Kettering Aikido club

After an absence of over five weeks our club Sensei Richard Mulcahy made a welcome return last night. He commented that he could see a general improvement within the group, and I think we all congratulated ourselves on that being as a result of our experiments during that period.

However, Richard was soon hard at work bringing us back to reality in focusing our practice on basic principles, relaxation and controlling our own bodies.

There is nowhere to hide when Richard is on the mat, he definitely has the ability to zone in the moment he sees something that needs correcting or improving.

In my case that's quite a lot!

Our club Sensei, Richard Mulcahy, has been away for the last five weeks, but we have continued to practice in earnest, trying our best to employ the principles he teaches.

The freedom to try other methods to find those principles has been irresistible, however, and it's been a fascinating time where we have all learned a lot, reinforced our understanding and realised we still have so much more to refine and find out.

The study of Aikido is a never-ending journey, and it will be interesting to discover where Richard thinks we have taken ourselves; let's hope it's not backwards!

A collage of recent photos at our club.

The majority of our members have trained in Aikido for many years, but since the arrival of our club teacher Richard Mulcahy we have been made aware of our reliance on upper body movement and pre-conceived technique to achieve an outcome.

Our current exploration is a deep study of of the use of absorption and small rotational movement to upset posture to a tiny degree, and then entering through uke's centre line, without thinking about outcome or technique.

It's very difficult and frustrating, but when the whole body coordinates the result is incredible. Richard is away at the moment, so we're all learning from each other, and after forty years I personally am still learning so much.

So our teacher returned, and was quite positive about our efforts.

He still managed to present us with some tough challenges, though!😆

Our teacher, Richard Mulcahy, has not been too well for a couple of weeks, but intends to be back on the mat tonight.

They say "While the cat's away the mice will play", but our group has used the time to try and further our understanding of where he's leading us, and hopefully with a fair degree of success.

Tonight will reveal all!😳

"Right, this one's broken, so I need another".

"So, Rob, if you rotate it a bit this way, and enter with your right hip, I'll go down."

Another problem being discussed at our recent course.