After 44 years of studying, practicing, and teaching Aikido, people sometimes ask me: How did you manage training all those years? The glib answer is: don’t stop. Naturally, it’s a lot more complicated than that.
If Aikido is a significant part of your life, as it is for me, there needs to be time allocated to it. It has always helped me to earmark parts of every week for Aikido. Currently, I practice once a week at Ithaca Aikikai for two hours on Wednesday. In addition, I instruct two classes a week at the Binghamton University Aikido Club on Thursday night and Sunday afternoon. Teaching follows the school year calendar, which means Winter and Summer breaks, etc. So, if I include travel time, ten hours a week. For me, that’s a comfortable amount of time and fits into my work/life balance.
Even if you carve out the time to dedicate to Aikido, you have to have the motivation to actually go and do it. When I was younger, I was very interested in exploring and learning Aikido and that was all the inspiration I needed. At this stage of my life, motivations consist of honoring commitments, maintaining my health and (frankly) having fun. At the end of a long work day, I’m often tired and sometimes just don’t feel like going to the dojo. At such times, I give some thought to what motivates me and it’s usually enough to get me up and out the door.
In my early days of Aikido, it was challenging to figure out how to move my body to perform a specific movement or defense. After I got past that, the challenge was to understand WHY certain things worked and others didn’t. When I started teaching Aikido, the challenge was how to explain things in a way that others will understand and use. Now, my biggest challenge is coping with changes in my body.
I am not a competitive sort of person. Organized sports can be fun to watch sometimes, but they’ve never attracted me to participate in them. In Aikido, I don’t compete with my fellow students. Sometimes I compare myself to others--especially those I feel are more advanced--but even then, it’s not a contest. I don’t have competitors, I have opponents. Training with others provides me with the physical opponents needed to work on my Aikido defenses, but my biggest opponent is myself and it gets harder and harder to deal with that person.
Personal health is by far and away my biggest challenge to my continued practice of Aikido. I no longer have the stamina, strength, or flexibility of youth. I have sustained injuries that have permanently reduced my ability to perform at former levels. The biggest impact was having my right hip replaced with an artificial joint. I have not been able to use many forms of ukemi since that surgery, including most forms of rolling and breakfalls. I also suffer from vertigo that prevents me from some kinds of rapid movement.
These and other health issues prevent me from practicing as I used to. However, I don’t view that as a reason to stop. Instead, it’s a personal challenge: If I cannot perform as I once did, what can I do now? Are there changes I can make that still make my Aikido effective? Viewing the problem this way shifts me from regret to motivation. THAT is why I’m still practicing Aikido. I want to figure out how to make this old body work. Perhaps I can overcome certain limitations. Maybe there are new ways to do things.
It was this personal challenge that attracted me to Ithaca Aikikai. Fisher sensei has been very supportive of my struggles and is incredibly patient when it’s clear that I cannot perform what she teaches. She has been inspirational in ways that few others have been in many years and I’m grateful for that.
So, I struggle on knowing full well that my challenge is ultimately a losing battle. It doesn’t bother me all that much. Mostly, I accept my limitations though it can be sad and frustrating at times. Still, the benefits outweigh the frustrations, pain, and failure. I am still practicing Aikido after all these years. There are not many left who can say that.
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