This is a quick reminder of the basic foot movements, in case you want to practice outside normal sessions.
The correct way of doing the foot movements in Aikido is to move FAST on the count, finish the move quickly, and wait for the next count - i.e. you're trying to fit all the movement into the smallest time possible, and pause in each position. Once you have a reasonable grasp of the basic movements, you can make the movement faster until it becomes just "countMOVE!..wait..countMOVE!...".
At all times when you pause, you should have a nice stable position, with feet flat to the floor, and your pelvis nice and straight, not twisted left or right. When moving your feet, they should slide along just above the floor, almost touching it, and you should move as quickly as possible. Don't worry - it's much easier to do it than to read it (or write it!).
Counting is usually done in Japanese (ichi ni san) or, occasionally, in any other language that comes to mind. We frequently take turns counting for the movements - don't panic, if you don't know Japanese: It's perfect acceptable to use chinese, urdu, russian, yiddish, spanish, french, or german: or if really necessary, english (we only count up to eight, anyway).
This movement is used for keeping your distance (maai) from your opponent,
and also moving in to attack.
Note that the middle position, position 4 is the same as the start/end postition: this enables you to change from left foot forward to right foot forward.
This movement is used to sidestep an attack to the left or right. Very
important, if you don't want to get hit!
The common way to get this wrong is the direction for 4/5/6: I remember it best as left, right right left: then the opposite, right, left left right.
This movement avoids an attack, and also changes your facing and distance
enabling different techniques for counter-attacking.
On the odd numbers you should end up facing either left or right: then back to the start on the even numbers.
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