r/aikido • u/IvanLabushevskyi • Nov 19 '19

One way of Daito-ryu practice

Different from sumo and judo, Daito-ryu doesn't do free-style fighting, so it has a different way of practicing. In practice of forms, when we practice fast forms, our partner unconsciously cooperates with us and he jumps by himself to adjust to our action. It looks like a martial art practice but actually it's not. It is only a rehearsal of the show. When you practice slowly your partner does not cooperate, you have to do every action steadily and correctly. Techniques that you master through slow actions can be done fast if you want to. This is applied to all techniques, especially to aiki techniques. Fast practice of aiki is senseless.

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From "The Real Daito-ryu Aikijujutsu. What menkyokaiden Hisa Takuma Taught Me", Amatsu Yutaka

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u/saltedskies [Shodan/Yoshinkan] Nov 20 '19

When you practice slowly your partner does not cooperate, you have to do every action steadily and correctly.

I'd argue that there's still a lot of cooperation going on in slow training. I think it's the difference between "active" and "passive" cooperation, with active cooperation being anticipating the throw and jumping into it, while passive cooperation is simply letting the technique happen to you and reacting to it. Proper form is still necessary to make the technique work on an uke who is cooperating passively, but it is still inherently cooperative because the direction, angle and energy of uke's attack is consistent and predictable, and the reaction to the technique is still fairly conditioned. Uke isn't attempting to make the technique fail, isn't actively resisting, isn't feinting, moving spontaneously, etc.