You have no idea

I was talking with "Evil" Todd in the parking lot after class today.  Out of that discussion, I realized something that I'd like to share.

New students often have very little idea how strong they are -- especially big guys. I was working with Kassim today (apologies if I got the spelling wrong).   He's a big strong guy.  He has previous martial arts experience, but he's new to Aikido.  We were doing Katate Dori Nikkyo.  He really had it "locked in," and was applying a LOT of pressure to my wrist.  He had no idea.

OK, so I'm experienced enough to know how to move to take some of the pressure off (and to tap!).  But not everybody is.  If Kassim were working with a new student, I fear that either somebody might get hurt, or somebody might at least get discouraged and eventually quit.

So anyway, that's not what I wanted to share -- it's just how I got there.  Here's my share:  Because of the way we do "Kohai rotate" during class, it usually splits the class right down the middle, such that the upper-rank half of the class is always working with the lower-rank half. This means less experienced folks are almost always practicing with someone with some experience -- this is a good thing in general.  But it does mean that new students seldom get to work with new students, and upper ranks seldom get to work with other upper ranks.

If we were to somehow orchestrate class such that, at least some of the time there was a more random pairing off, I think new students could benefit from working with other new students by experiencing their partner's inexperience (albeit with all the down-sides that come with that), and upper ranks could train together once in a while, too.

Just a thought...