I believe that attribute training is just as important as skill training. Most Taido practices are about developing skills — and this is probably the most efficient use of class time — but poor attributes (strength, mobility, endurance, and flexibility) will limit your performance of those skills. If you want to get more out of your Taido training, you…
taido is athletic, and you can only expect performance of certain movements in students who are relatively young. i certainly feel that we should continue to encourage young taidoka to reach the goal of black belt. eventually, we are going to have to hand them the reigns all together. i know i can’t keep performing at my level forever, so i want to make sure that there is someone ready to step up and keep creating new taido after i’m too old to eat anything but oatmeal.
A while back, I ran a poll about warm up methods and promised a follow-up article. You are now reading the follow-up article. I think most people are vaguely aware of the importance of warming up prior to engaging in demanding physical activities. Properly warming up prepares the body to operate beyond its usual ranges — and pushing beyond our…
rather than simply pointing out flaws, i’ve always been of the opinion that we should present better alternatives. i feel that the exercises i will outline below can lead students to develop a better method of breathing for taido. i find that these exercises lead to a very natural way of breathing while moving that is highly adaptable to taido technique (adaptation being one of the five tenets of taido’s philosophy). because i want to encourage others to experiment with these exercises (and because providing evidence that the current theory is inadequate is tedious), i will first present my “better alternative” before attempting to nitpick shukumine sensei’s method in a later article.
Note: Anyone who’s taken a Taido black belt test administered by Taido Honin has probably read the name “Ostwold” in connection with Taido’s taiki theory. Ostwold won a Nobel Prize for explaining how the body takes in and expends energy, but I feel that his name is wrongly invoked in Taido to justify some pseudo-scientific idea about energy…
