Essays & Articles

Equipment - by Alex Lawrence

If you’re going to seriously study Aikido then there are a few things you are going to need.
First and most obviously you’ll need a white suit. The correct name for it of course is not “white suit” it is keikogi which translates as “training clothes.” Usually this is shortened to just “gi” or occasionally “dogi” but the latter tends to be an American thing.

There are a few types of keikogi all designed for different arts, which you wear is up to you. The two most common are Karategi and Judogi. Karategi are quite lightly made as Karate, being mostly a striking art, doesn’t really need kit that resists ripping. You can probably get away with wearing one of these although it might not last as long as other types of keikogi. Judogi on the other hand are woven from heavy cloth and are quite heavily reinforced so they are quite tough. A good Judogi will last for perhaps three to four years of regular practice. Less common but becoming more common is the specialist Aikidogi. It sits half way between a Karategi and a Judogi being made of reasonably tough material but lacking all of the reinforcing patches; lapel grabs are uncommon in Aikido and therefore the patches serve no useful purpose. Another key difference between Aikidogi and other keikogi is the length of the sleeves. Sleeves on other keikogi cover the whole arm, on Aikidogi they stop about half way up the fore arm.
The reasoning for this is that it makes wrist grabs and weapons handling easier. In any case there seems to be a tradition within our dojo that sleeves are rolled up past the elbow, it’s not mandatory but it does seem that everyone does it.
Keikogi cost between £20 and £30 and along with the keikogi comes a white belt and since you we do not use coloured belts you wont have to worry about buying a new belt for a very long time! You will notice that during practice there are many pairs of sandals lined up against the edge of the mat, these are called Zori and are a required item of kit. Their purpose is to ensure that feet do not come into contact with the floor at any time, minimising the amount of dirt that gets brought onto the mat. Zori can cost between £6 and £20 depending on how flash you want to be. In fact an ordinary pair of flip flops is fine so you might not even need to buy Zori.
A minor but increasingly popular item of kit is the tenugui (lit hand cloth) which is useful for mopping up sweat during practice either as a towel or as a sweat band worn around the head. Traditionally in Japan it’s a sign of taking things seriously and being willing to work hard. In our dojo it’s a sign that you’re fed up of getting sweat in your eyes! The next major part of your kit will be your weapons. A lot of dojo have “club weapons” our dojo does not………..individual members will sooner or later be required to buy a set. I’d advise that you spend a reasonable amount on weapons and not just buy the cheapest available. While I understand that the kit is expensive and some people might want to be sure that they like Aikido before they financially commit to it, the reasons for not buying cheap kit are entirely practical.

Cheap weapons, at best, last about a year before they break and even from day one you have to be careful with them; a good hit from an Iwama Ryu will shatter a cheap bokken. When weapons do break it is often the case that half of the weapon is sent flying across the dojo. I have seen cheap weapons break after only a couple of months of use. A £10 bokken sounds cheap now, but when you’ve bought two of them in as many months you may as well have bought a decent Iwama Ryu bokken (also known as an Aiki bokken) that will perhaps last for decades.
Generally in our dojo people have two bokken, a heavy bokken like an Iwama Ryu bokken for contact drills and a kata bokken for non-contact or very light contact drills. The reasoning for this is that while an Iwama Ryu is practically unbreakable, you can’t really feel what your partners sword is doing with it. Of course, just to state the obvious, if you used a kata bokken for heavy contact it wouldn’t last very long and bits of it would soon be flying across the dojo!
The kata bokken of choice in our dojo is the Niten-Ichi Ryu bokken, it’s made of the same Japanese white oak (Shiro Kashi) as the Iwama Ryu but is much thinner and lighter. The other major weapons are of course the Jo, or staff, and the Tanto or dagger which are also made of Shiro Kashi.
Shorter bokken called Shoto or Wakizashi are sometimes used but really you shouldn’t need one until you’ve been practicing for several years and want to mess around with mai-ai. Of course you will need a weapons bag to carry your weapons in. The best are home made, but commercially made ones are available.
A word of warning here. For some reason there are people who feel that they need “the best quality” kit they can get hold of. This usually translates into “the most highly priced” kit they can get hold of. You can spend hundreds of pounds on bokken, be they hand crafted from Shiro Kashi or made from some expensive and exotic wood like ebony. No matter how expensive your kit is, it’s not going to make your sloppy technique better and at some point it will break, be content with buying kit that will do the job for a reasonable amount of time. Also when you’re buying a keikogi plain white is the best.

Next question of course is “Where do I buy all this kit?” The best thing to do is to talk to Sensei, he can get kit at a discount. If cost is an issue, don’t buy it all at once. A keikogi is essential, you can put off buying weapons for a month or so, maybe longer as there are usually spare weapons. That said, the sooner you have your own weapons, the better.

The next thing I want to cover is books. There are loads of books out there dealing with Aikido and martial arts in general. A small word of advice, avoid the technical manuals when you’re starting out, they’re not all that useful for people just starting out and they may be teaching a different style of Aikido. There are, though, two books I would pretty much make everyone read. Kodo by Kensho Furuyama, it’s a series of essays about the realities of martial arts training, which I find very inspirational. It’s a book that will get you through the days where you’re wondering why you bother. Another very good book is In the Dojo by Dave Lowry, the title is self explanatory it’ll tell you about all the etiquette in the Dojo and the reasoning behind it as well as describing Dojo culture.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009 0:02 AMTuesday, January 6, 2009 0:02 AM