Aikido und Baseball

[FireFlea]

Hier eine Geschichte ueber den Einfluss von Aikido auf Oh Sadaharu; einen der (wenn nicht der) groessten jap. Baseball Profis aller Zeiten.

http://cms.psychologytoday.com/articles/pt...501-000026.html

[AlArabiata]

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[FireFlea]

As much as any transformative practice that commands a significant followingtoday, certain martial arts facilitate a many-sided integral development of human nature. At their best they simultaneously promote moral sensitivity, athletic abilities, and a degree of unitive awareness. Some, such as aikido, are superior to modern sports in their reliance upon spiritual principles, and superior to quiet meditation in their cultivation of stillness in action. The transformative power of martial arts can be seen in the influence of aikido on the great Japanese baseball player Sadaharu Oh.

Oh hit 868 career home runs, to surpass Hank Aaron's American record, and won 15 professional home-run titles in Japan during a 22-year career. He also helped the Tokyo Giants vein many national championships, including nine in a row from 1965 through 1973. But he might not have achieved his great success without special training with Hiroshi Arakawa, a baseball instructor. Oh has told his story simply and eloquently.

Though he had been a high-school star as a left-handed pitcher, Oh was assigned to first base as a professional because he was a powerful hitter. But during his first three years with the Tokyo Giants, he did not fulfill his great promise and often drank to excess. The Giants' manager hired Arakawa to work with Oh in 1962. Arakawa extracted a promise from Oh that he would stop drinking and smoking, and during their first months of training introduced him to Morehei Uyeshiba, who offered them insights from aikido. Uyeshiba taught Oh about ma, the "psychic time and space" in which a contest occurs, and other aikido principles. But these first lessons did not have an effect. Not until Arakawa made Oh adopt an unusual one-legged tatting stance in his hitting. This change in style helped focus Oh's aikido traning. The athlete wrote:

"I had reached a point where aikido had become absolutely necessary to what I did. Without aikido, I would not learn to stand on one foot, I would not 'understand it'.

One of the first things a student of aikido learns is to become conscious of his `one point.' This is an energy or spirit-center in the body located about two fingers below the navel. While many martial arts make use of this center, it is essential in aikido, [which] requires tremendous balance and agility, neither of which are possible unless you are perfectly centered. So much of our early work was getting me to pose simply with the one point in mind. I would get up on my one foot and cock my bat, all the while remaining conscious of this energy center in my lower abdomen. I discovered that if I boated my energy in this part of my body I was better balanced than if I located R elsewhere. If I located my energy in my chest, for example, I found that I was too emotional. I also learned that energy located in the upper part of the body tends to make one top-heavy. Balance and a steady mind are thus associated with the one point."

Besides centering, Oh learned other things through aikido, among them awareness of ki and the power of waiting.

"As long as I had [a] hitch in my swing, I could not begin to think of using ki in my batting. But posing on one foot, ki did not seem so far-fetched--if I could learn to steady myself.

Earlier in the season, when we had simply been trying to overcome my hitching habit, Arakawa-san had had yet another discussion with Ueshiba Sensei about the problem.

`Look,' he said, `the ball comes flying in whether you like it or not, doesn't in Then all you can do is wait for it come to you. To wait, this is the traditional Japanese style. Wait. Teach him to wait.'

During the 1962 season, Arakawa incorporated concentration, ki, centering, balance, and waiting into Oh's baseball technique, so that he would achieve the "Body of a Rock" described by Musashi, the legendary Japanese swordsman.

"The image entered my mind as simply as a bird alighting on a branch. The goal of perfecting what was in my body seemed entirely natural."

Sometimes Oh practiced in front of a mirror, visualizing the many kinds of pitches he would face. To strengthen Oh's form Arakawa had him imagine that his body was a gymnast's bar that could bear immense pressure without breaking. Oh practiced his stance with this image in mind until his blisters callused over. But his form was still imperfect. With his teacher's help, he realized that his upper body and bat position also needed to be reorganized. Only after months of practice could he balance his entire body so that his power was fully concentrated.

"Our training enabled me to hit thirty-eight home runs, twenty-eight d them coming alter lute raised my batting average to .272 and my RBI total to eighty-five, both career highs. Most important, I won the home-run and RBI titles for the Central League that year. [But] I received no particular praise from the Master of the Arakawa School. I accepted mat. I knew he had his reasons.

"`Think of it this way, Oh,' he said to me. 'Gain and loss are opposite sides of the same coin. it is beat to forget them both.

"It turned out that Arakawa-san had been making his own plans. These had little to do with my having won a title or two. His mind was already in the future."

Thus began a new stage in Oh's training based upon the budo of swordsmanship as well as aikido. At a dojo for the sword in Tokyo, Oh learned to channel ki through his bat as if each stroke "were a matter of life and death." He learned metsuke, a way of seeing as if with two sets of eyes, which Musashi had called a "distances) view of close things." With such ability, one could read a pitcher's Intentions # well as his motion. Oh also learned about the geometry of physical action, about the triangle made by arms and legs when a sword or bat is extended, and me power of circular movement in me pivot of the hips.

"If the position of the driving elbow in a swordsman--or batter--is too far from the body," he wrote, "it is not possible to form a good triangle with me torso." Day alter day, Oh practiced, and during me 1963 season he won his second home run title and raised his batting average to .305.

"But I was hungry for more. Sometimes in that season, I woke to find that my heart was on fire. It did not matter if I went to Ginza or put away a whose bottle of scotch, I always woke clear headed and on fire for baseball. I had reached the point where I simply lived to hit. How can I say it without sounding foolish? I craved hitting a baseball in the way a samurai craved following the Way of the Sword. It was my life."

Oh hit 55 home runs in the 1964 season and raised his average to .320, When opposing teams shifted their fielders to the right side of the diamond, where he usually pulled the ball, he simply hit through them or over them. He had become the greatest and most feared hitter in Japanese baseball. When he retired 16 years later at me age of 40, he had broken more records and won more acclaim than any other Japanese player.

Other sportspeople have employed martial arts to promote their athletic performance. Like Sadaharu Oh, they have testified that martial-arts exercises enhanced various kinds of extraordinary functioning. But such training has influenced more man the world of sport. In recent decades, people in many walks of life have found new vitality, balance, and strength through practices such as aikido. The growing popularity of martial arts in many parts of the world today reflects a general attraction to disciplines that reveal the greater possibilities. of mind and body.


Komisch; direkt geht der Link nicht aber wenn ich ueber google rein gehe dann schon. :confused:

[kennin]

Dieser Link müsste klappen! (http://cms.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19920501-000026.html)

[Kung-fuWurst]

alter was ist das denn für ein englisch. da versteh ich ja nur jedes zweite wort.

[Mandrake]

alter was ist das denn für ein englisch. da versteh ich ja nur jedes zweite wort.

das sind die komishcen Namen ;)