Adam Hosie Sensei
Adam Hosie Sensei has developed a unique and pragmatic method for teaching Aiki through a de-stylised western-minded approach. It is his aim to demystify Aiki by providing a solid path for other seekers to achieve this elusive skill.
Distilling Aiki into its foundational elements developed core principles. This provided a better understanding of what Aiki is, how it works and why. When he taught these core principals to students of martial arts like Aikido, Karate, Judo, Daito Ryu and Tai Chi for example. They began to make much more sense and function as they were intended. This is why he believes Aiki was once in all the martial arts, and over the generations it has been lost or deliberately held back from students.
His skill in Aiki has been confirmed by Roy Goldberg Shihan 7th Dan Kyoju Dairi Daito Ryu Aiki Jujutsu. Taken from the published book about the life of Roy Goldberg Shihan "To become A Living Art".
"Adam Hosie is an extremely talented martial artist. We enjoy collaborating together. We have spent a lot of time sharing ideas on Aiki and I am highly impressed with his abilities"
The Beginning
His earliest memories of martial arts were at his father's Aikido dojo where he would play with toys at the side of the tatami and watch his dad throw the students around. He also remembers his dad showing him Aikido books and been told fascinating stories about a mysterious white bearded man. While Adam was still young his father stopped teaching Aikido for over 10 years. During this time school life was a difficult one as he was badly bullied and got into fights daily. His dad taught him self-defence tactics and how to fight, even though normally winning the fights, he was left feeling upset that to protect himself he had to hurt the people attacking him. During this period from age 11 he started working for his family's potato merchant business and grew into a physically powerful man. Unfortunately, trouble seemed to always find him and the fights became more serious, on a few occasions while fighting large gangs of men, he was lucky to survive, which was largely due to his physical power, and robust body.
At age 18 he took up playing Rugby Union as a loose head prop and trained at an old school boxing gym above a notorious pub in Hull. His trainer wanted him to get a boxing licence, but he always refused because the concept of getting into a ring to hurt someone for entertainment felt very wrong to him. In 2001 his dad returned to teaching Aikido, the concept of stopping an attacker without necessarily having to harm them, greatly appealed to Adam, and so began his martial arts journey.
Houston, we have a problem!
When Adam began studying Aikido, despite everyone performing the techniques as instructed, they did not work well on him. Wanting to help, he started looking for ways to improve the techniques so they would be more effective on himself. He was introduced to Wing Chun which proved helpful in many ways. One immediate improvement came from “Tan Sau” which greatly improved the effectiveness of Nikajo on Adam when he taught it to the other students. At this point he started listening to his body and guiding students to be more effective on him and turned out on everyone else too, thus he became the dojo’s guinea pig!
But even with all these little advances, Adam and his dad still felt something was missing. Deeper research into Aikido, looking at the various styles through studying books and the videos available, didn’t help a great deal. With immense gratitude to Stanley Pranin for uncovering Daito Ryu. Delving into its history of master's long gone, it became clear that the missing element of their Aikido training, was “Aiki”
A video featuring Roppokai Daito Ryu ignited Adam’s passion to make it his life’s mission to acquire this elusive skill, as without it, the only option available to make techniques truly effective was the harder, faster, stronger, and more brutal methods.
If they figured it out, why can’t we?
Financial barriers made it difficult to travel the vast distances required to search for a master with Aiki ability. On top of this, there was an additional concern that a master may not be willing to teach their skill. This presented a seemingly unassailable problem. Hence, the decision to acquire Aiki came about from the thought: “If they figured it out, why can’t we?” because they were just human beings that developed skill through problem solving.
Unrestricted study
The culture of traditional martial arts presented a severe problem for developing Aiki. To question something is normally frowned upon, especially if it feels wrong. Also to be “traditional” is to sincerely follow what has been taught to you and one day to pass that knowledge onto the next generation. This of course is fine providing the art is complete and there is 100% transmission.
Martial arts originally were constantly adapting and changing to the requirements of the time. That stopped in the early 20th century becoming effectively museums and each generation appears less complete by trying to faithfully copy the previous one.
Reversing this trend required a complete overhaul and rethink how to approach developing Aiki. So, all restrictions were lifted and statements such as “That’s not how it's done!” were banned. Questions were encouraged and ideas celebrated. All techniques, training methods, and ideology were put aside, creating an open blank slate focused on developing Aiki. Now unhindered experimentation could begin.
Shugyo: Everything you need is right where you are!
It is often said that it takes 10,000 hours of training to become truly proficient in anything. For example, training 4 hours a week, would take 50 years. Adam was always trying to integrate training into his daily life. This approach known as “Shugyo” encourages one to train in how to think, breathe, lay, sit, kneel, stand, walk, move and touch as well as how to perform techniques. Every waking moment becomes training.
His mind was constantly laser focused on Aiki. He was always problem-solving in his mind and continually worked on forging his mind-body connection. Examples of his Shugyo can be seen in his earlier working life: firstly, as a potato merchant. The physically demanding yet mostly monotonous lifting, carrying, and manoeuvring of hundreds of heavy bags allowed intense practice of Shugyo daily.
Secondly; Given the confidence afforded by his size and strength to be able to make mistakes, along with the support of his colleagues Adam worked as a door supervisor for nightclub security. Ejecting uncooperative patrons from the premises often in a variety of interesting ways, provided an opportunity to test his theories. This rigorous method uncovered what worked well, needed refinement or a complete rethink. When back in the Dojo, he would test his ideas and recreate the problems he encountered from the real-life results. This provided invaluable data to develop Aiki.
Gravity holds you up!
A huge breakthrough came from fellow student Amanda who was also an Alexander Technique instructor. She stated that gravity holds you up, explaining how the human body is a Tensile/Tensegrity structure. This new understanding led to a critical piece of the Aiki puzzle, which had a domino effect, leading to the later development of Aiki.
Despite this breakthrough, progress was still a slow and arduous process of turning every idea upside-down, inside-out, and back to front. However, after a few years, a steady stream of problem-solving discoveries was beginning to flow.
Painful lessons
While playing Rugby, Adam suffered a knee injury that ended his competition days. Often attending class with his leg strapped straight, he still trained diligently. While working on Irimi-nage, his leg injury forced him to move differently. This resulted in throwing his training partner better than ever before! What he discovered was that instead of using your legs to move your body, you use your body to move your legs. Collisions with an attacker wave were immensely improved by the sine wave generated by this way of moving, also Kuzushi was easily attained. This was a huge contributor to his discovery of Zero-point Aiki.
Occasionally Adam suffered debilitating back problems, one of which caused him to be in bed for 2 weeks. Over this time, he experimented with his body. At first by just trying to breathe and move in bed was very painful, but by listening to his body and trying many different combinations of holding his body together and attempt move without pain he discovered IN/YO Kamae and chain reaction movement. By generating two simultaneously opposites throughout the body like the string tension on a bow used primarily head to foot, hand to hand and back to belly. While maintaining these string connections of the whole body he would create a chain reaction of Mind, breath, and body. Starting with...
1st gear “Mind” intention coordinates whole body muscle tone with no discernible external movement yet constantly changing the string tension. This is the foundation of Aiki and operates like the rudder of a ship to create potential direction.
2nd Gear is “Kokyu” breathing is fantastic for keeping you alive, but it can be used for far more than just life support. By having correct string tension, breath should not leak and instead generate whole body movement, this is like wind blowing the sails of a ship.
3rd Gear is “Hara” the core of your body. Using the 3 Axis of the spine provided limitless 3-dimensional movements and immense power generation that is transmitted throughout your bodies string network and enhanced by Kokyu. This is like the propeller of a ship.
4th Gear is your core joints of Scapula and hips. They enhance the first 3 gears creating secondary power generation and alternative direction options.
5th Gear is your arms and legs, these are primary for positioning to allow transmission of previous gears.
Using his body in this way Adam was able to get out of bed practice Taisobaki, kicks and move without pain, he returned to work delivering potatoes, noticing he was much stronger than before.
Jutsu
During this evolving time, Adam met Terry Wingrove Hanshi 9th dan Karate-Jutsu & Yawara, a highly charismatic man with exceptional knowledge and skill of the pre-war ways of Japanese Martial Arts to which he called Jutsu. These distilled techniques unhindered by rules or regulations were used purely to disable maim and kill.
Realising the devastating principals of Jutsu could seamlessly integrate with the type of Aiki skill he was developing. Intensive study under this Sensei began with travelling to his seminars all over the UK and Europe, along with regularly attending his Dojo class, which was a 9-hour-round trip for a 90-minute lesson!
Kuzushi
Adam realised that they are 3 types of Kuzushi. The first type was Equilibrium Kuzushi, which is the normal understanding of Kuzushi by guiding an attacker to the point of balance loss to apply a technique more effectively. Rotary Aiki and Zero-point both are effective at achieving this.
Structural Kuzushi is the loss of strength and stability of an attacker’s connective integrity. It can be effective in 2 ways.
Using Rotary Aiki to remove the slack between joints by winching the body’s connective integrity out of alignment creating tight structural Kuzushi. This provides easy access for skeletal locking, Equilibrium loss, sticking techniques and amplifies Zero-point Aiki.
Using Zero-point Aiki which is focused leverage in the opponent’s centre, weakens or even completely collapses the structural integrity.
Both types can be applied separately or together in any position. Using Aiki to create structural Kuzushi during ground techniques is particularly useful as you are unable to break an opponent’s balance when the opponent is laid on the ground. An interesting note for this unusual Kuzushi is you can have a focused mind and good balance, yet often when the structure is broken most people are completely unaware that something is happening to them. It is only when there is movement, that crack in the bodies structure becomes a catastrophic break leading to loss of equilibrium and often their minds focus too.
Psychological Kuzushi, breaking the mind body connection is very much needed as a focused functioning brain controlling the body powerfully is a dangerous weapon. Breaking this can be done by various methods of such as tricking the senses, creating distress from losing equilibrium and structure and also inflicting severe pain and distress from using Jutsu principals that attack the Muscular Skeletal, Respiratory, Pulmonary, Nervous and Organ systems of the body. Along with psychological Kuzushi Jutsu also creates structural and Balance Kuzushi.
Becoming the Teacher
In 2008 other martial artists noticed his skill in Aiki Jutsu, and so he made the decision to teach more openly. However, it quickly became apparent that the great achievement of developing Aiki for himself, was very different to the skill of teaching. What was needed to enable a Sensei to effectively pass on their skill to others, was to understand...
WHAT makes Aiki work?
HOW does Aiki work?
WHY does Aiki Work?
Hosie Sensei spent the next 15 years answering these questions which now allows him to teach Aiki to almost anyone willing to learn. Though step by step key information and specific exercises, you learn a solid foundation of Mind, Breath and Body. Then learn to use yourself in a dynamically different way to develop Aiki for yourself.
One of the great aspects of martial arts is the wide variety of people who participate in its’ learning: carpenters, engineers, physiotherapists, and neurosurgeons, to name but a few. Each individual interprets information through their own lens, depending on their personal life experiences and perceptions. Quickly learning that if explanation of his concepts we’re tailored to each individual (using engineering analogies for an engineer for example), that they could be understood more naturally.
Roy Goldberg Shihan
Hosie Sensei considers himself a student of Aiki first and foremost, and so in 2019, he attended a seminar with Roy Goldberg Sensei. As they met on the tatami, they both instantly recognised their shared skill and passion for Aiki, quickly becoming close friends. They began working together, sharing their knowledge, helping one another improve, and had a wonderful time doing so. In 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdowns, they continued working together virtually, with their training amounting to several hundred hours! This intensive time working with Goldberg Sensei allowed them both improve their ability to teach Aiki.
During this period, Goldberg sensei convinced Hosie Sensei to start teaching Aiki through online lessons. Hosie Sensei now has students all over the world, who are now developing skill in Aiki for themselves.
Hosie Sensei, enjoys sharing his refined knowledge of Aiki on the tatami. He invites you to join his growing Aiki Community.
