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Michael DiFronzo
19th November 2000, 21:08
I am a new student at New England Aikiki, in Cambridge, MA. I have been practicing for 3 months. It seems all the experienced people, when it is time to pair up, already have someone they want to team up with. I end up getting teamed up with another inexperienced person. We wind up both confused and feel we are not getting enough instruction to learn the tecknique we are working on. Is it common for dojos to become "clicky"? What should I do? From what I read so far on O Sensi, he said new students should be embraced, and no matter how experienced one is, you learn from working with new students.

Waveman
19th November 2000, 23:30
Hi Michael & welcome
I like yourself am new to Aikido & this forum.
The same sort of thing happened with me, so what i did was pick a senior student I wanted to train with & grabbed him by the sleave & put myself in his face.
Now it is taken for granted in our Dojo, that senior students & Uchi deshi train with newbies, so that they can help them, & so that they retain a beginers mind.

Gil Gillespie
20th November 2000, 00:35
In our dojo we look around and "break up" pairs of inexperienced white belts to minimize the above confusion. A sempai with a kohai is the paired practice we seek. Sometimes senior students like to pair up & "grind the stone," and they've earned that right, but sensei gets on us when we as sempai are not aware enough to prevent paired newbies.

George Ledyard
20th November 2000, 12:35
I have my senior students train with the new people in the dojo so that two new students do not get paired up. But also I tell them that they are responsible in the long run for their own training. I am not going to be assigning their partners for long so they need to know how to go after partners who can help them.

My advice is to look around at the senior people and pick out the person who you want to train with on the next technique before you even sit down on this one. Then when the teacher says to take your seats, sit yourself down right next to that person. In most schools the senior students are busy trying to train as hard as they can. Normally working with beginners isn't something they go running after but will do if they have to. Show them you are hungry, go after them, ask them for help after class. Pretty soon they will think of you as one of the serious ones in the school. Besides, if the truth be known, most people have egos that don't mind being sought out and asked for help. If you find any senior who responds to this by being abusive do not train with them again. If you find that there are more than one or two who do, find another dojo.

Ron Tisdale
20th November 2000, 15:07
Standard practise in the yoshinkan schools that I've been to is for senior students to take junior students during shite/uke training. This does not always happen, but it is very frequent that my instructors will make a point of saying it, or will actually go through the line reasigning partners to ensure it happens. This is not to say that the seniors don't ever get to train together; they do. But particularly in the basic classes, the instructors ensure that two "newbies" don't have to figure it out for themselves.

Ron Tisdale

Chad Bruttomesso
20th November 2000, 15:24
I have to agree whole-heartedly with Mr. Ledyard. Whenever I am in a class where I notice 2 white belts training together I make it a point to separate them. I feel that this benefits the senior and junior students. It benefits the senior students by giving them a chance to remember what it was like at the beginning and remember how to slow down. This benefits the junior students by giving them the chance to train with someone who is confident in what they are doing and is able to take the falls.

As Mr. Ledyard said, you must take the initiative for your training. If you want to train with the senior students ask them. If they, as a group, refuse you might want to give that some thought.

If you think about it the senior students are probably as focused on their own training as you are on yours. With that said, they may not have noticed that you are struggling and/or paired up with someone who is at the same level that you are. Speaking from a personal level, I am always more willing to help beginners that show a certain amount of sincerity in their training and have the courage to approach the Yudansha to ask for help.

Good luck.

BC
20th November 2000, 18:04
Michael:

I think many new aikido students have very similar experiences to your own. I know when I first started, I felt like to same thing was happening with me, even though in our dojo senior students were supposed to train with the beginning students. What I eventually realized was that you basically have to determine who you would like to practice with, and grab them as soon as you can. I initially made the mistake of assuming that just because the sempai were supposed to train with beginners, that they had to seek me out. The problem is, there are usually more beginners in class than sempai, so they pair up with the first kohai that find them. When I realized this, I decided not only to be more aggresive in finding sempai to train with, but also to work very hard to improve my ukemi. My thinking was that if my ukemi was (relatively) good, than at least some sempai might be more willing to practice with me than before - plus, I was able practice my ukemi at home as well as in the dojo. I'm not sure if this helped in finding partners. I think what really eventually happened is that as sempai got to know and recognize me in class, they would bow in with me more often. I also found that the best sempai to practice with were the ones that actually wanted to practice with beginners, because they realized that often that's the best way to determine if you're really practicing the techniques correctly, especially the basics (there IS such a thing as a too-cooperative uke). Anyway, my two cents worth.

Michael DiFronzo
21st November 2000, 08:51
Hi, I took the advice, and went right up to a senior student and said I need to train with an experienced student because I am having confusion in class. The student I approached sought me out and we trained together. It was awesome. The differenc was astounding. He really liked my enthusiasum, and said if I stick with it, I can have a bright future with Aikido. Thanks everyone for the perfect advice.

Sincerely,

Michael DiFronzo