There’s nothing quite as educational at Aikido practice than working directly with your sensei on a technique. Several Mondays per month, our brown belts get to teach a class to prepare them for that role in the future, so Shiba Sensei gets to simply work out with the rest of us. It is always great to practice a basic move that you have been doing for several years with him, and have it not work at all, and then he shows you the way to make it actually work on a less cooperative training partner. It is usually a way that expends even less energy on your part too.
I have a lot to learn.
Yup!
When I was living in Seattle I trained in the morning classes almost exclusively. It turns out that most people, regulars even, find morning class to be one of the easiest to skip. As a result class sizes were almost always small. Sometimes, I was the only student. The sort of one-on-one training with Sensei that resulted was extremely beneficial to the growth of my Aikido and it was always a challenge.
Happy rolling!
e.