And I know these posts were made awhile back but I thought I'd include this anyways:
The demonstrations were NOT of aiki, tho if you want to call it aiki feel free.
He's trying to demonstrate the importance of "standing" and that you should need a "stance" persay to pull these things off. As in, he's trying to show everything in the most "simplified" version. It just happened that it ended up looking "Aiki" like when he did it that way. He can make his stuff look and feel like Internal CMA if he wants, and then use the same body skill with DRAJJ techniques...its all the same.
Yes his enrollment at Sagawa is verifiable, and in fact we had a student who studied 10 years at Sagawa's place come by last night (which was kind of dissapointed...didn't have nearly the structure I thought he might...and the fact that he was floored by Ark should speak of Ark's skills...but feeling is believing right?
)
And yes his background was originally more in the ringsport of Sanda. He originally competed in the first International Sanda Competition in Beijing, China in 1991, took first place in his weight class (65kg). These days though he's more about building the "core" or "foundation" common to all high level MAs, tho he's considering on getting our feet wet in Sanda/Muay Thai at some point.
Anyone have interest in the seminar/ happen to be in Tokyo and want to participate in a class/ or just want to shoot the "#$t email me at
foshizzlepizzle at hotmail dot com
Rob John