Graciela Casilla Kali and boxing techniques 🙂

I would definitely buy this in Kali sticks!

That was great!

I love everyone's enthusiasm for Aikido. My dojo was based on Kazuo Chiba's version of Aikido. Wiki explains it best when it says "Chiba Sensei learnt it as a (practical) martial art and rejected vehemently the idea that Aikido should become something else hence he insisted on keeping a live martial element which resulted in stylistic differences from the Aikikai foundation who were moving toward a more generic system." I studied this Chiba Sensei-style for 5 years with all the blood and bruises to prove it :)

Exactly. I feel that we practice the movements slowly to build up muscle memory and then, as we progress up in rank, we start to move in more flowing ways. I think the reason why Aikido gets a bad rap is because, for most people, they won't see the effectiveness of their Aikido until they get to black belt level... and black belt takes a long time to achieve in Aikido... at least seven years in a Chiba Sensei school. However, and this is a big however, if you train at a school that's more yoga-like than combative, it will take far longer to develop the martial effectiveness of each technique. You could be a black belt in a yoga-like Aikido school and be ill-prepared for combat until you are at least 3rd dan. The ultimate goal is to learn the philosophy behind what we are doing, not necessarily the techniques, so that we can develop movement patterns and actions that successfully allow us to deal with any combative situation.

@Erik Allan Cool! I will be among your first customers! 🙂

Also, just thinking ahead but a hood-gi with the forearm armor of the Blokr jacket would be totally awesome. If you could make it so that the forearm plates are removable, perhaps with zipper pockets inside, that would be super. But this might mess with the aesthetic look of the hood-gi, so this was just a suggestion :) I like the forearm plates idea you had in the Blokr. It kind of reminds me of Batman's gauntlets :)