I didn't see any improvement because this was still, I don't know really. And let's test this. Let's test that. So whatever the reason was, I didn't see much improvement.
00;03;08;27 - 00;03;32;01
Unknown
he was a nice enough guy. He came to training early and you know all of that. But I just felt like my investment wasn't wasn't solid. So I thought, okay, well, I will come over to him when I want to see, like, okay, this is working well with all these people. Is it going to work with Mike?
00;03;32;06 - 00;03;33;12
Unknown
And so I would go over
00;03;33;12 - 00;03;44;06
Unknown
and, and you know, I'd get a different take on it. And sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't. And if it wouldn't, then I would keep on going over every now and then
00;03;44;06 - 00;03;48;07
Unknown
And next week also again go to let's see what it is about,
00;03;48;07 - 00;03;52;03
Unknown
how he handles this, that does not let it work for me.
00;03;52;04 - 00;04;18;20
Unknown
And then I would figure it out. So it was very, very interesting and very beneficial to me. But if we spoke together today, maybe he would say that there was some benefit to him, but I'm not sure. But I didn't see it in that time, in that time period. So Richard, on the other hand, soaked up everything. He made such progress.
00;04;18;20 - 00;04;21;18
Unknown
It was incredible.
00;04;21;18 - 00;04;26;11
Unknown
So let's move through some points that I've prepared.
00;04;26;12 - 00;04;34;03
Unknown
First of all, you can't measure your progress by how many people you defeat. So there's no scoreboard,
00;04;34;03 - 00;04;53;09
Unknown
And this is intentional and it's harder than it sounds. So you've got to be the judge. Am I a better person today than tomorrow? Sometimes the answer is yes. You know what? Some. Sometimes the answer is no. Okay, well, I'll try again the next day. Right. Am I doing my technique better?
00;04;53;11 - 00;04;57;18
Unknown
Do people enjoy training with me? Do people hate training with me
00;04;57;18 - 00;04;58;16
Unknown
or is it.
00;04;58;18 - 00;05;14;26
Unknown
Is it a mixture where they know that they're just going to die? Because, you know, you keep this pace that is challenging for everybody. They know they're going to die training with you, but they love training with you. That's really great. That's what I'm always hoping.
00;05;15;04 - 00;05;22;24
Unknown
anyway, it's not about how often you win a match, how many tournaments you've won or anything like that.
00;05;22;25 - 00;05;35;16
Unknown
Another really interesting thing about Aikido it requires you to take your partner's well-being into account at every moment of the training, every moment.
00;05;35;16 - 00;05;40;24
Unknown
it's not just a rule, but it's a technical foundation of the art.
00;05;40;24 - 00;05;51;29
Unknown
So things oftentimes don't work if you're not taking your partner's well-being into account. That's really fascinating in my opinion.
00;05;51;29 - 00;06;09;18
Unknown
The cooperation that's built into the training isn't a limitation or a compromise. It's the point. It's the whole point of the training. What you're practicing is the hardest thing not overcoming someone, but moving with them.
00;06;09;18 - 00;06;31;29
Unknown
This takes a lot of training and it takes the right environment. It takes the right training partners. And I don't mean partners that are just going to go easy with you, just the opposite, where as your skill improves, you will earn more of their heaviness or resistance from your partners.
00;06;32;01 - 00;07;00;02
Unknown
And by the way, if you're interested in topics like this, I have a weekly Aikido training videos newsletter. It's free. You can join it easily anytime. There's a link in the description below. But that's why I have that newsletter, is because these are some really deep topics that we can't just understand at surface level, and we would be cheating ourselves if we just took everything at surface value.
00;07;00;02 - 00;07;32;00
Unknown
So what this demands of the practitioner over time is that you have to develop qualities in yourself, not just skills, qualities, patience, sensitivity, the capacity to fail without shutting down, etc. etc. so many different things that this invites you and encourages you to develop. And I think that all the martial arts teach qualities such as perseverance, resilience.
00;07;32;00 - 00;07;43;09
Unknown
But I wonder, and if you've got a martial arts background and some other arts, please feel free to to chime in in the comment section. I wonder if
00;07;43;09 - 00;07;58;14
Unknown
some other martial arts also ask you to develop qualities such as sensitivity, patience, right? The capacity to fail without shutting down?
00;07;58;14 - 00;08;02;02
Unknown
I suppose at a very high level they probably do.
00;08;02;05 - 00;08;29;07
Unknown
So let me know in the comment section. But I wonder if they are pointed out and stressed and emphasized in the early stages of training like they are or should be. And Aikido dojos let me know. Continuing ego is a technical problem in Aikido. It's a technical problem. It's not just like, oh, he's egotistical, he should work on that.
00;08;29;09 - 00;08;49;00
Unknown
It shows up in your hands, in your timing and how you treat okay. You can't hide it. The more ego you have, the more you're going to be trying to push people around. And then if you're lucky, you'll get a strong partner that you can't push around. So then you have to release.
00;08;49;00 - 00;08;58;06
Unknown
Release this, this feeling of ego, and also just literally release the tension in your muscles, the unnecessary tension in your muscles.
00;08;58;09 - 00;09;04;00
Unknown
You can't improve technique while avoiding what it asks of your character.
00;09;04;02 - 00;09;12;19
Unknown
Again, it's not just skill. Aikido, in my opinion, has built into it.
00;09;12;19 - 00;09;16;11
Unknown
These requirements for improving your character.
00;09;16;13 - 00;09;34;18
Unknown
In Aikido. They're not separate tracks your Aikido skill and your character. And if you take this away or you don't make progress in this, it's okay. You can still make progress in this. No, they go together. They're not separate tracks. And there's no point in training where the character work is finished.
00;09;34;20 - 00;09;37;08
Unknown
The character work must continue.
00;09;37;11 - 00;09;41;07
Unknown
And so we can bring ourselves out of our comfort zones.
00;09;41;10 - 00;09;44;23
Unknown
that helps to develop these character traits.
00;09;44;25 - 00;10;04;16
Unknown
One great way of doing that is to go to seminars. I always talk about seminars. And by the way, I've got a couple of them coming up. I'll be in Montana this weekend actually October 2nd through fourth, and then I'll be in Redlands, California November 6th through eighth the first weekend of next month.
00;10;04;16 - 00;10;20;15
Unknown
Anyway, that's a great way to get out of your comfort zone and check to see where where is my character at? Where's my self-development at, how is that going?
00;10;20;18 - 00;10;27;26
Unknown
I think this is the reason that I can be so rewarding for the long term.
00;10;27;28 - 00;10;36;03
Unknown
My understanding is that a lot of people quit martial arts, the striking arts, especially when they get to a certain age
00;10;36;05 - 00;10;47;20
Unknown
because the recovery from injury takes longer, the reflexes get slower. So of course not everybody quits. But I've heard that many people do.
00;10;47;27 - 00;10;51;21
Unknown
And for example, even not even striking arts, but,
00;10;51;21 - 00;11;00;12
Unknown
you know, taking falls, judo and things like that, people have heard quit at a young age a lot
00;11;00;12 - 00;11;07;14
Unknown
or sorry, young age meaning like 30. So.
00;11;07;16 - 00;11;29;10
Unknown
But in Aikido, we have so many people continuing into their 60s and 70s and 80s, and I believe that that's one of the reasons why else would you want to fall down and get up for 90 minutes or 60 minutes or whatever it is, over and over and over. But I think that the benefit that we get off of the mat,
00;11;29;10 - 00;11;31;29
Unknown
these check ins with your character,
00;11;32;00 - 00;11;34;14
Unknown
every time you get stuck, you can remind yourself.
00;11;34;17 - 00;11;48;28
Unknown
Oh yeah, I'm trying to push this person around. I'm demanding that this person act like this or like that, instead of noticing where they're already predisposed to move and then taking advantage of that.
00;11;48;28 - 00;12;12;13
Unknown
So that's I think one of the ways that Aikido, is unusually rewarding for the long term. Another thing, the the art, there's no ceiling. You're never finished. It keeps demanding of you as you continue. And the longer you train, the more you find out about yourself.
00;12;12;13 - 00;12;25;29
Unknown
I haven't gotten to a point where that has stopped yet, and the students who stay the longest are doing something that genuinely doesn't exist anywhere else that I know of.
00;12;25;29 - 00;12;50;18
Unknown
And that's not marketing, it's just why they're still here. So let me go back to to Richard. It was a great story. I did mention it in one of my other videos, but one time we had finished training and we went to the pub, a whole group of us, as we did every Thursday night and oftentimes other nights too.
00;12;50;20 - 00;13;04;26
Unknown
So the brew pub was a half a block from our dojo, so we went to the brew pub and I forget the other guy's name, but he did some other martial art. But every now and then he would pop in and train with us. Great guy. And
00;13;04;26 - 00;13;22;23
Unknown
and he was still really kind of stuck in his head. He wasn't like really natural and flowing, at least in, in the Aikido classes, you could almost see him thinking the whole 90 minutes, even when he was just doing reps so well.
00;13;22;24 - 00;13;31;01
Unknown
We really enjoyed him, we really enjoyed his company and so he asked Richard one night at the pub, he said, hey, you know,
00;13;31;01 - 00;13;45;23
Unknown
like me, you have, you have a solid background in the striking arts. And now that you've done Aikido for a year or three years or whatever it was at that point, he said, if you got into a fight, which one would you use?
00;13;45;25 - 00;14;18;01
Unknown
And Richard thought for a moment and he said, well, I think the whole point is to build muscle memory and reflexes that you can control, but you don't have to decide which one to use. So he said, hopefully at this point, doing as much Aikido as I've done, hopefully the Aikido would kick in automatically and, and and so that's what I would use.
00;14;18;01 - 00;14;20;16
Unknown
But it would wouldn't be a conscious decision.
00;14;20;16 - 00;14;42;25
Unknown
He said. So, you know I guess the other guy wanted more description. Well what do you mean or something? I can't quite remember. It was a while ago. And so anyway, Richard ended up saying something like, well, maybe I'll kind of whip them around and maybe do a quote on him. And and then there was a pause. And then Richard said, Richard's a tough guy.
00;14;42;28 - 00;14;49;17
Unknown
And there was a pause. And then Richard said, oh, I don't know. Maybe I'd whip them around and then just give them a big hug.
00;14;49;17 - 00;15;20;02
Unknown
In conclusion, my experience of Aikido is that Aikido is asking me to become something or someone, and my understanding, limited understanding of other martial arts is that they might ask you to become something or become someone at a certain point, but I believe, correct me if I'm wrong in the comment section. I believe that in the beginning they're more focused on how to do something.
00;15;20;04 - 00;15;34;20
Unknown
Put your left foot here. Put your right foot here. Punch this way. Do that. I believe that in the beginning of your journey in other martial arts, it's all about doing something. And in Aikido
00;15;34;20 - 00;15;53;15
Unknown
taught. Well, I believe it's asking you to be something right from day one. Give up the ego. Stop pushing people, stop pulling people. Stop demanding of people and notice where they are and what they are predisposed to do in the first place.
00;15;53;15 - 00;15;57;17
Unknown
Then right on that. Take advantage of that. So
00;15;57;17 - 00;16;00;14
Unknown
let me know in the comments section. And
00;16;00;15 - 00;16;08;26
Unknown
if that's the case and if that's what you're looking for, then find an Aikido Dojo near you.
00;16;08;28 - 00;16;12;06
Unknown
Thanks so much for joining me. I'll talk to you again soon. Bye bye.
