Shadowboxing?

Mike Tyson shadowboxing.

Solo practice in Aikido usually consists of weapons training in kata forms. This is an excellent method to ingrain the body movements used in Aikido unarmed practices. I think there could be an additional component added to solo training, namely unarmed form training. Most martial arts have solo drills or form training. Karate has kata, taiji chuan has forms and most notable western boxing has shadowboxing. Kata and form practice in taiji are "fixed", whereas shadowboxing is free flowing.

 

In your own Aikido solo training I would suggest the following: Create your own free flowing and unique form but with the basic principles intact. This would mean no rigid form is to be remembered but instead a spontaneous moving of the body in an Aikido manner. Feeling the movements as they are being performed is the biggest part of this training.

 

A few principles I try to incorporate are the following:

 

- Keep eyesight horizontal at all times.

- Hanmi posture should be the result of every movement.

- Try slow even movements like taiji, alternate with faster movement.

- Connect hip to hands in every movement.

- Hands move first followed by the waist and completed by hips and feet.

- Hips square as part of hanmi.

- Both hands move in relation to 1 hip joint.

- Use natural movement like arm swing.

- Relax shoulders at all times.

- Identify open and close in every movement.

- Be creative and use a 360 degrees attitude, you can move everywhere.

- Use three pins on the foot.

- Use basic Aikido techniques to experiment.

- Add the principles you want to focus on in your solo training.

Aikido in a taiji format has been suggested by sensei Sugawara in the past and looked like this.

 

 

Every practitioner of Aikido can create spontaneous movement according to principles and will learn a lot concerning his own body structure in motion. Partner training can be used to experiment with forces acting upon this structure.

 

Enjoy practice.

 

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