What you can learn from a child

Aikido with Patrick M. and Whit

• ROM, ukemi
• Tegatana with emphasis on tsugiashi and weightbearing on the balls of the balls of the feet.
• hanasu 1-4 with emphasis on measuring ma-ai properly, moving right as uke passes ma-ai, and releasing and getting back to ma-ai by pinging and brushing off.
• shomenate
• shizumiotoshi

Whit is doing such a good job with his aiki and judo lately - really looking like a yellow belt.  All my kids are doing great and I am really proud of them.  It was really neat to see the aiki functioning properly despite such huge size differences.  The fact that a 7-year-old could evade and brush off of reasonable attacks from people 3X to 5X his size gives the rest of us some hope that the thing will work for normal-sized adults. 

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It is important for both parties to work with partners of vastly different sizes.  Both the smaller and the larger partners learn a lot:

• The smaller partner has to learn to work the technique using all of his mass effectively and efficiently
• The larger partner has to learn to deal with the speed and narrow timings of the faster man.
• The smaller partner has to learn to move at the larger man's pace in order to get the timings right.
• the larger partner has to learn to hold his muscular strength in reserve so he can work on developing real power.