This week in Aikido

So went to Aikido with eldest daughter this Saturday. She had fun in the Youth class and then I attended the beginners class that comes after hers.

It was... interesting. The warm ups, basic exercises, and weapons practice were all what I'm used to. For the weapon portion we stuck with bokken and basic front strike.

The open hand technique was the odd part, to me at least.
Cross wrist grasp - o.k. standard opening I remember those.
Elbow power #1 and then finis breaking their grip with your off hand - hard to explain, but again nothing new
Cross step, step-in-throw - interesting, in "the old days" I don't know if that would have been a 6th kyu technique but memory fades.
After throw move in for Achilles tendon pin- and my head when waaaaa??? I don't recall any leg pins from back in the day, let alone having a pin off a throw be on something as low as 6th kyu. Wow....

Talking with some students after class (brown belt, and a shodan) found out there are now choke holds, some sort of cross body pin, and a host of other things. Plus more is being added.

So yeah post split in the 90s Yoshokai has gone in an interesting direction imo. My current feeling is they are trying to go more into the pre WWII style of Aikido. We'll see though.

But overall class was good both daughter and I had fun. Still like it. :-) (oh and the brown belt I worked with had wrists as big as Mr. Bedor's!)