I agree that some of the attacks are wildly silly. This is often because many aikido students today (and some instructors) have little experience with other styles before beginning aikido. It wasn't always so.
At some point, probably after my ikkyu test, I intend to practice karate for a while in order to improve my grasp of the pacing and flow of striking combat, which is where things usually start out. Aikido techniques are most easily applied when the attack is maximally committed, and many strikes are in fact feints or relatively light jabs used to create openings. In aikido practice, we generally go straight to a single committed strike as uke; this is pretty much a teaching aid not to be mistaken for the context in which the technique will arise in real life.
Our head instructor did ten years of tae kwon do, so he devotes some time to this kind of thing in our classes; we also have some senior students with other experience, with whom practicing can be quite "eye-opening".
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Date: 2007-09-30 12:56 pm (UTC)At some point, probably after my ikkyu test, I intend to practice karate for a while in order to improve my grasp of the pacing and flow of striking combat, which is where things usually start out. Aikido techniques are most easily applied when the attack is maximally committed, and many strikes are in fact feints or relatively light jabs used to create openings. In aikido practice, we generally go straight to a single committed strike as uke; this is pretty much a teaching aid not to be mistaken for the context in which the technique will arise in real life.
Our head instructor did ten years of tae kwon do, so he devotes some time to this kind of thing in our classes; we also have some senior students with other experience, with whom practicing can be quite "eye-opening".