These photos are more art than documentary. Take a good look, they can tell you a lot about aikido!Take a good look, these pictures can tell you a lot about Aikido!
Aikido is also work in the vineyard, we agreed with our youngsters. One Saturday in October, we enjoyed the fresh air while picking grapes on the hill above Žernoseky, where Bogdan Trojak has a vineyard and we sometimes help him out.
We woke up early in the morning and arrived at the place in the morning fog. We couldn’t see even a few meters, almost by touch we were picking and cutting the tassels, our fingers wet from the cold dew.
Green hills, cold streams, narrow rock passes and in the middle of it all young people from Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Ukraine practicing aikido for a week.
We were in the Slovenský ráj again and it was wonderful!
This was our 15th summer school in Třešt’ under the guidance of Martin Švihla. 7 days and 6 hours of practice per day. Plus lots of time together over meals, evening talks, ambient music concert, board games and… just a week with good friends and aikido.
That weekend there was to be a camp for young aikidists in the vineyard in Žernosky. But it was much, much more…
One weekend in May, Martin led two seminars at the Dojo De La Roserai in Toulouse, France. Friday and Saturday were for adults, Sunday for children and teachers of children. And the whole week before that he and Vanda spent in Bordeaux… so here are his notes from the trip:
“Bang on you” – this was probably the most frequent phrase of our aikido weekend together. Traditionally, in early May, we went together with the aikido kids to the Svobodný statek na soutoku. The theme of the camp was the question, “What good is aikido to us in life?”
The exams are an important milestone in the life of an aikidist – and the black belt exams even more so. At this year’s seminar with Franck Noel, seven brave members of our club advanced to the next dan level. You will find their names in the article.
It was still bitterly cold in Prague in February, and we were greeted at Barcelona airport by the sun and the smell of the nearby sea. And so we began to thaw…
We sat on the mats after practice, resigned expressions on our faces. I think Honza broke the silence: ‘When is the next training? And where?”
On that Thursday in November, the first snow fell in Stockholm. The beginning of winter. We slept on the tatami at the Iyasaka Aikidoklubb (there’s an insanely noisy air-conditioning system running at night) and got up at six in the morning. An hour practice, a quick change of clothes and a subway ride to Vanadis, where there was another morning practice at another club. Then we had breakfast at the cafe where Astrid Lingren used to go (Pipi Longstockking was written in the tenement across the park) and the lunchtime training was starting, which of course we also attended. Three workouts in half a day wouldn’t have been too much, but we kept up the pace of 3-5 hours of exercise on our sixth day in Stockholm… and we still had three more intense days to go.
A cottage near the forest, training on the mountain meadow, cooking together, hiking up the hills on the horizon, morning exercises and night walks, conversations by the fire, swimming in the spa town, reading comics and watching horror movies… our camp in Jeseníky was really very varied!
This year was our 14th summer school in mountains. As usual it was full of exercises (7 days and 6 hours of training every day) and at the same time it was very different in many ways.
This year, eleven of us went on the annual trip to France, so we were really an unmissable group at the summer aikido school on the island of Oleron. Also because most of us were young students around 18 years old.
More than 20 aikido teachers from all over the Czech Republic participated in the training of teachers of the Czech Aikido Federation, which we hosted in February in Prague’s Vinohrady. The training was conducted by Martin Švihla from our club and René Novotný from Třebíč.
7 days and 6 hours of training a day. Training with and without weapons, indoors and outdoors, during day and during night, in keiko-gi and tracksuit. And with food, games, massages, sleep, additional training and exams in between. See the video!