Hi- I'm sorry if this has been discussed to death...but I have a question and situation I am curious to hear your ideas about.
Um...In Aikido...what is the difference between someone resisting energy and you doing a poor technique?
I worked with a guy doing Shihonage the other day and I could only move him slightly before I felt a lot of resistance----"I was like man my technique is not good"----but my instincts were like "I ain't gonna fight this guy" so I moved him as far as I could and then changed sides.
I wasn't frustrated, just curious- the guy says "You want me to stop resisting? I find it helps me learn when people resist, but I can stop." I said, no, you just do what you want to. Its cool.
When I felt the resistance I noticed other techniques that were opening up...but it wasn't what the teacher showed so I just kept failing at Shihonage.
What do you guys think? Should your techniques work even when someone gets super rigid and muscled up?
To my own understanding, you should not move into resistance. Regardless of using internal or external force, your movement should feel free even when UKe is resisting.
But, this is much easier said than done, especially once Uke knows your technique, and is on a level comparable to your own.
As a general rule, once you face resistance is starting to build in a particular direction, your technique should shift a little to either go around it, or tunnel through it or roll over it, depending on the exact situation , while generating power that is harder to follow and resist. Or, if the resistance is too strong, you may wish to use it to get into another technique.
It is pointless to practice a technique directly against resistance, since if you can do that, you could simply grab the guy and throw him with force - and the technique is not needed.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions and feedback:
I guess I wonder about the nature of ukemi- if ukemi means to recieve then why on earth would you ever resist?
Sometimes nage does not have my center, but that doesn't mean i resist him- I dunno
Training with the existence of resistance, is not the same as working directly against resistance. As mentioned above, one should be able to do his Aikido even when Uke is resisting, it would not be the Kata Senei showed, but it would be Aikido.
And Ukemi is not just simple recpetion, it is a much more subtle issue, which is at least as important to "martial effectiveness" as doing the techniques.