I have always held a fascination with aikido.

I like the way you're  supposed to be able to redirect your opponent's  energy and use it against him.

I don't  argue that it is the best or that it will prevail in fights, but I think it would be a very valuable skill to learn as a base. To feel and anticipate your opponents' energy and movements.


Then learn all the other arts like judo and just jistu  and striking,  etc.


Watch this video and share you're thought and observations. ..

. .

My chi farts are deadly.

always wanted to learn Akido.  Took several years of BJJ and Wing Chun. Sparred against an Akido guy and he was very effective keeping me off my balance.  I should take it but it's rare to find teachers in Utah.  Most of them are in Salt Lake and too far for me to take from for very long.

Its 1 hour 26 minutes long.

You might get %0.05 of people on here to watch it.

Ironically  I was thinking to myself that if I was a football coach, I'd have my players practice it in off season.

Particularly  linemen

I trained briefly under Robert Nadeau in San Francisco and Dale Matthews (student of Saotome). I'd like to get back into it but my back injury says no.

I'm sorry. No successful fighters trains in akido as a serious matter. None.

I studied under Gaku Homma who was the last live in student of the Grand Master of Aikido. He was very traditional in his teachings. I still try to uphold what he stood for in my everyday actions. It all comes down to doing the right thing and having selflessness come before ego. Those were good times. It is a good way to live if one can let it be all encompassing. Sadly I no longer live where he teaches and no one does anything even close here.

that was why I took wing chun. I was a football player and did wing chun in the off season to improve balance and to learn to strike hard and clean with my hands. Worked very well.

Yeah I remember you were a NFL lineman right?

I was at a bar and everyone was talking about MMA and all that crap and then someone asked what kind of hand to hand stuff I learned in the Marines, I said nothing much just real basic stuff to handle prisoners and the like (not true, learned a lot of LINE and it was BAD ASS). So one kid is drunk as hell and won't let it go and is all "what would you do if I did this" and kept poking, and poking... he was gross, and ended up trying to grab me in a bear hug and being hammered myself I did this BEAUTIFUL Akido like move where I just brushed the back of my hand across his chest, starting from about mid forearm, and the leverage sent him sprawling.

While probably no where near an Aikido move, it used all the same stuff, no thought, flowing movements, and putting the opposition off balance... and it was totally effortless and took no strength, even with him pushing towards me.  No more effort that shooing a fly away.


That's when it kind of dawned on me the stuff probably works pretty darn good! Especially out at bars where you don't want to go overboard.*







*If I had not had my wits about me and gone full LINE mode it wouldn't have been elegant OR pretty, and overkill for a guy who was fun meaning but annoying.

I have seen real Aikido in action and gone up against a couple of guys who had it in their repertoire. It works as a demonstration and as a philosophy, but not as a practical martial art. There is no takedown defense, which is a problem for a martial art with no strikes.Their footwork also seems primed to get them hurt in a real fight.

I'd be more impressed to see some real world examples of Aikido in use.  All the videos I've seen have consisted of "masters" standing there while a bunch of hapless students take turns holding their arms out so he can throw them around and look like a badass.  All the "demonstrations" I saw in the OP's video were the same; the subject willingly placing their hands/arms/body in an illogical but advantageous position, making the Aikido practitioner look good.

That stuff reminds me too much of that crazy martial arts "master" who bought into his own bullshit so much that he thought he was unbeatable until he took on an MMA fighter, and got beaten badly.

Yeah I imagine it being more useful just to be really in tune with movement and force and balance WHILE using other techniques.

I don't know though. I am not in the least bit trained on any of that. But I have a new baby boy and just thinking about his upbringing.

I practiced it for years growing up, I wouldn't try to use it in a fight.  If you want to learn how to fight learn something like Krav Maga.

Yep

I love this video. What I don't understand about it is how does a fantasy/neurosis get this deep, and affect that many people? I just don't get it.  All the hand waving and people flying around ten feet away. WTF?  Can anyone explain why someone would act like they are getting hit when in fact, they are not?  Why?

It is interesting.  Aikijutsu, and many other things, kind of come from jujutsu which was quite broad hundreds of years ago.  Warriors would learn about unarmed fighting, restraining, etc., and writing and poetry on top of that.  Now you get the accumulation of a specific design, goal, or something that is to be attained- aikido, judo, etc.  


Me, I just work with pugilism.  

Would have been cooler if they mma guy would have pretended to be air punched  for a while before coming back "rocky balboa" style and demolishing the old man.

As is, the video was kinda sad.

As for aikido demonstrations: some of them look really phony. Other techniques seem to make sense and look genuine in their use of physics and balance.   That they can be used in fluid, real life situations is harder to believe.

Same thing that got Obama hired, hero worship.  

 

During and after the Tokugawa era many ancient fighting arts, (jitsu), were refined into an esoteric way ,(do).
Aikido has some devastating joint locks in it's arsenal.
The Jujitsu techniques they were derived from are down right brutal.

To sum things up...
Jujitsu was a method of incapacitating an opponent wearing 100 pounds of armor.
Aikido is a method of reaching a path the spiritual enlightenment.

relevant ?

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1774326_Can_you_feel_people_s_aura_sense_their_presence_.html

the level of stupidity in both examples is stunning.

Lol

I am truly jealous

I have a ton of respect for martial arts and have taken some myself, but I have no intention of ending up in a fight. It will be spray first (if possible), and if I get dragged to the ground I will cut my way out. I am non confrontational and not a shit talker, so my escalation of force with tools oughta work out legally. We'll see.

I love these threads.   Didn't we do this a few weeks ago though?  

I remember reading my dad's Black Belt Magazine collection when I was a kid in the 70's and 80's.  These magazines were from the late 50's and early 60's.  They had constant discussions about things we still discuss in GD.   MMA didn't exist, but Gracie style Ju-Jitsu was the rage back then as well.


The consensus opinion back then was this:


1) Everyone should learn a striking and a grappling art to be a well-rounded fighter.

2) Some arts are more applicable to learning to fight quickly (bjj and jj,western and thai boxing, catch wresting, etc) and some arts are more philosophical (tai-chi and aikido for instance).  Any martial art will teach effective self defense, but the more philosophical arts tend to take longer to reach a level of effectiveness compared to more straightforward arts.   You can be pretty effective after 2 years of bjj or boxing, but 2 years of tai-chi or aikido isn't going to give you the same level of self defense skill.


It's 30 years later and those expert opinions from people in my father's day still apply pretty well.  The way MMA has gone seems to bear those opinions out.


Can Aikido be an affective self-defense art? Of course it can.  Are there other arts that can get you to a level for effective self defense a lot faster than Aikido?  Of course there are.


Is Aikido good for MMA?  Some of the techniques are, but there aren't many traditional martial arts that are effective for MMA by themselves.  What I liked about the first cage fights back in the day is it paired style vs style.    Modern MMA is sport whose rules (limited as they are) determine what is effective in the ring.   Even if you had an Aikido practitioner in mma, he'd be impossible to tell from any other MMAer after he cross trained in striking, ground fighting, takedown defense, etc..  So it really wouldn't be Aikido he was using, some of his moves would be Aikido, but some of those same moves are used by judo, jj, bjj, aikijutsu, etc...


Does that mean some random GDer should walk up to someone with 20 years of Aikido and start a fight?   No.  That would be a bad idea.

Does that mean some random GDer could whip Steven Seagal's ass?  No.  He'd fuck 99.9% of this site up, even as old and as fat as he is.  If he didn't shoot you first, he's one of us when it comes to the rkba.

I have been practicing Aikido for 15 years.   It has worked out pretty well for me multiple times in real life.  I have only used a couple techniques and they were no where near as pretty as in the dojo, but I have used a ton of the principles.

Technique wise rokyo, kotegaeshi, gokyo, ikkyo, and various pins have been what I used, but even the times I have punched someone in the face or supplexed a guy on to the pavement I have always done so in harmony with the universe.

Gold.

I practiced it for a few years; I love the art, but I can't say I really like the artist. Now I study Jujitsu. There are a lot of techniques in Aikido that I've used and would use again. However, there are some that I'd never use anywhere but the mat.

One of the things that I continue to use in any martial art is the art of Ukemi. I've found that not a lot of arts emphasize this like Aikido does and it does help a lot; I've also found that it really frustrates a lot of people who don't have a lot of experience and training when it comes to Ukemi.

I practiced some aikido and took it seriously for the time I did.

I was never beaten in tournament.

I did employ some principles of aikido in fights.

What's your definition of successful?

I took Hapkido for several years under Master West (www.hapkido.com) in Mississippi. He learned from the Korean Tiger Division during Vietnam and used it whenever hand to hand was needed for sure.  Excellent teacher and school, unfortunately I had to move and there are none nearby.

Hapkido is the Korean version of Aikido as I understood the development of the art.  Very worthwhile to learn and he always said that he never had a student come out on the bad end of a situation.  I would highly recommend it and going at it pretty hard it took me 2 years to get to red belt which is a mandatory 1 year belt before black belt tryout at that school. I wish I could get back  in it, it helped balance tremendously, strength, agility, just the required stretching 4 times a week I went helped me feel much better and agile.

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Really?
Anderson Silva did. With Steven Seagal

Successful fighters aren't measured by MMA records.

A bit more to it than that. Anyone interested look up what Kano did with jujitsu in 1880s.

It is a good tool.  Pain is a motivator.  Wrist locks are painful.  They force people to submit to your will quickly if properly applied.

He did but has distanced himself from Segal in the meantime.

Most of what you posted here is wrong.

I could see some usefulness in Detention, LE, Security, Bouncing, etc.  

But when it's really "on", it doesn't cut it.

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THERE IS NO TOURNAMENTS  IN AIKIDO.

I didn't say they were aikido matches, did I?

I said I used aikido principles in fights.

This.

I did Shorin Ryu when I was a younger man & my sensei had an Aikido background.

Aikido techniques are great tools to have under your belt, especially when they are combined with a harder style.

That's kind of the point, aikido is never really "on"

It " being really on" implies a toe to toe matching of strength or skill, to which aikido would respond
"you're doing it wrong".

Your spelling and punctuation seems fine.  

A front kick up the middle is akido now?