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A practitioner recently posted in an online aikido community: “I’m getting bored. I have a history of spending maximum one year doing one hobby, then I quit... I’m scared of that happening with Aikido.”

They are at 4th kyu. They dream of moving smoothly, but ukemi still makes them nervous. Progress feels painfully slow. It is that desperate feeling that they should be “good” by now, even though they logically know mastery takes decades.

If you’ve trained for more than a few years, you recognize this moment. It isn’t a personal failure of discipline; it’s a predictable neurological reaction.

The voices from the mat

The community responses to this struggle generally cluster around three psychological pillars defined by Self-Determination Theory: Competence, Relatedness, and Autonomy.

One sandan wrote: “A 6th dan is just someone who didn’t quit their membership.” Another added: “Forget about the grades... see what tiny detail you can pick up that day.” This is the pursuit of Competence—shifting the goal from external rank to the internal feeling of mastery over a single movement.

Others focused on the social dimension: “Having a set time with people expecting me there is a big help.” This is Relatedness. It is why solo hobbies are easier to quit; in the dojo, your struggle is a shared journey.

The third theme is Autonomy—the feeling that you are authoring your own path. As one practitioner reflected on their shodan: “The one thing I did not because I had to, but because I chose to do it.”

When these three pillars—mastery, connection, and choice—align, motivation feels effortless. The problem is that your brain is biologically wired to eventually pull the plug on all three.

The science of why motivation recedes

Your brain is designed to stop rewarding you for repetition. Neuroscientists call this hedonic adaptation. That first ikkyo, where uke seemed to float, released a dopamine jackpot. By your thousandth ikkyo, your brain barely registers the event. The technique hasn’t changed, but your neural reward system has.

This is compounded by the mathematics of skill acquisition. In the beginning, you learn 80% of visible technique in 20% of the time. You go from tumbling awkwardly to rolling with control in months. Eventually, the curve reverses: 80% of your effort yields only 20% improvement.

You aren’t stagnating; you are refining. But your brain interprets this diminishing return as “wasted effort.” It assumes the investment is no longer paying off and begins to downregulate your drive to attend class.

The plateau isn’t where learning stops—it’s where high-level refinement begins. But to your ancient survival brain, it just feels like the dopamine stopped flowing.

The institutional shadow

Sometimes, however, the plateau isn’t psychological—it’s environmental.

What happens when institutional expectations stifle Autonomy by demanding conformity over exploration? What happens when Competence is blocked by poor pedagogy, or Relatedness crumbles because the dojo culture is hierarchical or unsafe?

For the first 15 years on the mat, my three pillars were rock solid. Then, the structure itself began to thwart them. Autonomy died as politics demanded loyalty over inquiry. Relatedness collapsed when mentor relationships became untenable.

The assumption in most martial arts circles is that the practitioner must “learn to love the plateau” through sheer discipline. That is excellent advice when the environment supports growth. But if the pillars of your motivation are being actively dismantled by the culture of your dojo, “trying harder” is like trying to build a house on quicksand.

What’s actually happening to you

The practitioner who sparked this discussion isn’t weak. Their brain is working exactly as designed: protecting them from a pursuit that (neutrally speaking) appears to have hit a point of diminishing returns.

The 6th dan isn’t the one who was “tougher.” They are the one who recognized which pillar was wobbling and found a way to shore it up before the structure collapsed.

This is where many practitioners unknowingly set the conditions for later disappointment. They treat the plateau as a temporary test of “will” rather than an architectural problem. By trying to “push through” without addressing which pillar—mastery, connection, or choice—has cracked, they burn through their remaining mental reserves. They stay for another six months on fumes, only to quit later with a sense of resentment, convinced they simply “lost the spark.”

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In Part 2, we will look at how to diagnose which pillar is failing and the specific strategies used by long-term practitioners to rebuild their motivation from the ground up.

If you’re navigating a motivation crisis right now, you’re not alone. Join the discussion and share which pillar is struggling for you.

If you haven't read Part 1, start here for the full story.

TL;DR: During tactical military training, Oksana discovered that the "childish" exercises she'd been teaching for years weren't preparation for martial arts—they were survival skills disguised as games. Her revelation transforms how we understand aikido's true purpose and practical value.

The moment everything clicked

I was lying on the ground during a tactical training exercise, having just practiced dropping to avoid incoming fire, when the instructor said something that stopped me cold:

"These movements you're learning—falling, crawling, moving low—if you've done any martial arts training, especially the kind with ground work, you'll find this comes naturally."

That's when it hit me. The "children's games" we'd been practicing for years—crawling under partners, rolling in every direction, learning to fall without fear—these weren't just exercises for physical conditioning. They weren't preparation for more advanced aikido techniques.

They were the techniques.

Every time we'd had students crawl under imaginary bridges, we were teaching them how to move undetected under fire. Every forward roll we practiced was training the body to hit the ground safely when explosions knocked you down. Every exercise where children jumped over their crouched training partners was developing the spatial awareness needed to navigate obstacles in crisis.

During my second tactical medicine course—the serious one with veterans—I realized I wasn't struggling like other participants. When they told us to drop and crawl, my body knew how to do it efficiently. When we practiced rapid position changes, the movements felt familiar. The instructors even commented on it.

"You move like you've done this before," one said.

In a way, I had. For eight years, every time I'd taught a beginner how to roll properly, I'd been teaching survival skills disguised as martial arts fundamentals. Every time we'd practiced those "playful" exercises, we'd been developing exactly the physical vocabulary needed when everything falls apart.

But it went deeper than just the movements. In those tactical courses, I watched people give up when the exercises became challenging. They'd drop their weapons during stress drills, freeze when asked to make quick decisions under pressure, surrender when fatigue set in.

I recognized the pattern from aikido training. "Very often, losing is when a person simply gives up," I realized. In our dojo games—the ones where students had to last as long as possible rather than defeat an opponent—we'd been building something more valuable than technique. We'd been developing the mental conditioning that keeps you moving when everything goes wrong.

The revelation was stunning: while martial arts communities debated the effectiveness of various techniques, we'd been quietly training exactly what people need most in real crisis—the ability to move safely when the world becomes dangerous, and the mental strength to keep going when giving up feels easier.

Coming back transformed

When I returned to teaching, everything had changed—not the techniques, but my understanding of what we were actually doing.

Those "basic" exercises I'd taught for years weren't preparation for advanced aikido. They were advanced life skills, disguised as children's games. The crawling, rolling, falling, and spatial awareness we practiced weren't building toward something else—they were the destination.

I stopped talking about these movements as foundations for "real" aikido techniques. Instead, I began explaining what they actually develop: the ability to move safely through dangerous spaces, to recover quickly from unexpected falls, to stay mentally composed when physical challenges become overwhelming.

The students felt the shift. Parents noticed their children were more physically confident, better at recovering from stumbles, less anxious about rough play. Adult students mentioned improved balance and body awareness that carried into their daily lives in ways they hadn't expected.

But the deepest change was in my understanding of what aikido teaches about pressure and persistence. In our training games, the goal was never to defeat an opponent—it was to last as long as you could. "You win not when you can't last the longest, but when you lasted as long as you were able."

This philosophy, which had seemed almost quaint in peacetime training, revealed itself as profoundly practical wisdom. In real crisis, victory often means endurance. Survival comes from not giving up when circumstances become overwhelming. The mental conditioning we'd been developing through playful exercises proved more valuable than any specific combat technique.

Our instructor chat had transformed too. What began as coordination for seminars and rank promotions became a safety network where we checked on each other's wellbeing. The relationships built through years of shared practice—helping each other learn to fall, encouraging persistence through difficult techniques, celebrating small improvements—these bonds became lifelines when everything else felt uncertain.

What the games were really teaching

Now when I watch students practice those same exercises—crawling under bridges, rolling across mats, jumping over partners—I see something completely different than I did before.

They only seem like children's games because most aikido beginners are children. But these exercises develop physical preparation and endurance that extends far beyond martial arts. They're teaching fundamental survival skills: how to move your body safely through unpredictable environments, how to fall without injury, how to recover quickly when knocked down.

The movements trace back to the origins of aikido in traditional jujutsu, developed when warriors needed to fight effectively even when armored opponents made striking ineffective. Joint manipulation, balance disruption, and groundwork—the core elements disguised in our "basic" exercises—were practical responses to real combat situations where mere strength wasn't enough.

But perhaps more importantly, these exercises teach mental qualities that no amount of theoretical instruction can develop. Every time students struggle through a challenging drill and choose to continue rather than quit, they're building psychological resilience. Every time they help a partner learn a difficult movement, they're strengthening the community bonds that become crucial when individual strength isn't sufficient.

In Ukraine today, many civilians are learning basic tactical skills—not because they plan to become soldiers, but because these abilities might save their life or someone else's in an emergency. They're discovering what we'd been teaching all along: the most valuable skills are often the ones that seem most basic.

As there's a saying in Japan: the sword that might save your life once is worth carrying every day. Aikido's foundational movements—the ones that look like play—are skills worth practicing precisely because you hope you'll never need them for their original purpose.

But when you do need them, you'll be grateful they're already part of you.

The wisdom that was always there

Looking back, I realize the wisdom was never hidden. It was embedded in every exercise, present in every class, visible to anyone willing to see past the surface. We were always training for real life—we just didn't know it.

The children who giggled while crawling under their partners were learning to move through spaces too low for normal walking. The teenagers who competed to see who could roll the farthest were developing exactly the skills needed to minimize injury during unexpected falls. The adults who practiced jumping over obstacles were building the spatial awareness and physical confidence that translates directly to navigating dangerous terrain.

Even the philosophical elements—the emphasis on persistence over victory, the focus on mutual benefit rather than domination, the cultivation of calm presence under pressure—these weren't abstract ideals. They were practical preparations for handling real challenges with wisdom rather than just force.

What war taught me about aikido wasn't that our training was inadequate. It revealed that our training was more complete than we understood. The art had been preparing us all along, not just for physical confrontations, but for the broader challenges of staying human when circumstances become inhuman.

To instructors in peaceful countries, I offer this: continue practicing aikido at any age. What seems like play today might prove to be preparation tomorrow. The movements that appear most basic often carry the deepest wisdom. And the community you build through shared practice—the bonds formed by helping each other learn to fall and get back up—these connections matter more than any individual technique.

In the end, aikido taught me that the most profound skills are often the ones hiding in plain sight, disguised as something simpler than they really are. Sometimes it takes a crisis to reveal what was always true: we were never just practicing martial arts. We were learning how to live.

Editor's note: Oksana Kozakevych received her 3rd dan in April 2025 at an instructor seminar of the Ukrainian Aikikai Aikido Federation, continuing her development as both practitioner and teacher.

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TL;DR: Oksana thought she was teaching "children's games" until war forced her to question everything about her art. What she discovered about the true purpose of aikido training will change how you see every roll, fall, and crawling exercise.

When training felt like play

For ten years, I watched students crawl under imaginary bridges, roll across tatami mats, and jump over their training partners like children at recess. In my two dojos in Lviv, these exercises were as routine as warm-ups—part of the foundation my first sensei insisted would "improve physical preparation and endurance."

I started aikido in 2014 as an adult in a group of adults, but even we did these movements. Crawling exercises. Rolling in every direction. Learning to fall without fear, to move low and quiet, to navigate obstacles with your whole body. My sensei treated them seriously, but to most observers, they looked like games.

The students seemed to understand this intuitively. The children especially—they'd giggle as they slithered under their partners' extended arms, race to see who could roll the farthest, compete to jump the highest over a crouched classmate. Even the adults would smile during these drills, the tension of learning complex techniques giving way to something more playful, more natural.

"These are the basics," I'd tell new students as they fumbled through their first attempts at forward rolls. "Foundation for more complex movements." It was what my teacher had told me, what the curriculum demanded, what made sense in the progression from white belt to black belt.

By 2022, I had reached 2nd dan and was teaching regularly. My groups were mixed—adults and teenagers training together, each working at their own pace through the ranks. Some would advance quickly, drawn to the elegant throws and joint locks that make aikido recognizable. Others preferred these foundational movements, finding something satisfying in the simplicity of a perfect roll or the challenge of moving silently across the mat.

The dojo felt alive with this energy. Students helping each other, laughing at mistakes, celebrating small breakthroughs. We had our routines, our rhythms, our shared understanding of what we were building together. The crawling and rolling were just part of the landscape—necessary, beneficial, but ultimately preparation for the "real" aikido that would come later.

I had no idea we were already doing the real thing.

When everything familiar disappeared

February 24, 2022 changed everything overnight.

All training stopped. Lviv was a rear area—not the frontlines where the worst fighting happened—but even here, air raid sirens wailed and shells sometimes fell. Any facility that couldn't evacuate people to bomb shelters within minutes was forced to close.

The sports halls that remained open served more urgent needs. Schools became shelters for families fleeing combat zones. Gymnasiums turned into distribution centers for humanitarian aid. The spaces where we had practiced harmony and balance now housed people carrying whatever they could grab when the bombing started.

I lost half my students in those first weeks. Some evacuated with their families, scattering across Europe—one to Poland, others further west. Parents sent children to relatives abroad, planning to follow once they could arrange their affairs. My student with third kyu came to class in January 2022 and said, "I'll probably stop training because I won't be able to continue." He'd been mobilized. I still see him sometimes on social media, somewhere in uniform, still serving.

The city filled with strangers carrying trauma. Around the train station, crowds of people moved with the particular exhaustion of those who'd left everything behind. You could see it in their clothes—whatever they happened to be wearing when the shelling started, sometimes with a medic's jacket thrown over civilian clothes, evidence of how suddenly they'd been forced to run.

I found myself questioning everything I'd spent a decade building. The techniques, the philosophy, the patient progression through ranks—what did any of it matter when people needed food, shelter, safety? When the skills that actually kept you alive were medical first aid and knowing evacuation routes?

The dojos felt like relics from a different world, one where the greatest challenge was learning to fall gracefully rather than avoiding real bullets.

But somewhere in that chaos, something wouldn't let me abandon what we'd built together.

The question that almost ended everything

"I actually thought that probably I would start doing something else entirely."

That thought kept returning in those first chaotic weeks. Everything I'd spent years building suddenly felt disconnected from the world around us. What was the point of practicing harmonious movement when people were fleeing for their lives?

Looking at my empty dojo, I wondered if I was clinging to something that no longer mattered. The hall we used for training had been converted into a warehouse for humanitarian aid. Our tatami mats sat unused while the space filled with supplies for people who'd lost everything.

The practical needs seemed so much more urgent. In Lviv, the only real activity was volunteering—helping coordinate evacuations, distributing aid, answering phones for people desperate to flee combat zones. That work felt immediately useful.

Aikido felt like a luxury from peacetime.

I had promised my students I wouldn't close the dojo, but standing surrounded by boxes meant for refugees, the promise felt naive. How could I justify spending time on martial arts practice when people needed medical aid and evacuation coordination?

Maybe it was time to let go of aikido and commit fully to work that clearly mattered.

But something stopped me from walking away completely.

Stepping into the unknown

Three months into the war, I made a decision that would change everything I thought I knew about aikido.

I kept my promise to my students. Despite the storage boxes and the uncertainty, I found a way to continue training. The sports hall next to our usual space had a playground in the courtyard. When the weather was good, I'd carry the tatami mats outside and we'd practice under the open sky.

It felt strange at first—rolling and throwing on a children's playground while air raid sirens occasionally pierced the afternoon quiet. But the students who remained were committed. Parents wrote to me saying they'd return from abroad to continue training. Children who'd been sent to relatives planned to come back. The art mattered to them in ways I was only beginning to understand.

Meanwhile, I threw myself into the volunteer work. For six months, from April through autumn, I spent my days coordinating evacuations from dangerous territories. People would call our volunteer center in desperate situations—families trapped in frontline areas, elderly residents unable to flee on their own, civilians caught in zones where Russian forces were advancing.

I'd take their calls, gather information about safe routes, connect them with other volunteers, help coordinate transportation to safer areas. The work was immediate and necessary. Lives depended on getting the information right, on staying calm under pressure, on making quick decisions when situations changed rapidly.

But something else was happening during those months. I'd started taking courses I never thought I'd need—tactical medicine, military preparation. Two different schools, two different approaches. The first was basic, almost gentle. The second was taught by actual veterans who'd returned from the frontlines, and it was serious in ways that made everything else feel like preparation.

In these courses, we learned to fall quickly and quietly. We learned to crawl undetected across open ground. We learned to move through obstacles without making noise. And slowly, a recognition began to dawn.

In Part 2, you'll read about: The moment when Oksana realized the "children's games" weren't preparation for martial arts, but for survival itself. How tactical training revealed what aikido was actually teaching, and why the art's philosophy proved more practical than any sport martial art when everything was on the line.

Know someone whose voice should be heard?

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In my twenties, I kept finding myself in conflict. I attracted tension and confrontation like a magnet. I still don’t fully understand why, but that storm faded the moment I started training. The more I practiced, the less conflict found me. It didn’t make me soft or passive — it gave me something steadier to stand on. A different way to move through the world.

The way I see it, using Aikido for fighting is like trying to use a kitchen knife as a screwdriver. It might work once in a while, but more often it slips, cuts, or simply isn’t the right tool for the job.

Which brings me back to a question that’s been with me for years — why do people really practice Aikido? Why do I?

In my dojo, we rarely talk about it directly, but there's an unspoken understanding — we really enjoy training. Enough to sweat like crazy in 35°C heat. After 25 years of practice, conversations with fellow Aikidoka, reading hundreds of online threads and applying scientific methods to process them, I now see a pattern. People who stick with Aikido over the long run aren’t moved by what they say they want. They might talk about recreation, socializing, or philosophy. But underneath that, Aikido is a tool they use for something else entirely.

Here’s what people are really seeking when they step on the mat.

It’s not about practicality, but it is practical

“I want to stop being clumsy”

A surprising number of people come to Aikido because they’re tired of bumping into things, misjudging space, or simply feeling awkward in their own skin. They want to move better, fall without fear, and stop feeling like their body is an unpredictable object they have to drag around all day.

Aikido offers something rare: body confidence without performance pressure. You’re not training for medals, status or applause. You’re learning how to be in your body, how to organize yourself in space, and how to respond to the unexpected without panic.

One student told me, “I tripped down a flight of stairs and just rolled out of it.” No injury. I’ve fallen off my bike many times and never got hurt. That’s years of ukemi. The body learns how to fall and get up without panic.

“I need my body to feel good again”

Aikido is one of the few physical practices that rewards sensitivity over force. You don’t have to push through pain or exhaust yourself to improve. You can grow through curiosity, awareness, and attention to detail.

People who don’t enjoy loud gyms or working out alone often find something different on the mat. Instead of punishing the body with endless reps Aikido brings coordination, balance, and subtle strength into play. And the complexity of the movements keeps your brain and nervous system engaged in a way few other activities can.

You’re not working out. You’re working with yourself.

“I want to handle conflict without becoming the problem”

Conflict happens. At work, in families, on the street. The question isn’t how to avoid it completely, it’s how to stay centered when it arrives.

Some people say Aikido helps with this. And maybe it does, especially if your teacher is good at guiding students through emotional self-regulation, not just physical technique. But for me, it didn’t teach me how to handle conflict better. While it helped me avoid physical confrontation, it didn’t give me the emotional tools to navigate hard conversations or tension at home. That part came later, from elsewhere.

Still, something in the practice keeps this question alive. The exposure to tension, pressure, and contact pushes you to notice how you react. Aikido doesn’t solve conflict, but it might change how you react when it happens.

The emotional archaeology

“It’s my moving meditation”

Some people sit. Others move.

For many of us, traditional seated meditation doesn’t quite land. It’s too still, too empty, too disconnected from the body. Aikido fills that gap — it gives us a way to drop into the present without trying to force the mind to be quiet. You just move. Breathe. React. Flow. And then, somewhere in the middle of a technique, you realize you haven’t thought about your inbox or your problems for a full hour.

From my own experience, there are days when I don’t feel like going to class or teaching. But I’ve never once regretted stepping on the mat. One student put it well: “After class, it’s like someone hit reset on my brain.” It didn’t fix anything, but it cleared the noise and made space to breathe and see things more clearly.

“It’s just genuinely fun”

People forget this part. Aikido is fun.

It’s physical play for grown-ups. You get to roll, move, experiment, and interact in a way that feels alive—not performative, not competitive. Just alive.

There’s laughter, surprising positions, mistakes that lead to discoveries, frustration, too. And for a couple of hours, you’re not a job title or a parent or a decision-maker. You’re just someone learning something new, with others.

In my experience, it’s rare to find a place with clear structure that still welcomes imperfection. Aikido gives me that—a solid form to guide me, and the freedom to experiment, improvise, and belong even when I fail.

The tribe you didn't know you needed

"You find people who share your values"

Aikido attracts a certain kind of person. Not always talkative. Not always easy to categorize. But there’s often an unspoken alignment. A desire for harmony over dominance. Presence over performance. Growth over glory.

The dojo offers a kind of community that doesn’t require small talk. You don’t need to explain why you’re there. You just train. And over time, connections form — through shared effort, bruises, and respectful etiquette. One student said, “I love the atmosphere of the dojo — it’s a very positive space.”

For me, it's not about friendship in the usual sense. It's about sharing space with people who keep showing up — trying, learning, forgetting, and doing it all over again. That silent commitment creates a bond that's hard to explain but easy to feel.

Final thoughts

After more than two decades on the mat, here’s what I’ve come to see:

For most practitioners, aikido is never really about fighting or martial prowess, but about something more subtle, and personal. It's about shifting the question from "What can I do to someone?" to "What can I do with someone?" and that changes everything.

What keeps me coming back is the joy of navigating Aikido’s unique movement vocabulary, with all its demands on attention, coordination, feeling, and adaptive thinking. It’s that elusive 'flow' that sometimes appears just as you're pushing physical limits in a hot dojo. It's the lasting satisfaction of a deep physiological reset, and the kind of resilience built not from chasing wins, but from meeting Aikido’s unusual demands — movement that requires full attention, physical awareness, and constant adjustment in response to another person, like a conversation carried out through the body.

Aikido, for me and for many I’ve trained with, is the ongoing, chosen path to a different kind of self-mastery — one grounded in internal peace and a better understanding of how to move through life, harmoniously.

Beneath that, I’ve come to recognize deeper motivations that often go unstated: a desire for routine, structure, or discipline, the need for acceptance and belonging, the search for meaning or personal growth, or simply the human wish for someone to learn from and lean on. These aren’t just my reflections, they echo across stories and conversations, and are supported by scientific research.

If you already practice, I’d love to hear what keeps you coming back. If you don’t — is there something in your life that works like Aikido?