I've trained at the Big Sky Aikido on previous trips back to Montana. This time it started to feel like coming home. The slogan for the dojo is "Train With Joy" and the space and people embody this philosophy in every way from the moment you step into the dojo until you bow out at the end of class. For a town the size of Bozeman (30,000) having as large a group of Aikido practictioners is surprising but having a dojo with its own dedicated space and the number of classes is mind-boggling. The largest town in Montana, Billings (130,000), doesn't have a dedicated dojo or as large of a group to practice with. Having had trained there, I suspect a good part of its success stems from the successfull embodiment of the slogan.

The Friday night classes with Olson Sensei are perhaps my favorites – it is generally the hardest, fastest training one of the week. The warm-up usually leaves you panting and then the real training begins. Olson Sensei will perform a technique 3 or 4 times and then let us at it. There are very few words spoken in front of the whole group – if there is a correction to be made it is generally done with him and your training partner. During the whole of the Friday classes, I would be hard pressed to remember sitting in seiza for more than 1 minute and even that might be stretching it. At the end of the Friday sessions, there's the free training where you're expected to 'pick up the tempo'. Any attack, any response, as fast as you can go. Needless to say, after the training and being at 1500 meters elevation, I was spent, my muscles were aching, but without any pain in any joints. Even when going full speed, nobody tried to wrench or force any technique on me.

My second favorite class is the Saturday morning class. 8:15 in the morning. I know that's an ungodly hour to Irish sensibilities on a weekend, but the classes are fun and light hearted. They also got you up and ready to enjoy your weekend. Olson Sensi's jokes or stories get everyone laughing during the warm up. Once everyone is smiling there's some kata type breath work and then on to the techniques. The emphasis is on flow and breathing: incorporating breathing into the flow of the technique. Everyone is softer in their techniques and aren't going as fast as the Friday night classes, but you still manage to get slightly out of breath. Plus, I picked up some subtlties that I had missed when going faster.

Sometime during almost every class Olson Sensei shows you some deliciously 'evil' way to immobilize your partner. From a 'broken wing' strangulation, to a pressure point you can use during Irimange, to pinning a partner's both arms. Each one is momentarily painful, generally shocking and decisively effective. Olson Sensei quite literally wrote the 'book' (research papers, actually) on why ikko, nikyo, sankyo and yonkyo work, so these demonstrations are welcome asides from the standard core aikido training.

Olson Sensei does not instruct much but at one point he simply shared a story with us. Back in his competitive Judo days: a young woman was trying to finish the match with a strangulation, but her opponent was successfully defending. Finally, she says to him, "Raise your head, the judge wants to tell you something." He did, she applied the strangulation and won the match. The judge didn't want anything! His point was that we are all very succeptible to suggestion. If we make suggestions (as the young lady did in the story) in a non-threatening manner, then it is likely they will be followed even when it is obvious the action will be detrimental to ourselves. He also pointed out that not all suggestions have to be verbal, we can give non-verbal suggestions also – here grab my wrist, move a little bit this way (as when shifting someone's weight for Iriminage or Kote Gaeshi), take a step to follow me this way. All innocent seeming until a split second later you're flying through the air. At least that's what I got from the story.

And that brings us full circle - if you can make 'suggestions' with a smile on your face, in a joyous manner even when someone is trying to hurt you – they're probably going to do what you want them to – even fly thorough the air.

Big Sky Aikdo's website is: http://www.bozemanaikido.com and is located in Bozeman, Montana. Olson Sensei currently has plans to teach a seminar in Ireland during the Summer of 2011 with one of his former students, Detlef Decker, who has recently opened a dojo in Cork.