I like the idea, but looking at your examples I’m skeptical that it actually works out that way much in practice. Let’s look at your examples, in order.
Hearing pitch isn’t scaffolding you remove once you learn to sing, which is why skilled vocalists still have ear pieces so that they can hear themselves when they perform. I’m sure they could still sing better than you even with earplugs in, but not to their potential—and their performance would likely degrade with time if you cut that feedback loop.
”Rolling” is absolutely a big part of fighting. It’s not a huge part of striking, but it’s a huge part the grappling aspect of fighting which doesn’t go away, and the rolling only becomes more prevalent at the higher levels of grappling. Heck, Jiu Jitsu is one of the main components of modern MMA, and their term for sparring is literally “rolling”.
If getting into a fencing jacket isn’t a scaffolding skill, then I don’t see how getting into donning helmets and gloves can be—for the exact same reasons. Same with training wheels, which you typically have your parents do for you.
Training wheels have an additional problem in that they actually rob you of the feedback you need in order to learn to ride a bike, making it harder. You could argue that catching yourself with your feet on a balance bike becomes the scaffolding skill, and this is indeed not an integral part of high performance bike riding… but every time you dismount a bike you use this skill. And it’s never a limiting skill in the first place.
Skimming through the rest of your examples, it looks like my objections break down into 3 categories.
That skill is an integral part of high performance, even though once you reach high performance you can perform at low levels okay without it.
There are other ways to do that, in the same way that a fencer could hire an assistant to help him get into his jacket.
That doesn’t actually help develop the skill. You’re better off skipping the metaphorical training wheels and working on the thing itself.
If we get rid of the second criterion, then there are a lot of things that would fit the requirements. That also seems fair, since there are a lot of times you can’t reasonably hire an assistant to get you into your jacket, or to make good pitches for your games. But then again, those would be better described as “supporting skills”, because fencers don’t stop putting on their fencing jackets once they learn to fence.
I’m struggling to come up with an example of a skill you could really remove to no significant detriment once you get good at the thing. Skilled rock climbers by and large would be pretty pissed if you took their ropes, for example. You might be fine forgetting how to navigate Duolingo’s interface once you’re fluent, but that skill seems hardly necessary or limiting in the first place.
It just seems too often that the skills that enable a thing either continue to enable the thing or else enable other things. For example, even if rolling was no longer helpful in fighting it’s also a skill I’ve applied to bike riding, for when I’ve gone over the handlebars—long after I’d learned to ride a bike.
I should clarify what would actually surprise me.
Most people at a jiu jitsu gym don’t really get jiu jitsu, and struggle in ways that they don’t have to if they were to just learn jiu jitsu. This is unavoidable, as learning to jiu jitsu takes time, but it also means that even if BJJ has an equivalent concept of this Unbending Arm thing you should expect these results. I don’t doubt that there’s something there.
What I’m skeptical of is the idea that it’s a blind spot in jiu jitsu, to the point where cross training in Aikido for concepts like this has demonstrable merit. I’m skeptical that the field of jiu jitsu lacks an equivalent concept and therefore systematically misleads its practitioners in a way that is relevant to BJJ/MMA/street altercations/etc.
These blind spots do exist, but they’re impressive and cognitive dissonance inducing when demonstrated. My favorite example is Derrick Lewis “just standing up”. The announcers recognize that Derrick Lewis isn’t demonstrating skill at “jiu jitsu”, and don’t recognize the unforced errors that his opponents are making which allow him to just stand up, so they’re shocked. “This isn’t supposed to work, and it is!”.
If someone tries to stand on one foot with their eyes closed and falls over due to the fact that they haven’t practiced it, then that’s kinda unavoidable. It takes practice.
If someone tries to stand on one foot with their eyes closed and falls over due to the fact that they tried to stand on one foot with their eyes closed… instead of just opening their eyes and putting their foot down when there’s no reason to not open their eyes and put their foot down… then that’s entirely avoidable. All you have to do is think through what you’re actually trying to achieve.
By using the word “dumb” I’m saying that if it turns out I’m missing something here it’s not because I haven’t spent ten years practicing Aikido visualizations in the mountains of Japan. It’s because I was doing something drastically wrong that can apparently be fixed in a 30 second demonstration, which I’ve had ample time to notice, and have apparently been blind to for whatever reason.
The distinction is important because if it happens, it calls for some more self reflection on how I ended up not knowing how to use my arms despite using them for decades. In the same way that if you think you’re about to submit someone and they “just stand up”, its in your best interest to humble yourself a bit and go back to the drawing board.
I trust your honesty about where the goal posts are, but I still have to locate them in order to know what you’re saying, exactly. I’m trying to find out where you’re drawing the line between “the thing” and “not the thing” so that I can understand what you’re saying and make sense of why the Aikido demonstrations look so much like they’re trying to hide what’s actually going on.
I tried it this morning at the jiu jitsu gym, with a fairly skilled training partner that likes to play with challenges like this. Specifically, what I did is say “I want to play an Aikido game with you. See if you can bend my arm”, and then placed the back of my wrist on his shoulder, and let him do as much as I thought I could without letting my arm bend.
He started off gently pushing and pulling to feel me out, and I had to move my feet to stay standing because it doesn’t take much if you’re in a regular upright stance. Eventually he pulled pretty hard and I had to half collapse in order to keep my arm straight. A bit after that I had to collapse fully, and he spent a couple minutes trying to figure out how to pin my arm in a way that allows him good biomechanics for bending my arm. The game ended when I had to tap to an arm bar… which I guess is fair since I didn’t specify that he had to bend it forward and he certainly would have been able to bend it backwards from there.
When we switched roles, I immediately did the thing that he eventually did to bring me down, and bent his arm. I reminded him that he was not obligated to stay standing, and that the lose condition is just the arm being bent. The next time I couldn’t bend his arm with him standing, but I could force him off his feet so long as I took a step back and used good biomechanics to pull his elbow down and into me.
The thing is, none of this looks anything like an Aikido demonstration. It looks like a grappling match.
Why don’t Aikido demonstrations look like grappling matches, if not for implicit rules about what you’re not supposed to do? Why does the guy demonstrating the technique never get to the point of having to say “Okay, but no pinning my upper arm”? Why is he never forced to collapse to the ground in order to keep his arm straight? Why doesn’t the offensive player ever take a step back and pull them down in the way that generates significant bending moment—the way my training partner did to me?