UKEMI – the problem with Nage centric training

If you look at most teaching manuals, they are essentially Nage-centric in their approach to teaching Aikido, perhaps in the beginning of the manual there will be a brief description of how to fall, how to do a forward roll, a backward roll, knee walking, and so on. However, the focus of most manuals are the movements of Nage with little explanation about Uke. To better understand Aiki a better grasp of Ukemi is required. Ukemi in this context refers to the movements of uke not only how they perform the attacks but equally how they respond to nage’s defensive techniques.

In a presentation by Henry Kono, he stresses the role of uke (the person receiving the technique) is not that of a passive victim but of an active participant essential to the discovery of balance. Kono emphasizes that “there is no victim in Aikido”; rather, the uke and nage (the defender) function as two halves of a single, unified whole striving always to be in balance.