Welcome to South Austin Aikido

This year, Gail, Charles and I went to Washington, DC for the annual ASU weapons intensive during the first week of July. It always seems so hard to get around the city where so many people commute to work. The amount of traffic in DC amazing and we think we have traffic in Austin (not even close).

Once you get into the training, it is always a valuable experience and this year in particular, being my fifth weapons camp, proved to be both challenging and exciting. You know the old saying "ignorance is bliss". Well, this holds true for aikido techniques. Once you start to recognize the more and more subtle pieces of Saotome Sensei's movements, you quickly find yourself going back to relearn what you know and integrate these subtleties into your own movements.

This year I began to see many of the subtle connections we often focus on in open hand practice during this year's weapons intensive. This had somehow escaped my vision in previous years and once again I found myself feeling like the Rob Schneider character in The Water Boy where he exclaims "Oh, no! We suck again!" I have come to realize that this feeling is a necessary part of one's growth in aikido. We have to be willing to let go of our old ideas and go back to square one to incorporate new ideas into our technique. This can be very uncomfortable in the short term; however, this practice enables our aikido to improve over the long term. Without allowing this process to take place, we find our aikido growth stuck in much the same way as we get stuck during a technique when the focus is on the stoppage point.

All in all, this was an incredible learning experience. I would encourage everyone to make the trip to the annual ASU Weapons Intensive. The 30 hours of weapons training during the seven day intensive will quickly increase your confidence in weapons practice. This in turn will enable your open hand practice to improve as well.

I hope to see you all there next year.