I believe Ikkyo is a wonderful technique, and for many years I thought I'd really nailed this one. My omote was strong, and my ura-waza was energetic and controlled in a clean cork screw to the ground, the way that Saito Sensei showed it a gazillion times.
But it turns out, I've never really understood it. It was performed well enough to pass all my gradings, but the reality was, it was very easy for a strong uke to resist. Ok, no run-of-the-mill uke, but a trained martial artist type of uke. The kind that when they are not training aikido, they train ground grappling techniques in jujutsu and judo.
I figured if my technique was good, and I trained with Shihans to do it their way, it would work on most people. With a compliant shomen uchi attacker, I'd move offline, and project right to the face, and bring uke down with a lovely ikkyo arm bar to my centre of influence.
So lets try that with Bazza, 130 kg and a 3rd dan (no expert but capable).
Shomen uchi comes in, entry by nage, looking strong.
Nope. Um, why's he still standing there.
Because you're going against his strength. He doesn't want you to overpower him. And he just hit you in the face.
At risk of repeating myself, fellow trainees, (lets call them aikidoka) all allow the nage to do their technique so we can learn. But somewhere along the line, perhaps from Hombu (Aikikai Headquarters Japan - but also Iwama, Yoshinkan etc), we've allowed it to become a body movement of cooperation. Because it looks nice and it flows and it's harmonious. If we are only learning to cooperate, we never actually improve our martial skills.
A dilema.
A decade or more ago, a very high ranking sensei in Melbourne began making some adjustments because of this very problem, and for me is one of the biggest revelations in my training for 20 years.
We'd become complacent in our aikido.
To be continued...