Sorry to hear about your injury. If I understand correctly, you did not feel nage had you in a good nikkyo so you did not go down, but as a result, you ended up getting injured. This is a fairly complex situation to be in for the following reasons. 1) Smaller joints such as the wrist can be broken or sprained quite easily compared to larger joints. Our normal protective instinct is based on pain; however, with adrenaline, the sense of pain can diminish and by the time your wrist hurts, it could already be sprained or broken. For this reason, when small joints are manipulated, you should consider always going with them or at least tapping out early because it is so easy to be injured. 2) It isn't that simple, on the other hand. There is no such thing as ukemi unless nage allows for it. So as Aikiwolfie stated, nage must learn to control uke. Nage should never attempt a lock without first unbalancing uke. So as you might see, if nage had unbalanced you before placing you in nikkyo, you would not be asking whether to go with it or not, because you would have not much choice seeing you are already unbalanced. There should be no way for Aikido technique to ever be resisted. If someone is too strong, then atemi is used to cut them down and unbalance. If nage failed to unbalance you before Nikkyo, they should train to use atemi to strike through an unbalancing point rather than break your wrist because you are not unbalanced. Otherwise, you will end up with a lot of sprained wrists from training and then there won't be any ukes left. 3) As I stated above, there is no ukemi unless nage allows for it. So nage must learn how much to allow for uke to be able to ukemi safely allowing for nage and uke to feel the full technique without permanent injury. If nage does not allow for ukemi, then uke should have their wrist broken and there isn't anything uke can do to prevent this unless they tap out early or counter nage. 4) It is important that uke be allowed to feel the full technique because one primary part of ukemi is to steal technique. Uke must be allowed to feel what works and what doesn't so they can steal what works and learn to avoid what doesn't work. 5) However, ukemi is more than just allowing for the full technique to be applied safely and stealing technique. As part of ukemi, one learns how to protect themselves, not by falling to the ground but by how to protect vitals and bring themselves to their limbs. For example, with shihonage, the break can be in four places if the arm is extended. Instead, as part of ukemi, uke is taught to bring the side of their head to their forearm. In doing so they are protecting against the broken arm. In the case of nikkyo, as part of ukemi, uke learns to go with the technique to a point where there is a hole and the technique can be countered. 6) Countering is dependent on the lesson plan. We usually allow for uke to slap nage with the other hand. So if I was uke and nikkyo was being applied, I am allowed to use my free hand to slap nage in the side of the head. If we are working slowly, then my slap would come slowly, if we are working faster, my slap can come at any time. The point here is that if I'm unbalanced and nikkyo is applied, I never get my slap off, but if I'm not unbalanced I can nail nage and unbalance them with atemi, then counter the nikkyo into placing nage in kotegaeshi, for example (so now they are uke and I'm nage). Yes, but not by falling on the ground. The falling on the ground is because a lock or break is turned into a throw. Actual throws are designed often to twist the spine or otherwise cause the enemy to land badly. For example, you can jerk up the arm on a break fall to cause uke to land on and break their tailbone or you can follow them down and land on top of them with your elbow into their ribs or your forearm across their throat. So breakfall is only for training as breakfall against a skilled opponent out to kill you does not protect you if the opponent can cause you to land badly. The protection comes as part of the immediate response to being in a bad position. This is where ukemi protects. Everything after is because nage chooses not to cause permanent damage. The real protection from ukemi is to feel out the technique and identify where there are holes for you to counter attack. Yes, uke must learn how to identify when they are in a bad situation and put their ego aside and so they can come back and train another day. Such things such as small joint manipulations can cause injury before uke realizes they are in trouble due to adrenaline masking the pain.
Again uke should be properly unbalanced first. This allows nikkyo to be received using the whole body, less emphasis on the wrist. Also nage will be in a position to Inflict serious injury if it were a practical situation. At the makotokai, attempting to apply a technique while nage still has their centre will simply get you a bop in the face. Can't over emphasise the need for kusushi.
'Ello Joe!! I asked for a grant once, didn't even get a reply.... Money accesses money, not what you know, who you know.... c'mon mate!!?
One sprained wrist shouldn't put you out of training. You have a spare. Ukemi as I understand it is the art of receiving technique. So of course part of it is learning to train without injury. However you don't simply yield to a technique to avoid injury. Uke should only yield to the technique when it is being applied correctly. In my training I've always offered a graded level of resistance. Black belts are given more resistance than white belts. As uke it's your job to make nage work for the technique. You should always be pushing nage beyond their comfort zone. However you still have to respect your partners ability and they have to respect yours. Was it a higher grade who applied the Nikkyo to you?
So far as I know there was no grant. The dojo was built in phases. I think it was converted from a car sales lot or some such that had in turn been a farm house before it. Strictly speaking dojo is owned by the Ki Fed. Although I don't see any reference to them at Companies House. Which means they're not a limited company. Which in turn means Ken Williams basically owns all the assets personally. At best he'll be self employed and claiming to run a not for profit organisation.
That's tough. There are always going to be those accidents that happens. Sometimes they are simply unavoidable, though it shouldn't be a common occurrence. For a little more control with nikkyo, try using the wrist to lock the arm, which locks the shoulder, and compromises balance in the spine. Just enough pressure is placed on the wrist so control doesn't get diffused all in that small area, but travels along the body. The result will be a visible drop in uke's hips and the buckling of his knees. If too much emphasis is placed in small joint manipulation you aren't going to get very much control...just pain compliance, which is inconsistent at times. Hope you heal quickly.
I have not read the whole thread but in my opinion I think the original poster should think carefully about how they accept feedback from others. One of the hardest things in this world is to get honest feedback about ourselves from other people. This kind of feedback is incredibly valuable and can tell us something about ourselves that we could otherwise not know. OP asked the visitor for feedback - the visitor was good enough to give it to him honestly rather than just BS about how great the club was. The OP then immediately reacted defensively and tried to angrily negate the feedback. In the OPINION of the visitor the training was too martial. It is pointless just to shout this down. I agree with the OP in that I prefer training that is reasonably martial. But not everyone is the same. You can´t just force your preferences on the world. Apart from anything else this is not very "aiki".
The reason why what I said may have came across that way is I found it one of the most absurd things to say when coming to a MA club. I disagree with the idea that the other ways to practice are AIKIDO if they are not MARTIAL. Would you expect someone to say it in a Karate, kendo, judo dojo or boxing club? Aikido should be no different. I can only teach what I was taught, and that was Aikido is a Budo not an exercise
thanks for the reply- I am agreeing with you about the martial thing- we are not supposed to be dancing and should make the training as reasonably martial as we can short of causing regular injuries. Of course not everything has to be martial all the time. When we are learning the pins for example we don´t have to always go full on to acquire the muscle memory we are trying to achieve. Also we take it easy with beginners and graduate up to more realistic attacks. Nevertheless comments such as from your visitor help us to recognise that often making the training more martial means that training becomes less attractive for SOME people. One thing I have learnt (as I am the worst in the world with accepting critiscism) when you get feedback you perceive as negative just accept it with thanks and think it over before reacting. It is tough because such comments can be a shock (google the SARA model for accepting feedback).
I trained in Ki Aikido for over 10 years. Making Aikido "less attractive" to certain kinds of people would be no bad thing. Experiencing different modes of practice is good. But when you get to the level where you're basically sitting down and standing back up again or people start to believe it'd be better to stand and let someone punch them around because they've bought into some bull-crap third hand semi-religious philosophy designed to sound vaguely like budo to untrained naive westerners. Things have gone very badly wrong. The only way to fix that kind of bad is to ditch all the fancy talk and musings and go back to basics. Keep it simple and honest.
