Se1Ep2 - A three space problem
- Noam Morchy
- May 21
- 1 min read
A lot of what you may see online, concerning Aikido are some big masters bouncing people around like they were yo-yos. This is only natural since what goes online is usually intended to grab people's attention. So when we talk about how to deal with a chop to the head, most of what's out there looks like this:
That's great, but in order to this effortlessly while maintaining minumum occupation of the common space, we probably need to train for a decade or two, and have a very well-practiced opponent (they usually don't fly this elegantly). We want to talk about something smaller, much simpler (okay, not simpler, really not simpler, but much smaller...):
Both styles, of course require a lot of training and a trained partner, but the magic, the "i did nothing and it still worked" is more evident in the second technique, the one that does the minimum in the common space, which is usually a much more difficult style: as strange as it sounds, we find it hard not to do much. We usually interrupt the attacker's movement by the need to push them, swing them, or in general do something to them. It embodies much of the difficulty in minimalistic martial arts movements or conflict resolution methods. They feel lacking since we don't feel like we are hurting or influencing the other.
Well, too bad. Because as you can see, less is more...
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