Sadly I don't live anywhere near Ohio otherwise I would take you up on that offer. Our dojo has progressively been getting smaller and smaller due to people moving a way. I think our sensei is a little down about this because he doesn't have anyone that he can train with at an intensity that would make it more interesting for him. I'm determined to get to a point where I can offer my sensei some form of challenge as a uke. We also have Tohsiro Suga coming up for a seminar this month if all goes as planned.
That happens to all dojo. One of my teachers almost closed his dojo. He is a 7th dan in aikido and has been running that place over twenty years. Attendance was very low. A few of our instructors meetings he talked about it, but couldn't bring himself to do it. I just visited his dojo recently (he's about two hours away from me, I was uchi deshi for him and he is the head of my aikido organization) and they had about 45 kids in the kids class and over 30 in the adult class. Oddly the advent of Groupon helped save the dojo. He did like a friend referral program and it brought in some new blood, and now the place is thriving again. My home dojo goes through the same thing...almost seasonally. It seems like when our karate class is slow, the aikido class picks up...when aikido is down, karate picks up. Judo/jutjisu stays around the same (pretty slow these days, but will be picking up as testing season is forthcoming and senior students who left to open their own schools will come in more often so all the seniors in our region can train together)...we recently cancelled our iaido class for about three months, but I think they are up and running again. Plus we have the dojo rats who cross train in the arts and are always at the dojo. But we took a hit as some guys schedules changed, or they opened their own school. We try to all get together at least one class a week...and a couple guys who's work schedule changed resulted in our dojo having morning classes (only about 3-4 people attend morning class though). TL;DR Have faith! All dojo can go through slow periods!
Uchi Deshi Program..??? Well if you have any extra time to yourself you can always do an Uchi Deshi program for the summer. My school is always looking for Uchi Deshis. I guarantee you will get what your looking for.
What dojo is that, BklnyJames? Not a lot of uchideshi programs out there. I'm a little biased, but I really can't emphasize enough how important uchideshi, or sotodeshi, intensive training is for a serious student of budo.
Uchikomi is about repetition. You practice the throw right up to the point where your opponent is all but thrown, then you reset. You do this because throwing the time you spend waiting for your opponent to get up, dust themselves off and reset is wasted time. You can do 10 uchikomi in the time it takes to do 2 or 3 full throws, but if you're doing them right, you get almost all of the benefit.
