I'm not an Aikidoka but you might want to look into your reiho too, that's all the etiquette etc. Knowing how to bow and move is valuable in Budo and you can expand this study to other cultural aspects of the art. Your tai sabaki (foot work, although it's a bit more than that) and your kamae (posture, again it goes beyond that a little) are basic building blocks of what you will be doing and something you can work on without the risk of screwing yourself up too much. Spend some time getting used to sitting in seiza (kneeling) and moving from that position, shikkō (knee walking) is perhaps something you could look at once you have been shown it.
Thanks Dean I wont be tryiong anything new without the guidance of one of the club's sensei's first. And i have been doing a lot of Suwari waza recently (i think that would be the equivalent of seiza). Once again thank you all for the help, this forum is amazing
Off the mat, you can greatly improve your focus. Be perfectly conscious of everyday tasks that are normally automatic. - This not only improves your Martial Arts, but it can also improve the quality of your work. The 'fighting' techniques taught in most Aikido schools are quite hard to practice solo, but it is possible. - If you are trying to the flow of Aikido in solo moves, it helps to know other 'soft-styles' like Tai-Chi To understand both the attacks, (e.g. Shomen Uchi) and applications of Aikido, it's good to take up Iai-Jutsu.
All good points but the most important is to ask your teacher what they want you working on. Depending on the style there could be very specific foot work and weapons to do
Thanks to both of you, i'll be asking my teacher & trying to "Be perfectly conscious of everyday tasks"
I used to take a grading syllabus to college with me and read it every spare moment I got. Terminology can change with club, association and style. So get your own clubs syllabus, training material and work from that.
There is plenty of tandoku training an aikidoka can practice. Not knowing your style of aikido, it is difficult to say what's included in your syllabus. My friend used to practice being uke for specific techniques as if a nage were performing them on him. Pretty interesting training...makes you think about technique from a different perspective. As you say - ukemi is a great thing to practice at home. As a senior student for various ukemi drills. Class time is limited and there are plenty of ukemi your senpai should know that you don't normally practice in class, or that you haven't seen yet. Strikes! Practice your strikes! So many aikido people have horrible strikes and kicks. However, as was mentioned with practicing weapons at home, its better to practice quality than volume. If you want to study off of videos, use a digital camera or smartphone to take some videos of your instructor...and try to replicate at home. I'm not going to tell you to avoid Youtube or Vimeo...but be really careful with what you absorb. I would use it as entertainment value and not a study tool. Youtube can be very misleading and can be hard to get value out of it. To caveat off Aikiwolfie, once you get your dojo terminology down you can look into other groups terminology. If your dojo associates outside its organization, it helps to know what other aikido groups terms are...websites like MAP are good for that as well.
