Welcome to South Austin Aikido

Friday 6/4/04:  Wow, where do you start to describe a very full and exciting weekend of aikido.  First, we were invited to teach aikido techniques to a karate school at the Austin Recreation Center on Friday night.  This was attended by Leslie sensei, Jay sensei, Alina, Robert, Matt, Chad, Jesse, Todd, Tommy, Brian, Barbara and Brenda.  The event was a blast!  The students were incredibly open and receptive to the techniques.  It was a real eye opener to work with other martial artists who had a different perspective on training and how to move.  It really anchored home the importance of movement in performing techniques of any style.

We first started trying to teach rolling to the kids class.  Finally, winding up looking a lot like Arnold Schwarzenegger's first day at school in "Kindergarten Cops".  Whew, That was wild.  Then we worked with the adult group for over an hour.  All in all we got to roll and share our aikido with the group.  The energy in the class was awesome.   Special thanks to all the members of the Karate School for opening their dojo and hearts to us.  Thanks to Chad, Tommy, Brian, Alina and Todd for toting mats over to the recreation center.  That was like real work.  We had to lug them up two flights of stairs. UHG!!

Saturday 6/5/04:  Pamela, Chad, Todd, Tommy, Brian, Brenda, Barbara and myself traveled to San Antonio to visit our friends at Alamo City Aikido.  We arrived in time to roll around with the kids class.  Requiring a lot of shikko, boy are my quads unhappy!!  Following the kids class we trained with Craig Slack Sensei until we were totally drenched.  Us Texans can really sweat.  (Converted Californians Sweat good too).  After class they conducted tests including an Ikkyu test for Shawn Young.  The test was grueling but she hung in there and did an outstanding job.  Thanks to Todd and Barbara for driving us around all day.

Sunday 6/6/04:  Seven members of the San Antonio group traveled to Austin to train with our group.  What an amazing class with 27 aikidoka on the mat.  It was definitely a seminar feeling in the dojo.  After the first class we had testing for Pamela Tovar (Rokyu) and Todd Kammerer (Ikkyu).  Both tests were outstanding.  Pamela showed incredible softness and control of body movement, especially considering the fact that she has only been training since February.  Way to go Pamela!!  Then Todd handled the many and energetic attacks of  8 different ukes during his test which lasted almost an hour.  He was pretty spent by the end but did a lot of really nice aikido during the test.  Todd definitely represented our dojo well during this test.  Way to go Todd!!

• Click here for the pictures from this awesome weekend