After the first Kids Aikido class in Wimbledon

Finally I slept well last night. I think everything went well during my first kids training and both children and watching parents seemed to enjoy the class. Obviously, there's a lot I can improve and there's a lot more we can practice in future trainings as the kids learn more and more basic movements and techniques. I forgot to say and do a couple of things but I didn't expect that everything should go exactly the way I planned, I needed to practice being flexible and spontaneous in 10% of the time.


Someone said after class that I was too serious and hardly ever smiled. I will definitely work on this because it's a good point and I know I tend to concentrate too hard sometimes. An aikidoka has to be relaxed, that was one of the reasons I started aikido for, I needed to build confidence, had to be more relaxed and, obviously, I needed a good exercise. I hope to improve these skills in children I train, too.


There were six young aikidoka in my class and I want to say thank you to all of them because they worked hard and focused surprisingly well during that one our yesterday. I also want to thank the parents who brought their children and some of them supported us by staying there and watching the class. I really liked one of the fathers who laughed every time the kids did something cute and funny. It was a positive support towards me as well.


We practiced a couple of breathing exercises, the famous rowing exercise, played balancing games, learned hidari and migi hanmi positions, mae ukemi and ikkyo omote. This week we will step forward and extend our knowledge.


The above photos were taken by our "regular photographer" with the verbal approval of parents. If you are a parent of one of the children and want to see all the other pictures as well, please contact me.

ps.: Yesterday I learned that there are actually people who read this blog :). Parents mentioned reading it and newcomers in the adult class also said they had read a couple of posts. Thank you all, I'll keep writing and sharing my aikido thoughts! On Wednesday I'll post an entry about Heroes' Hiro Nakamura ;).

My first Aikido experinces

If you are talking about aikido in public, probably the first reaction to pop up will be something like “oh yes that Steven Seagal stuff”. Funny though, I didn’t even now this “common sense” until I was doing aikido for about a couple of months. Well, maybe that was my luck; otherwise I would never start learning this beautiful martial art. Not because I have no respect for Seagal, of course I had also enjoyed his movies, but because I don’t really like aggression (and now we all know that was only about entertaining), it wouldn’t be the real motivation to catch up with it.

Fortunately my master Laszlo Elsner 5.dan have more sense of harmony, so after seeing my first ever training in early 1999, I got really excited about something absolutely new (for me, of course :) ), therefore I was already taking the following class in my jogging trousers and my favourite Red Bull t-shirt (you have to look cool, hah?). I remember having pain in my knees, ankles after the first fallings, but I was absolutely determined to survive J At the beginning the progression wasn’t quite easy for me, because the majority of the club was pretty beginner-guys being graded for 5th, 6th kyu, or had no grade at all. So I started to attend classes also in my masters headquarter club, where I could also practice with some guys having hakama. Soon I realized I was utterly addicted to aikido, having 5 classes a week, plus helping out in the children's classes on Saturdays and Sundays, which made it 7 trainings a week…
The reason for doing aikdo is simple: I found something that I was missing and I would really miss in my life. Not just Aikido, harmony or the universe’s energy, but friends. Friends who really made my last decade, and hopefully they will so in the following few ones :).

The first training

It is generally understood that first things are always memorable. You remember your first day at school, your first kiss and most certainly your first aikido training! There are, obviously, exceptions but if you loved it (or it was a complete shock :)), you will probably remember. This post is about my first training experience. If you too have your story please share it in the comments.

It was back in 1999 in my 2nd year at the (then) University of Veszprem. Each semester, we needed to collect 20 signatures from some sort of sport activities, and I was really bored with the excuse-sports the year before (airgun practice), so wanted to do something 'extreme' along with some friends. At that time a martial art seemed extreme enough, so I picked one at random. Alright, this is not true :). It wasn't random. I already heard about karate and kungfu but nothing about aikido, so it was an obvious choice :).

Having no martial art experience, the first training was...very funny. You had to sit down in the beginning in a line with others, and had to be in total silence for at least a minute. Then there were these jumps and breathing exercises, still in silence.
If you are in an unusual situation you often give a strange smile or play around with your fingers, ears, pen, etc., and since my body movements were controlled, smile remained :) Actually, I was really about to burst into laughing, and so were the other newcomers (roughly 15 of us). There was one time when I even needed to pretend coughing to hide a sudden laugh. I felt exposed in front of all those people and I was so lame. At the end though, I was tired and didn't feel like this anymore*. During that week of my first trainings, I already decided that aikido would be a long-term "exercise" for me.
By the way, the training was about tenchinage (as I learned its name later on).

Please share your experience with me (and other readers) even if you martial art is not aikido. That would make the story-set really interesting.


*this is not true either :D. There are still days when it's hard to control myself in the beginning of the meditation before class. The difference is that now it's now because I'm in an unusual situation but because I want to train so much and my body would jump and do those tenchinage (and many more) techniques. Be warned: the squeaking sound of a swinging punch bag can be very dangerous :D!