Rolling, rolling, rolling, keep these newbies rolling...

Yesterday I did Aikido for the first time (it's a form of Martial Arts for a lack of a better explaination if you're not familiar with it). A friend from work came with and we loved it.

The class, students and senseis, are extremely nice and outgoing. Instantly accepted and taken care of as if we were part of the flock. It was amazing. We spent most of our time rolling around on the mat (that's not really a fair example, in Aikido you take turns being the attacker and the attacked to practice all aspects of the battle up to escaping, etc), but when it's so hard to keep focused on the hands and footwork we don't have a lot of options.

Even the junior students were very good and patient teachers. They were able to slow down the movements for us enough to be almost comical, but any faster might have caused serious harm, heh. Aikido even being mostly a defensive art, it would take great skill to drop someone with one of the holds or the like and still not risk breaking an arm.

I recommend it to anyone to find a class in their area and make it happen. You'd be surprised at the people and personalities in this class. One of the people I can only easily describe him as Mr. Magoo. He's five feet tall if that, looks like he could be in his 50s, has a bit of a pot belly and is just as agile, flexible and has the endurance of anyone else. To see him recover from some of the falls is amazing.

There's some stuff on youtube, but last night the topic was how bad it all was. I have an eBook that I was reading that warmed me up to some of the things that I should expect. I suggest if you're interested in Martial Arts this would be a good place to start! Even more than that, most of it doesn't involve strength as much as agility and flexibility, so this may be a good sport to get into to compliment an exercise regiment (like me and P90X).