Welcome to South Austin Aikido

Craig Sensei shows Todd how much safer it is to be nage than uke.

On Sunday we had a guest instructor from our sister dojo in San Antonio, Alamo City Aikido. Craig Slack Sensei gave us a special training day, providing the opportunity to challenge our members at all levels. This was our first special training day in the new space. The energy was outstanding with 14 aikidoka on the mat and we all had a wonderful time.

A view of the front door from the mat

Thanks to the hard work of several of our dojo members, we have accomplished a lot in just three short weeks. We have multiple changing areas, storage closet, fans that provide great airflow and a viewing area with plenty of seating. Simply put, the space is coming together wonderfully.

Cierra pins her sweaty but proud dad.

Thursday night Cierra Kling became the first member to test in our new space. Cierra made us all proud, showing great poise while performing all of the required techniques and plenty more. She moved in a relaxed manner, showing great progress for someone who has been studying aikido for only 8 months.

It has been a busy week. Many of us were tired from working on the space over the past several days and the weather failed to cooperate by providing a heavy hail/rain storm just 45 minutes before class resulting in traffic problems. Even so, opening day in our new space was great!

I am pleased to announce that we officially have our own dedicated space for "our dojo" :-) We will train at the Elks Lodge on Saturday from 3:00PM - 5:00PM and then move the mats to our new location.