Shomenuchi what exactly? Do you mean Shomenuchi ikkyo? You typically learn irimi and tenkan when you start Aikido, but shomenuchi itself is an overhead strike applied by the uke, it is not in itself a defensive technique.
Yes, sorry -- I was referring to shomen uchi ikkyou.
The difficulty for me with Aikido is the "set nature" of the techniques and lack of flow (at least in the early stages. Which is entirely understandable, as you can't really flow before you have the basic techniques down, and there's a lot to get squared away).
But, regardless of the art, I always find "set drills" and "set responses" to be a bit awkward. There are so many small factors that can dictate a different response. The distance or timing might be slightly off. "Uke" might feed you the attack in an awkward way, or at a slightly different angle. You might step slightly wide, narrow, short, or long. This kind of thing leads to different circumstances, and different energies, which require different responses. And this isn't just due to the incompetence of the teacher, or the students, as I've heard people use that excuse to write it off before. I've noticed it in every school, and every martial art that I've studied. It's just the nature of the activity that it can be very hard to replicate everything "correctly," and that can lead to people "forcing a technique" to work in a way that is a tad awkward.
Of course, this could just be me. And in some cases, I really don't understand what the technique is trying to teach me. I'll use shomen uchi ikkyou as an example:
The way it was taught to me is that as Uke raises his arm to attack, I enter with irimi to his inside, and catch underneath his elbow from the outside and do the technique. Now, this is really counter intuitive, because I'm moving to the inside, while taking his elbow from the outside. This often causes uke to spin the wrong way, or simply results in me not having the structure to stop his attack because my arm is extended over the centerline. It would make much more sense to me if you moved to the outside to perform the technique. But, I'm sure that the technique is trying to teach me something, and that I'm just not getting it. So I just keep doing it "wrong" in hopes that I will figure it out eventually.
In this case, I'm not sure who's fault it is; if I'm doing something wrong, or uke is. It works sometimes, but more often than not something else happens. It could be physical factors too, as I train with people much larger than myself; on this technique in particular, I find that sometimes I can hardly reach the points I'm supposed to catch uke's arm, besides all of the other issues I pointed out.
Of course, I can flow with the energy that Uke gives me and I give him, and sometimes go into a different technique when things "mess up", but that's more a product of my training in other martial arts than my Aikido training. And of course, I'm doing the technique "wrong" in that case, or merely failed to create the correct circumstances and energy for it to occur. So I generally refrain from that and try to figure out what I did "wrong," but I do feel that, if I had only trained Aikido, perhaps I would not have the ability to flow in the same way, but would rather have a more static and rigid view on things.
So, basically, I feel that it is the lack of dynamic training and "flow" exercises are what make Aikido hard to understand and really get a feel for, especially given its focus on using/blending with an opponent's energy. At least, this is my impression from my very limited experience. I've only been at this for about 4 months now.
