I understood what you meant. Tone of voice and other paraverbals don't come through well on forum posts without the cartoon figures, which I seldom use. I was teasing back for what I thought was an overstatement on your part.

From what I've come to know of you through the forum, you are a well rounded and fully potentially lethal warrior for whom I have a lot of respect. I have learned a few things from you. I have learned some things that I had to pursue with aikido people in person, because I learned from you that they would be worth knowing, but hard to communicate via forum.

You are in similar position, I guess, to where I am except that I never had your level of skill and I am female. At 59, I should be paying more attention to my risk of injury and taking that more seriously. Problem is, I love what I am doing so much, that I hate to cut back.

The LIGHT qin-na practice that I was getting at Yang's in Boston was good. Skilled people could practice with little resistance and low risk of injury. Still, after a 3 day seminar, you wonder about the integrity of your wrists, but if you are practicing with jerks who want to resist and not relax, and yank through their movements, you wouldn't have any joints at all.

The weekly classes were 1 1/2 hours. They taught me a lot about how to move. They improved all of my skills a lot, not just qin-na.

I've been told the undertaker will have to tie me in my coffin, so I understand your joke. I'm just too hard-headed to slow down, so I pay for it. I might hobble to class, then go full speed (hurting all the way) and then hobble home.

As for "wrist strength", I've been doing jujutsu for 45 years, so that's not a problem. My orthopedic surgeon always brings his nurses in and has me show them my wrist flexibility, which he says is abnormal for someone my age. I think it's just my "keeping them in shape" by doing my stretching exercises.

As for the "jerks" in training, I have one simple solution... twist the wrist. Mechanically, the wrist drives the elbows and shoulders when rotated in either direction, and if somebody is exceptionally strong, simply step out so they're "reaching", and you can twist their wrist with a few ounces of pressure. When stretching them out, use your whole body to move to your position, and they will have to reach to "stay connected". After that, it's watching where they land that's the problem...

By the way, don't be afraid to use your pressure point training to "motivate" some of the jerks to move their arms... they might whine about it, but they'll comply... if they're yanking on you, yank back... just wait until you're at the point of surrender for them. A few of those and you can say, "want to play nice, or do I need to hurt you?" After all, you're just learning something, not actually defending yourself... but you can change that equation at will...

Don't forget that you can always request a different partner.

Dr. yan is one onf the pre-eminent teachers of combat taichi and pressure point use.

Oh yes I know. I value all the time I spent in that school. He taught me much, he directly, and more so one of his senior instructors, Jim Noble, who taught the Saturday morning class I went to. It all served me very well in my home kenpo style in the school where I hold rank. Now, Master Yang's son, I believe runs the Boston campus while Master Yang is in California pursuing his new venture with highly committed full time students.