Techiniques

When you learn Aikido you warm up performing stretching exercises, breathing exercises, break-falls etc. It is important to make sure that your body and mind is in a ready state for practice to avoid injury to yourself and others.

There are thousands of techniques in Aikido, (some say “infinite” as Aikido is personal to each and everyone). The techniques are split up into unarmed and armed, where you would practice in pairs or groups. To give you some understanding of just how many techniques there are, you have approx 9 basic applications or throws. These are then practiced in unarmed training, where you have different stances - one is where both of you have the same hand offered or oblique stance where opposite hands are offered. From here you would take the wrist where all 9 techniques would be applied, both left and right hand. Or the sleeve, lapels or the back of the collar, then you have a striking attacks from punching to stomach or head, chop to the head or neck, these are just the attacks with one hand. These are learnt both standing and kneeling. Then you have two hands on one, again from wrist, sleeve, lapels and shoulders also shoulders and neck from behind. So you can see the amount of techniques are building. As I’ve said in earlier posts Aikido is a Japanese art and as is custom a lot of time was spent on your knees, so you had to have a way to defend yourself or your Shogun from attack.