I passed a billboard advert for Gatorade – a racing cyclists body with the head and forearms of a scientist looking into a microscope “The science of winning”. There was something about the solemn linearity of this that seemed to me the antithesis of the aiki ethos.

In many ways aiki embraces losing – at least half the time…. I also thought of the hilarity of aikido. I think the aikido situation follows comedic dynamics and the subverted expectation of the joke – looks like one thing is going to happen, it doesn’t, then… ooops! someones fallen over. There is something almost archetypely and inexhaustively funny about people falling over – check “You’ve been framed”.

“Thats the way to do it!”