Wing Woo Gar
Senior Master
I know nothing of aiki per se. Pardon my guess, but I would say that in your everyday life a developed aiki is more often useful than the most efficacious combat techniques. Please advise.There is usually some work on technique progression (if you hit resistance on kote gaeshi, reverse to kokyu nage). Unfortunately, the mindset often continues into that kind of drill, where the reversal isn’t practiced with real resistance.
Part of the problem is inherent in the pursuit of aiki. Aiki development is not an efficient path for fight training - it takes a lot of time and effort to develop the aiki principles, for a marginal increase in fighting ability. Leaving out the aiki, and just focusing on solid fighting fundamentals is a more efficient path to competence.
But some of us really like the subtlety and challenge of aiki training, so we prefer that path. The problem is that means we aren’t looking to progress our respective art to the most efficient and effective techniques, etc. That can lead to ignoring realities of combat, in favor of developing aiki.