Aikido Yoshinkai Burnaby

Aikido Yoshinkai Burnaby
Is Aikido For You?

The Benefits of Aikido

People study Aikido for various reasons. If your reason(s) are listed below, you may find the information that follows to be of interest.

Fitness:
Many people join in order to get or stay active and fit, or maybe to lose some weight. Those are certainly valid motivations for learning a martial art. While Aikido training isn't focused on building or maintaining one's level of fitness, the class activities can be quite strenuous at times, and will always be active enough to provide a decent benefit to your health. The further out of shape you are, the more you will sweat, and given time you will become relatively fit. If you are already quite fit, as a jogger perhaps, or you regularly train in a martial art already, you may not be satisfied with the level of cardiovascular activity you receive during Aikido training, enough to want to give up your other activities.

The classes are very much focused on teaching you how to perform and excel at Yoshinkan Aikido, which is primarily a martial art and only coincidentally a great way to stay active and build or retain your fitness level. If your focus is only on fitness, rather than on doing your best at Aikido, you would not be doing yourself or your Aikido instructor any favours by attending.

If however, you're looking for an interesting way to get or stay active, we invite you to try Yoshinkan Aikido. Many who have tried it purely for fitness reasons end up enjoying the study and training so much, their motivations for attending shift to include learning Aikido for its own fascinating sake.

Self Defense:
This is indeed the heart of Aikido. If you train with diligence and focus, long enough to attain advanced ranking in Aikido, you will understand and possess the ability to properly perform many very powerful techniques for defending yourself. Aikido's power comes not from applying your strength, but from applying a series of movements synchronized to your attacker's motions, that lead your attacker off balance. Once they are off balance, their entire weight and momentum provides you with all the power you need to bring them under your control. You will learn some astounding "joint locks", "submission holds" and "pins" that prevent your attacker from ever regaining their composure, and without hurting them.

It takes a long time and a lot of training to develop these movements to the point that they are effective. But every time you get one figured out, you are rewarded with a indescribable sense of achievement. One of the more difficult things you will have to learn, is to relax and try not to use your strength.

"The bigger they come, the harder they fall." That idiom starts to make a lot of sense once you start learning Yoshinkan Aikido.

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