Anything is possible if you put in enough practice. Years ago I saw this video of Japanese kids learning to use the abacus or soroban. The video featured a school that Japanese kids would go to in order to learn not only how to use the abacus but in a super fast way. There was one kid who was so fast that he no longer needed to use a physical abacus anymore. As he did the calculations his fingers moved as if he was using one. Incredible! Everything in this world is a skill - even Aikido. Therefore all that is necessary is that we practice Aikido over and over again in order to master it. But, don't you have to be athletically gifted in order to excel? Not really. When I was in college I remember my Motor Control and Learning professor said that the largest gains in strength come not from getting stronger or from the muscles getting larger but from learning the proper muscle recruitment or in other words from skill development. I recently read an article in the Atlantic that supported this:
In a small study recently published in the Journal of Neurophysiology, researchers found that much of muscle strength is based on brain activity, rather than on the mass of the muscles themselves. Researchers at Ohio University’s Musculoskeletal and Neurological Institute, 29 volunteers had their non-dominant arms placed in elbow-to-finger casts for four weeks. (Fifteen others acted as a cast-free control group.) Of the 29, 14 were asked to perform mental-imagery exercises five days a week, imagining themselves alternately flexing and resting their immobilized wrists for five-second intervals.
When the casts came off at the end of the four weeks, both groups had lost strength in their arms—but the group that had imagined themselves doing the arm exercises lost significantly less, measuring an average of 25 percent weaker than at the start of the study, compared to 45 percent for the group that hadn’t taken part in the mental-imagery activities.
With the above assertion and the realization that everything is a skill then anyone can learn anything - even Aikido. All that is required is to put the work in.
Side note: This is why I always suggest people watch class when they are injured. You can learn a lot by watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m6s-ulE6LY