Kokikai Aikido of Bucks County

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https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=973787536490428&id=551353802067139

Striking without Hitting

Atemi is often misunderstood and mistaken to be something akin to a pulled punch which would be completely ineffectual and entirely bereft of the spirit of the concept. The purpose of Atemi is to take mental balance of uke; it requires 100% commitment and conviction. It should be treated as your one and only chance at the spotlight, your soul, your entire being put into one brief Oscar winning performance. Uke must believe that not only are you going to hit them but their grandma is going to feel it. It should command their attention and response. And when you don't strike, it further creates upheaval and confusion while your other hand deftly takes their remaining balance and sends them crashing to the ground.

If Atemi required an actual hit, it would violate a key tenant of Aikido. No, not the peace, love, harmony stuff. The part about working against larger/stronger attackers. An actual strike against someone with 50+lbs on you is far from reliable. But your mind, for that instant, can be as big or bigger than anyone else's, if you choose to make it so.

Academy Award winning Leon Brooks Sensei conducting an "acting lesson". :)

Unbendable Arm (reprinted from Kokikai Rochester)

We have this technique/concept/superpower in Aikido called Unbendable. It's a way to use the minimum amount of muscle power to maintain the state (current shape) of your body. It most often is tested with our arms but easily extends to other parts. [Tangent, if you already know Unbendable arm, stand on one leg, go ahead everyone is staring at their phones, ok, now think about Unbendable leg, notice the increase in stability. Cool, right?]

Unbendable (arm) is used throughout techniques. It helps us prevent the collapse of our arms when guiding uke (the attacker) in various ways during technique. It also saves our neck, literally, during rolling (ukemi). If we make our arms as stiff as we can, they would snap or tear at ligaments in elbows and shoulders from the energy our falls. Notice that Aikido practitioners tend to keep practicing for many decades, so this damage must not be happening. Instead we learn how to use just the right muscles so that our brains and bodies have the capacity to dynamically adjust to the load of our weight, speed, and direction during the roll. Result, we get right back up and attack again and again, without damage, for hours at a time. In the picture below, is a sub-second long instant in time. What is not captured by a single still is my forward momentum, the rotational momentum about my center of mass. But given that, it still looks like my arm would crush and crumple under my falling weight. It didn't. The shape of my arm maintained the closest approximation to round one could with the fixed segment lengths of the hand, forearm, and upper arm, never presenting a sharp corner to be knocked off by the fast approaching ground.

This is "Unbendable" and it is a skill you can easily learn.

https://youtu.be/ILfn2Thw3tA

Koichi Tohei - Authentic Aikido Fundamental Concept Principle and Elementary Course Demonstrated and Narrated by Master-General Koichi Tohei. Демонстрация фундаментальных принципов и базовы...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPA1xVcSIrM

Tohei Sensei performs jo kata From the Maui Ki-Aikido vault: Awesome archival footage of Koichi Tohei Sensei demonstrating Jo kata!