Riai Aikido Wellington

"Best place to learn Aïkido. Very friendly and competent teachers. If you want to learn this great martial art, you're in the right place."

"Lots of fun with a great group of people. Aikido is a very interesting martial art which teaches fine motor skills and balance. Riai is a very cooperative group who work together to advance everyone in the art."

"NOTE: I am amending my original review after the Riai club got in contact with me and addressed several of my concerns. This included Mr Moffatt now openly acknowledging his role as a senior instructor at the club and providing some explanation and context to the concerns I had. Therefore it seems only fair to adjust my review to take this into account. Also worth clarifying is that while several senior students and instructors I trained with were consistently rude and unfriendly the vast majority of students were welcoming and friendly. Make of that what you will. Finally it should be made clear that I attended Riai Aikido in 2014 at the Mt Cook dojo (which has now closed) and that with four years passing the club merging with another the concerns I have may have been settled and so I will simply highlight the concern I had at the time with the clubs training program and provide some possible solutions (which may have already been implemented). Concern: The club did not have any comprehensive training for rolling, break-falls, high-falls or ground work (ie techniques done on the knees or with one sitting and one standing). This lead to many students not being able to be thrown from techniques like kotagaeshi or shihonage at the level where a high-fall was the safest and easiest way to be thrown due to nage throwing in a manner that was appropriate for a higher level student and also more realistic to how such a throw would be done in an actual grading or real life situation. Also of concern was that when students were thrown in this manner there was a more than normal degree of injuries, sprains and hurt from taking falls badly, incorrectly as students were not comfortable or confident being thrown in this manner. This would not be an issue if the club was only ever training by itself at the level it had established with this degree of training but on the two occasions outside students other than myself visited the dojo their own level of training with comparable grades showed that they were much more experienced and advanced in these areas. This is why I believe I saw so many students hurt themselves while I was there as their gap in training meant that they were not able to progress their aikido to the next natural level (being thrown in what could be termed an advanced or "vigorous" way) and their lack of confidence or hesitation when being thrown was leading to the injuries I saw. The solution to this is to make rolling, high falls and break falls a much more integral part of the training rather than doing a few quick rolls in the warm-up. There are many fun and intermediate ways to do these exercises and my own favorite when a beginning student was to have one student crouch in a ball face down on the mat and roll over their back to do a low level break-fall with almost no risk to myself and none to them. While I am not an Aikido master in any way shape or form I have practiced it for over 20 years in New Zealand, Singapore and Japan as well as doing martial arts for over 35 years in total so I am both happy and comfortable to train in a different style of a martial art but if there is a better, different or in Riais case a safer way to train then I believe that this needs to be communicated to a student I train with. SUMMARY The club has indicated that they will be addressing this review once I post it so I they may be able to show that things have changed since 2014 and I genuinely hope they have as when they reached out to me it was in true Aikido style and that was impressive as in the age of the internet it could have easily been something else. So I am giving my review of the club a 3 star rating with the caveat that if the club has improved its training to include the things I noted they would get a four and if they dont have a comprehensive training program in high-falls, break falls, rolling and weapons then it would be 2 stars."

"I have been a student of Riai Aikido Wellington for 11 years. I am currently an instructor of the kids class at the new City Dojo. This is a great venue and a great place to learn Aikido. I encourage anyone to come and try Aikido at City Dojo."

"Starting at the club a couple of years ago as someone completely new to Aikido I have had really positive experiences through Riai Aikido Wellington. I found everyone at the club very welcoming and would definitely recommend it. I have mostly trained at the Belmont dojo but the city dojo is really well set up as a permanent training space and when I have trained there I have really enjoyed it."