Exploring Heavy Connection: Inspired By Yamaguchi Sensei | New Year’s Aikido Seminar

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Unlock the advanced technique of Yamaguchi Sensei’s "heavy connection," a key concept for senior Aikido practitioners.
In this video, recorded during my New Year’s seminar in Los Angeles, we explore how to ride uke’s center and build a powerful connection that improves your Aikido skills. Whether you're practicing as nage or uke, these insights will inspire and enhance your training.
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[@kingofaikido]

Hi Lia, I agree with you that there's heavy contact. Indeed, Endo's student are encouraged to lower their center, when attacking, in just the way you describe...allegedly to enable an understanding of center to center connection out of which all techniques arise. That's good as far as theory and practice goes with the proviso that it takes away one of the fundamental difficulties of aikido, namely taking the center of someone who isn't willing to give it to you. In short, when we lower our center, apart from the advantages you mention of not getting hit in the face, this act, nonetheless, is a concession not found in other schools. Indeed, it's a massive concession that makes for beautiful aikido but only if beautiful aikido was all important. Self-defense and combat is unforgiving however. People do not sacrifice their balance this way willingly, anywhere outside the dojo. It seems a rather large concession to make, if the idea is simply not to get hit in the face, when that idea can be achieved with far, far less sacrifice of our balance. P.s. I also agree with you that one shouldn't go into a grab, standing tall, like you demonstrated in the 'what not to do' section. Indeed, I was taught that the hand grab was merely a preliminary set up for a strike with one's free hand. Secure the defenders body in space, so that the strike lands more securely. A boxer doesn't have that luxury, since they are not allowed to grab their opponents. "Clinches" are broken up, so that fighters may begin again from a distance. Which doesn't mean to say a boxer wouldn't pop you (hit you) on his way out of a clinch. The nasty ones often do just that, especially if they've been unsuccessful in landing punches from a distance. This move then is held in common in aikido, at least in versions of aikido which remain aware that it is a martial art. We live in the 21st Century, where encounters are unlikely to be with naive fighters or with people who don't learn from two minute videos online. In short, I think our art faces a crisis, unforeseen by O Sensei. Either we maintain course, striving to be like our teachers (and feeling satisfied with that) or we find ourselves in the same predicament as O-Sensei...to (re)create for ourselves a functional martial art that can deal with anything contemporary that can likely be thrown at us. I suppose the third option is to remain open-minded, while bearing in mind this fork in the road, without losing our soul in the process. After all, "he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword"...but it is also true that 'he who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in eternity's sunrise.'

[@liasuzukisvirtualdojo6240]

@@kingofaikido thanks as always for taking the time to watch the video and leave a comment. And thanks for the reminder that unlike me, lots of people focused greatly on how these movements and techniques would serve us in the context of a fight.
Aikido is a martial art, of course. but I always feel like I’m selling it short if I think about it in that context.
Just a different outlook I suppose.

[@kingofaikido]

@@liasuzukisvirtualdojo6240 Selling it short..? How so..? What is it if it isn't a 'martial art'..? When I got my floating ribs on both sides broken by an AKI instructor here in New Zealand, in the dojo and unprovoked by me, all the other instructors immediately defended his violation. I went up the chain of command all the way to the Takeda family and all I got in response was 'aikido is a martial art.' Maybe Takeda says one thing to ladies and another thing to men, I don't know. But I do know what O-Sensei might have said, given he's on record saying "to injure another person is a grave sin," and that would stand to reason if aikido is, in fact, a martial art of love. It would be hypocrisy otherwise to go around breaking bones in the name of love. But Takeda Shihan doesn't even pass the minimum ethical requirement of a typical Westerner in a modern Western democracy, where a violation is a violation and not an excuse to say how "good your sambo skills are at breaking people who aren't even fighting you back." Takeda may have nice technique but it doesn't mean he's got his head screwed on straight. Unluckily for us Westerners, our cultures differ in so many significant ways that if you haven't felt 'culture shock,' we know you either haven't stayed long enough in the country or delved deeply enough into the thought processes of the Japanese. No wonder our ancestors went to war with them.