Customer Reviews

Aikibatto: Sword Exercises for Aikido Students

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Sword practice is a great tool for all budoka to advance, to get more precise, more sharp in his art. Aikibatto, brought to life by Stefan Stenudd, is a set of simple practices for both self and pair practice, which covers elementary moves, attacks, and other parts of sword work. Author, who served also as chairman of Swedish kendo, studied the sword with Ichimura Toshikazu and Nishio Shoji, which makes the book even more trustworthy.

Good basic sword book that covers a lot of beginner ground and is well illustrated in b/w. Typical of books like this, a lot of transition motion is missing between the images which may be a problem for some. Book presents a series of bokken and jo techniques, all rather basic but good quality instruction none the less.

As I often do, I take issue with Stenudd's method of breathing, which cover a whole 2.5 pages but deserve significantly more. In fact, if more teachers actually knew how to breath and if practitioners spent more time training breath, skills would improve radically. The author describes controlling the breath with the abdomen. In a sense this is correct, but not as he describes it.

The author says, "Most budo techniques are done with exhalation, where you are the strongest." Really? That's like saying I only punch with my right hand even though I have 2, because my right is strongest. That's very limited. A stronger approach is to synchronize the breath with rising and falling and be able to flow both with Qi and the cut.

For example, using Tachi Iaido Kesagiri Bunki, or any type of say draw that employs a rising diagonal cut, done correctly an inhalation is stronger than blowing all your energy out, and, it sets up a fast second downward strike with the exhale. However this author tells me to "forget my inhales and only focus on exhales". Kind of like only focus yang and ignore yin; its just wrong.

He then tells me to "extend exhales and let inhalations be done by body reflex that will be short and sufficient." Again this is wrong. If breath is not even, smooth and rhythmic, the body gets out of sync and heavy breathing is the result. Very poor technique, but Stenudd says, "this decreases the risk of getting out of breath". No, it doesn't.

I think this is the most important training in the whole book, and unfortunately it is both too short, and incorrect. Leaving the breath aside, if you can, the rest of the book is rather good for what it is.

I've been a student of aikido and Toyama Ryu Iaido for over 6 years, almost as soon as I had seen this book offered I bought it thinking it would be a valuable training resource. I was unfortunately very mistaken in the hasty decision.

I found this book to be rather shallow and uninsightful, instead of exercises the reader is presented with a new set of kata. This would be great for someone in an aikido school where the sword is de-emphasised, however I did not appreciate being mislead.

If you're looking for sword drills, look up Suino, if you're looking for aikido, the Ueshiba books are great, as are Shioda-sensei's. This unfortunately was a waste of time and money.

Despite his supposed knowledge and supposed years of teaching experience, this is one of the worst presented and empty works on the theachings of weapons in aikido that I have ever had the misfortune to have purchased.

He leaves out the basis eight kata for the boken, does not deal with footwork (the very reason such is practiced), proper manner in hodling the boken, etc.

I do not recommned this work.

namaste