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Traveling all over the place, seeing all these shows, and being serenaded on gh with the cups song has me missing this specific scene in PP3. Will there be a PP4? Maybe yes. Maybe no.

**I still haven’t totally worked out my feelings here, so I apologize if this comes out as confusing.

First things first. I’m a 40-yo woman who practices aikido. I passed my shodan a few months ago. I train in Japan and while in the West, I’m average-to-small, here I’m on the bigger side of the scale in size and weight. Also, I’m stronger than average for a woman, Japanese or Western. Aikido doesn’t rely on strength. In fact, it is discouraged to use muscle power to execute a technique because it means you’re ‘powering it through’. Having said that, as a uke, you’re supposed to attack vigorously, and with higher ranking folks, it helps tori (the person who’s doing the aikido technique/defense) refining their skills if you block, becomes heavy, strike powerfully. Also, rolling over and over again, training with weapons, etc. requires good stamina and physical condition, so everybody does pumps, crunches, works on those abs, etc. So yeah, it’s not a slow dance and I have definitely gained muscles.

Then cue in the cultural and gender card. Women and men train together, and it is an etiquette rule that you adapt your strength (as uke) and power (as tori) in relation to your partner, their size, weight, and skills. I won’t hold back with a shorter and older woman who is a 4th dan, but for sure, I’m not going to throw down a 25yo white belt dude who started last week. I don’t care if their pride is hurt, they don’t know how to fold and fall yet.

But that’s me. Over the past months, I’ve realized some men are wary around me (higher or same rank). A sempai of mine who always takes great care to point out all the things that don’t work with my techniques and helps me improve begged me last week with a laugh to ‘take it slow’ with him, on suwari waza kokyu ho, and called me a ‘beast’. Yep, I can block this one pretty easily, and my technique is good so not many people can block me even when they’ve got 30 kg on me. 

But you know what? A part of me thought, ‘uh, I should maybe back down a notch’. And I know it’s typically a woman’s reaction. I see those guys acting like sumo wrestlers for the same exercise and nobody tunes it down. So... no? Then yesterday, during our GM class, when doing a nikkyo ura, a (female) sempai pointed out I was using too much power when folding her wrist. It wasn’t working. She’s super strong and powerful herself. I realized I was indeed powering through the technique, and not doing it properly. It hurt but wasn’t debilitating. I didn’t need to squeeze and grab so much. The angle was wrong. It will take some time to correct myself, and she was totally right.

Now right behind, I ended up doing suwari waza yonkyo with two sempai - one young 2nd dan foreigner, and one of our highest ranking instructors, a 7th dan shihan (so you shut up and do what he says). After watching me rolling twice with the other sempai, he stopped me and said ‘what are you doing? you’re doing budo, stop being kind. He strikes, you bring him down right away with ikkyo, and then move to yonkyo. Slam him!’ It’s honestly the first time anyone told me that, and darn it felt good! I grinned, said ‘okay’, and then went full power, basically knocking the breath out of my sempai with my ikkyo. 

When I turned uke, my sempai didn’t dare reciprocate and got an earful. He protested, ‘but she’s an angel!’. Wrong answer. 

I honestly snorted (face against the mats, before grunting in pain when he almost snapped my wrist).

Then it was again my turn to defend, and I slammed him again. When we switched to suwari waza kokyu ho, he called me a ‘bull’ - his technique wasn’t good enough, and I could block him. I retorted - ‘yeah but with blond hair and wings, right?’

Anyway, I don’t know what my point even is, except maybe:

- strength matters but only when appropriate

- it’s fine to look like you came out of the hair salon, then drive them through the tatami.

- power and strength are two vastly different things

- To all women doing martial arts out there: *most* guys are intimidated and would like you to tune it down so that their ego doesn’t get as bruised as their ass, but those who know better will support you and train you so that you can become the weapon you were meant to be.