Some Realities of Practicing Sydney Aikido

At Times, You May Never Apply Self-Defence

How can your verify your expertise as an aikidoka? One way of verifying your Sydney aikido training is through an actual physical event. Sad to say, you might be unlucky. Not every aikidoka will be given the rare opportunity to put their skills into real life practice.

Because there is no competition in aikido, all of us will be contend with having to wait for a real life situation wherein you can test your skills and verify what your sensei has taught you. But actually, how many of us could really get to encounter a mugger on the street? How many of us would face a bully at school? Could you practice your wrist grabbing techniques, locks and throws on a drunk who just passed you by without hurting you? Sad to say, it’s zero chance.

Our society could be dangerous, but most of us will never have to really defend ourselves. It’s kind of sad, right? So what are you taking Sydney aikido for?

You Can Never Measure Your Skills

How successful is your aikido or any other martial arts training? To measure it, you would want to participate in an actual physical event. For practitioners of judoka and taek won do, there are always the Olympics, Commonwealth Games and other sports competitions. What about us practitioners of aikido? Well, best thing we ever got is demonstrations with Steven Seagal and the masters from Japan.

It sucks that an aikidoka will never have the chance to measure his or her success. How can you know if your training has improved your self-confidence and awareness? How can you know if you are never attacked?

Expectations

But would you look forward to be attacked just so you can apply your nikyo or sankyo? Would you be sad that you were never attacked? Should you consider yourself lucky that you are never attacked? If you are thinking of benefits, don’t you think that aikido has taught you to avoid confrontation and de-escalate potential trouble?

For certain practitioner, they would be disappointed to the point that they would give up practising Sydney aikido altogether and get depressed. Worst, they would think their training is just a waste of time and money and their sensei is teaching them a lot of baloney. However, let’s realise a few things:

• No one would be mad enough to look for a fight. If you want a fight just to measure your martial arts skills, why don’t you take up karate?
• Aikido is for self-defence, not for self-aggrandisement. What a total waste of energy it is to make yourself greater with your aikido skills. O’sensei never taught us that.
• In any other way, our aikido training success is manifested in the way we express our self-confidence and conduct ourselves in public. Could it be that people never attacked you because they perceived you as someone never to mess with?

Sydney aikido is like insurance. You hate paying insurance, right? But you should pay for it and you also wish you will never you it. In some ways, aikido is like insurance, but we love our training. Despite the lack of attacks at the moment, it will be useful at the appropriate time.

The sensei at Shin Sen Dojo invites you to our Sydney aikido training. If you are interested, please contact us today and visit our website.