“Like with Aikido, you are using your opponent’s movement/energy against him. ‘Okay, he pushed a pawn… now the two old squares it was guarding are no longer guarded… how can I use this to my advantage?’ or ‘His bishop came off of the a2 – g8 diagonal and now his knight is no longer defended. How can I exploit this?’”
Brian Kagen is an avid web researcher with a particular interest in martial arts. His training background includes both judo and aikido. He has contributed hundreds of article links over the years for AJ readers.
“I am aware of the growing trend of Aikidoka to cross-train in other martial arts. It has received a lot of support over the past few years from some high ranking and influential people in the Aikido world. I find this trend to be really unfortunate for Aikido, and it saddens me that people are being encouraged to go in that direction.”
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“To follow Buck’s excellent post, I thought I’d republish our training guide, which you can also find in a printable format on our class information page.
The article below has been selected from the 
“One of the biggest problems Aikido has is that somehow it has evolved into an art in which the practitioner strives to understand some very sophisticated techniques and principles while working with a partner who acts handicapped. Ukemi, as it is generally taught, has evolved into something that makes the teacher look good. This is terrible martial arts and really doesn’t require any degree of skill on the part of the practitioner to do technique. If you partner breaks his own balance, disolves his own structure just because his attack missed its target, throws himself simply because he perceived incoming in tent from his partner, no one really has any idea what is going on. The practitioner can’t know whether he actually did the technique or his partner “tanked” for him.”
“Practice. This is the single most important attribute for becoming good at budo. It doesn’t matter how talented you are. It doesn’t matter how nature gifted you with strength and speed. Without regular, ongoing practice, you won’t be good. Period.”
The article below has been selected from the 
The article below has been selected from the 
“If anything above sounds obscure, then this is to be expected. The spiritual dimension of aikido is the hardest to talk about. It is hard to say anything about the spirit or the soul without using religious-sounding language. This language talks about people’s most diffuse feelings. It talks about big questions like “what is God?” or “what does God want?” It puts these feelings into words and it answers these questions with words, but words alone are not really adequate to the task.”
People will talk at length about Aikido and how invincible someone else was using it.
“The Bay Marin Aikido dojo was empty this morning, just half a day after 100-odd aikidoka bowed out with Saito Hitohiro Soke to end his two-day seminar in Northern California. I had expected students to show up for noon class today with renewed enthusiasm, ready to practice what we had learned over the weekend, but as the noon hour chimed the parking lot remained empty.” 
We have just uploaded a demonstration by Nobuyuki Watanabe Sensei on youtube. Watanabe is an 8th dan instructor at the Aikikai Hombu Dojo in Tokyo, Japan. He is known for his soft, no-touch style of aikido that leaves viewers scratching their heads wondering about his technique. This particular demonstration from 1987 is closer to a more traditional style where the usual aikido techniques are easily recognizable. Watanabe Sensei’s demonstration here takes place around the time he was featured prominently in two “Do Sports” tv documentaries that greatly expanded awareness of his approach to aikido.