Re: Aikido?
Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2008 2:31 pm
I can say from past experience that Aikido taught correctly, worked amazingly well for me. It was the first art that I trained formally, and I trained it a lot, upwards of 20 hours a week on average. I think it is telling that my Aiki teachers were pretty disappointed with most of the stuff out there (although not all of it, they spoke well of some lineages and teachers, but not so well on the "ki approach" types). A couple of things I would add:
1)You start cooperative, you learn to move from the dantien and to keep a calm mind. Doing so allows one to build some confidence, something that is vital if you wish to remain cool under pressure and for using the skillset. Once this is developing however, it was par for the course to up the resistance.
2)There ARE strikes, called atemi, and they are focused at spots on the body that generally induce a protective response . They are not necessarily designed to be used without the rest of the system, but they do a good job of coaxing a response out of a person, creating openings, controlling/influencing intention in another, and familiarizing each of us with the general vectors a strike will take (from up to down, from down to up, thrusting up the middle, diagonal, etc) and gave us body knowledge/muscle memory on how to move into technique from almost any stimulus. One motto was : any attack any response
3)We were taught the "less merciful" methods of handling situations, should you desire to deal with things in a way other than submission. Knowing these made it much easier to trust the submission stuff for what it was, as well as what it was not capable of, or a good fit for.
4)We worked hard and sweated like crazy. Class was generally around 2+ hours. 20-30 minutes were straight ukemi practice on your own, followed by generally, 2 45 minutes portions, each working one technique through rotating partners nonstop. We would finish off with some randori, single and multiple opponent, and then some meditation. If you were Dan grade you stayed after for another hour of weapons and advanced work as well.
In that format, the art works well. I would argue that most arts, if put into a similar template, would achieve pretty decent results out of those that stuck around. Our school generally had 5 or 6 people in class on any given evening, and lost money
After about 3 years, I decided to try out what I knew on an amature boxing buddy of mine that was training for his first pro fight. He threw a jab followed by a lead hook, and I managed to evade the jab, follow him in, and throw him head over heels with the hook. It kind of freaked me out that it worked that well. I have since used aspects of that training working doors on occasion and even subduing a guy on pcp at one point a few years back. As you can probably tell, I am a fan.
I also loathe meeting most people that train Aikido, as we tend to have very little in common.
1)You start cooperative, you learn to move from the dantien and to keep a calm mind. Doing so allows one to build some confidence, something that is vital if you wish to remain cool under pressure and for using the skillset. Once this is developing however, it was par for the course to up the resistance.
2)There ARE strikes, called atemi, and they are focused at spots on the body that generally induce a protective response . They are not necessarily designed to be used without the rest of the system, but they do a good job of coaxing a response out of a person, creating openings, controlling/influencing intention in another, and familiarizing each of us with the general vectors a strike will take (from up to down, from down to up, thrusting up the middle, diagonal, etc) and gave us body knowledge/muscle memory on how to move into technique from almost any stimulus. One motto was : any attack any response
3)We were taught the "less merciful" methods of handling situations, should you desire to deal with things in a way other than submission. Knowing these made it much easier to trust the submission stuff for what it was, as well as what it was not capable of, or a good fit for.
4)We worked hard and sweated like crazy. Class was generally around 2+ hours. 20-30 minutes were straight ukemi practice on your own, followed by generally, 2 45 minutes portions, each working one technique through rotating partners nonstop. We would finish off with some randori, single and multiple opponent, and then some meditation. If you were Dan grade you stayed after for another hour of weapons and advanced work as well.
In that format, the art works well. I would argue that most arts, if put into a similar template, would achieve pretty decent results out of those that stuck around. Our school generally had 5 or 6 people in class on any given evening, and lost money
After about 3 years, I decided to try out what I knew on an amature boxing buddy of mine that was training for his first pro fight. He threw a jab followed by a lead hook, and I managed to evade the jab, follow him in, and throw him head over heels with the hook. It kind of freaked me out that it worked that well. I have since used aspects of that training working doors on occasion and even subduing a guy on pcp at one point a few years back. As you can probably tell, I am a fan.
I also loathe meeting most people that train Aikido, as we tend to have very little in common.