Kime – the long and the short of it
When I was training in Aikido, our head instructor, Sensei “Koa” Kimura was an older (actually, only in his mid-fifties) local Japanese man. He was solidly built, with thick muscular wrists and forearms…this was apparent to me, a frequent “attacker” who had to grab his wrist or arm or gi before getting slammed into the mat. My dad told me that Kimura Sensei worked in a car repair shop as a “body and fender man”, which explained the strength of his upper body and arms. His primary teaching method was to demonstrate technique by throwing or taking down an uke and have us copy him (typical Japanese methodology). His explanations/exhortations were pretty much limited to: “Yoop! Yoop!” (his form of kiai), “Shoulders down!”, and “Focus on One Point.” When we did the technique with some semblance of correctness, he’d exhort in rapid fire fashion, ” You see! You see! You see!” If we did it wrong, he’d say, “Chikara…No good!”. Chikara, of course, means bodily strength and in Aikido, we were trying to develop technique and reliance on mysterious Ki force versus using physical power. Ironically, on one of his frequent trips to the islands back in the 1960’s, I [...]