Advanced Aikido. Phong Thong Dang

for powerful execution of techniques. The best way to gain proficiency in a specific skill is through repetitive and realistic training. Specific skill training is best thought of as either gross motor skills or fine motor skills. The gross motor skills are those that the entire body participates in using the larger muscle groups of the body and are often the easiest to practice and gain proficiency in. Under stress, the gross motor skills maintain a higher degree of proficiency and effectiveness. Fine motor skills require the use of the smaller muscle groups and are far more detailed in their action and task. Visualize the movement to help coordinate and unify your body and mind. Staying relaxed, breathing, focusing on your center, and extending your ki can help you apply aikido concepts to skill training and acquisition. Slowing down and paying attention to the persistent and consistent repetitive and realistic training with and against honest intensity and intent will help one build aikido skills. It is hard to tell beginning students to slow down and pay attention to body movement. There appears to be a natural tendency to want to speed up. They need to develop the correct form, alignment, and coordination. It is wisest to pay attention initially to each individual movement and not let momentum, speed, and ego dictate training and condition in sloppy technique execution. Correction to overcome a bad habit is often much harder than learning a technique correctly to begin with.

      Block training also tends to help long-term skill retention. Block training refers to the number of repetitions that one does of a task within any execution set. One set may be ten repetitions. Another set may be five repetitions followed by a break followed by another five repetitions. In the beginning, one will practice a single technique repeatedly, as if finding a training groove and staying in it. Eventually, with consistent and persistent training, the student of aikido will practice finding a training groove by doing only as many repetitions as necessary to find that specific feeling. Many know that it is not training more that achieves skill improvement, but training wisely. It is easiest to stay within a training groove or block. It is harder to keep finding that groove. Research suggests that the best long-term retention of a skill comes from repeatedly finding that training groove.

      As stated earlier, under stress, the body responds best to the adrenaline pump, rush, and dump, when the advanced student keeps training simple and direct in strength, flexibility, cardiovascular, and skill acquisition.

      TRAINING PSYCHOLOGY

      The field of sports psychology focuses on providing techniques to facilitate optimal performance. As a field of psychology, its focus is on mental and emotional development and discipline. Initially, sports psychology helps identify those internal mental and emotional blocks to better performance. It then begins to model, install, and imitate a more positive and constructive model of performance. Sports psychologists base these models on elite athletes in the field. Last, the field of sports psychology teaches how to let go and enter the "flow," the "zone," or in aikido, what we call takemusu-aiki.

      One sees and experiences aikido mainly through the teaching of physical discipline and practice of the techniques. Most dojos and senseis permit very little, if any, talking while practicing and training. This type of introspection may need to be part of the personal study and journey of the aikido student. Two of the most common obstacles to optimal performance are fear and anger. One creates fear by negative internal fantasies about what might happen. Fear is strong enough to create an avoidance reaction, but usually only brings into one's experience everything that one is afraid of and trying to avoid.

      Peak performers in sports and athletics demonstrate an absorption in the activity facilitated by a detachment from conscious awareness of their performance. The athlete feels a sense of ecstasy, a sense of personal power, an altered perception of time, and a sense of unity. "Peak experiences" have a high level of joy or ecstasy, feeling transpersonal and mystical, a sense of passivity, a feeling of unity and fusion, a loss of self, spontaneity, and a feeling of peak power. "Peak performances" demonstrate superior behavior, a high level of performance, a clear absorbed focus, a strong sense of self, and a sense of fulfillment with intended action but spontaneous performance. Most do not necessarily consider it playful.

      The optimal arousal level refers to an inverted-u theory in which too little or too much arousal produces a decline in performance. Therefore, for optimal performance, the arousal level must be neither too much nor too little. Too little often leads to a lack of motivation or drive. Too much arousal tends to overwhelm. One need is to know that moderate zone where one is "psyched up" but not "psyched out."

      The flow state (CSIKSZENTMIHALYI 1990 and JACKSON & CSIKSZENTMIHALYI 1999) characterizes a challenging activity requiring skill and a merging of action and awareness. The flow state has clear goals and feedback. The athlete concentrates on the task and the possibility of control, and experiences a loss of self-consciousness and a transformation of time. Athletes report the flow as fun, enjoyable, a loss of ego, playful, a feeling of control, a loss of time and space, and an intrinsic motivation. The athletes balance the challenge of the skill to allow themselves to feel neither too much anxiety nor too much relaxation, leading to boredom. Athletes learn to overcome inertia and get moving by facing down failure and by moving beyond their comfort zone by believing in their skill and ability. The flow creates an absorption in the task that transcends normal awareness, allowing the athletes to forget themselves, to let the competitors worry about themselves, to accept the environment as a given, and to focus on the process at hand. This flow of awareness results in a loss of a sense of clock time and any sense of effort. The flow uses winning only as a guidepost from which to set clear and specific goals that will enhance motivation and enjoyment. The flow emphasizes feedback from the kinesthetic (feel) sense of awareness and outcome information from the athletes themselves, the coaching staff, teammates, the opposition, and spectators. The flow focuses awareness in the present since the past is gone and leads nowhere and the future is still under construction. Total immersion in the present requires the ability to refocus, to use task goals, to keep things simple, to plan for the competition, to make backup plans, and to practice concentration that will direct attention. The flow only controls what is controllable by finding the optimal control level, recognizing the controllable, setting the stage, and choosing responses. Above all, the flow is fun.

      The zone describes a transcendent experience in sports (MURPHY 1978 AND 1995). The zone has mystical sensations of acute well-being, peace, calm, stillness, detachment, freedom, floating, flying, weightlessness, ecstasy, power and control, being in the present, instinctive action and surrender, mystery and awe, a feeling of immortality, and unity. The zone alters perceptions of size and field, time, extrasensory perceptions, out-of-body experiences, and an awareness of a spiritual other. The zone facilitates extraordinary feats of exceptional energy, overcoming invisible barriers, and fosters an extension of energy, psychokinesis, or mind over matter. Sports and athletic performances evoke this spiritual zone through the physical and mental demands of the activities, the sacredness of time and space, and sustained and focused attention. An athlete in the zone has a sense of detachment from the results and demonstrates a dedication to the creative and integrative powers for the exploration of human limits. The zone has the ability to command long-term commitment to express a perennial philosophy of a fundamental spiritual reality that is a provisional reality of the ordinary world. The zone facilitates the need for discipline, for the knowing and expressing of a deeper perfection, an essential ecstasy, knowledge of and by identity, a rich inner world, and a knowledge and acceptance of the subtle energy body. Elements of a mind/body training program to facilitate the zone would include meditation, biofeedback, visualization and mental practice, inner seeing beyond simple visualization, dreaming, sensory and kinesthetic awareness, and the development of Ki, or the energy body.

      Athletic programs that facilitate peak performances, the flow, and the zone, all have several things in common. The first is the centering of the athlete's attention and total awareness in the present task. The second is the use of repetitive rhythmic routine and training. The third is to trust one's training to the point where conscious control and thought are removed.

      It can easily be seen that training with honest intensity and intent in aikido will produce peak flow and zone performances or what one might call takemusuaiki, the spontaneous and creative execution of aikido.

      ETIQUETTE TRAINING

      Everything in aikido begins and ends with etiquette and respect, essential parts of the