http://www.japanskedanmark.dk/salg/hakama/1.pic/2005.09.19%20hakama%20_hlhTM%20(146)-b.jpg

But look, can none of you see the ease with which the plant is held back?

Aikido teaches teh r4@l anti-Triffid!



Hari krishna Hari krishna

How poisonous!



WHO TAUGHT YOU THE Secret Stance?!!!! [!--Ed.]

It is typical of . . . wait . . . I heard a clock go off . . . excuse one second. . . .

--J.D.

Now now ..... or you'll have me writhing all over the tatami out of control with my sides splitting!

Aikido bender bends unbendable plant with unbendable arm.

Quite an assumption. . . .

--J.D.

Some of the stuff people post on Aikido is all too true. If you eliminate competition, dont practice kata or drills then your asking people to figure stuff out through menial practice and within Aikido you already have an environment that is moving more and more towards the extreme of co-operative practice.


Thats all fine and well, but its hardly helping develop a martial art is it? I mean some of the videos involving dan grades is nothing short of woeful.


Ive been studying with Aikkai for near a year consistently, the sylabus is focused towards grasping the basics and then moving onto the atemis like kote gaeshi and sankyo. This is fine, if you forget that people arent living in medival Japan where attacking the wrist are essential to stopping weapon usage. Most modern day attackers are going to use brute force, incorporating mainly strikes, Aikido as very little to improve the odds in your favor against strikers.
I can recall a class recently where we practiced irimi nage against punches, we played with weapons, we did it solo, we did it in practice with partners and then in seiza. Heavens knows why because the likely hood of ever wanting to pull this off in a confrontation are practically nil.

Dont get me wrong, Ive enjoyed what Ive learned, I think it gives you a good understanding of movement, distance, techniques designed to break your oppoents balance and trying to use their energy to your benefit and there have been times I have been sparring and Ive managed a shiho nage and other few moves aside, but if your looking for a style geared towards defending yourself aikido from what Ive seen isnt it. It as good ideas but its presented with such mysticism and so withdrawn from reality that its hard to take anything physical from it.
I hoped Id got this all wrong so I managed to track down a 'hard style' just a few blocks past where I do Aikikai. See here http://www.theshudokan.com/ they state they practice a style from Gozo Shioda - Yoshinkan

So I emailed the local branch guy asking him do they spar (something I got alot from, but we only really did on one occassion), do they do competitions, kata etc he answered negative to all these. And said that there is no such thing as a Hard-Style Aikido....which thankfully put the record straight for me :eusa_thin

SIve been studying with Aikkai for near a year consistently, the sylabus is focused towards grasping the basics and then moving onto the atemis like kote gaeshi and sankyo.
Sankyo and Kote Gaeshi aren't atemi (not there is no 's' for the plural). Atemi is in the broadest sense, striking. Sankyo is a wrist lock/pin, as is Kote Gaeshi. They can both be used from grabs as well, so I don't know where this idea of them being atemi comes from.

"...Ive been studying with Aikkai for near a year ..."

This is where it comes from. Give him a break, just a noobie's mistake.
BTW, I agree with him about the part of wrist grabbing in feudal Japan.

This is where it comes from. Give him a break, just a noobie's mistake.
BTW, I agree with him about the part of wrist grabbing in feudal Japan.
I took Aikido for a total of one year, it must have taken all of three seconds for someone to key into the blank look when they said atemi and explain it to me.

I took Aikido for a total of one year, it must have taken all of three seconds for someone to key into the blank look when they said atemi and explain it to me.
Sorry, my own mistake, I was using it to mean a precursor to a hold or a pin, so this is the incorrect word.

Sorry, my own mistake, I was using it to mean a precursor to a hold or a pin, so this is the incorrect word.
http://www.stenudd.com/aikido/aikido-glossary.htm

I took Aikido for a total of one year, it must have taken all of three seconds for someone to key into the blank look when they said atemi and explain it to me.

Sorry, my own mistake, I was using it to mean a precursor to a hold or a pin, so this is the incorrect word.

Ok, he/she/it is just slow then.

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c137/mchalmers002/3ypfwc0.jpg

So, abclaret, do you practice any martial art?

Yeah . . . I went there. . . .

--J.D.

P.S. Welcome to the forum.

P.P.S. Two drink minimum.

Ok, to make this thread "deliver" again I would like to quote the words of one of the shihan I respect the most, Mistunari Kanai Sensei (Aikikai aikido 8th Dan). A bit long but still very much worth reading.




"One of the most basic, chronic, and perhaps inevitable problems in practicing AIKIDO, is that AIKIDO training can be reduced to an easy going exercise based on excessive compromise between the practice partners (NAGE and UKE). This problem arises because AIKIDO practitioners often base their practice on sincere but ill-founded philosophies and theories. Examples of the many incorrect interpretations of AIKIDO as applied to practice include emphasizing an idea of an "AIKIDO style" ambiance, expressing an "ideology" of AIKIDO, and misconstruing the concept of "harmony".

Because of the importance of correctly understanding the meaning of harmony in the specific context of AIKIDO, I will give a brief explanation. Keep in mind that I will cover only a tiny fraction of the meanings and aspects of AIKIDO's harmony.

First, it is important to know that harmony is a central component of AIKIDO. Most fundamentally, it means harmony with the entire universe, with all existence. In terms of mind and body, harmony simply means that one should equally emphasize each, rather than focusing on one or the other. But in physical terms, harmony has a technical meaning referring to a certain way of using one's entire body in every movement. Applied to a confrontational situation (including training), it is this technical meaning of harmony one must realize in oneself and with the opponent, and create a situation that brings the opponent into harmony with oneself.

Harmony does not mean just getting along with people on the basis of a lowest common denominator, or creating agreement without regard to rules in order to avoid confrontation and maintain an easy going or overly comfortable environment. Harmony, as used in AIKIDO, does not involve compromising, diminishing, or diluting opposing things and their individual essences. Such an approach waters everything down, sacrifices the essence of things, erodes standards of behavior and attitude and thereby diminishes each individual. Rather, AIKIDO's harmony brings different -- even opposing -- elements together and intensifies them in a way that drives everything toward a higher level.

It is often pointed out that AIKIDO permits men and women, adults and children, and old and young to practice together. This is true. It is equally true, but not as frequently noted, that within AIKIDO there is also room to practice in other ways, for example, to use very hard practice to develop martial techniques. AIKIDO's breadth and inclusiveness does not mean that its practice is easy, or that those practitioners focusing on developing hard fighting techniques are less important, or less legitimate, than those interested in other of its aspects.

The result of these errors, I suspect, gives rise to the first major problem in AIKIDO training, which is that many AIKIDO practitioners have been unable to establish a training method based on the most fundamental understanding of how to use the body to produce, apply and receive power.

What follows is a theory and explanation of how to correctly use the body. It seems to me necessary to articulate in detail this logic of AIKIDO. It is intended that this articulation of AIKIDO's physical principles should replace the abstract explanations typically advanced by many practitioners of AIKIDO and other martial arts.

The AIKIDO practitioner must understand how the physiology of the body, the very structure of the body, gives rise to rules or principles of how the entire body should most efficiently and optimally function. Correctness of a body movement is judged solely by this criteria: whether the movement, in light of human physiology, utilizes with complete economy all the parts of the body organized in the most efficient possible way. Understanding such a fundamental theory of body utilization must precede explanations of the specific techniques of AIKIDO.

Any system of body movement must be based on human physiology. The martial arts in general have rules which further define the implications of the human physical structure in the context of combat situations. AIKIDO, which is aimed at the broadest approach to martial arts, should have an even more precise set of principles.

A specific technique based on these principles will utilize every part of the body, organized and sequenced so as to optimize the generation of power. If this is done, the technique will be correct and will "work". Failure to understand and apply it makes techniques ineffective.

One must understand that AIKIDO training should be solely based on this uncompromisable principle of maximum efficiency arising from human physiology. Armed with this understanding, the practitioner may readily determine whether techniques that may look free flowing and correct are based upon the true principles of AIKIDO training. Incorrect techniques are all too common due to failure to understand this principle.

The failure to understand the principle of efficient body movement has other implications, for example, that the main groups of techniques characteristic of AIKIDO (throws, holds, strikes, and thrusts) lack a theoretical consistency and therefore appear overly distinct from each other.

It should be understood that I am not proposing to constrain AIKIDO in a rigid mold but, on the contrary, I am suggesting that it is necessary to break out of a rigid mold already in existence, a mold made up of formalized bad habits. The results of these bad habits are easily observable in much of what is today called AIKIDO practice.

There is a second major problem in AIKIDO training, one which arises in the relationship between NAGE and UKE.

Very often training is conducted in a kind of fake confrontational mode without either actually fighting or training in earnest. Because of this, the practitioner typically fails to realize an increasing dependence on the opponent's cooperation. This unwholesome over-cooperation corrupts the relationship between NAGE and UKE and, while it may create seemingly dramatic results, it ruins the opportunity to improve one's techniques or train one's eyes.

Because the fundamental principles of AIKIDO training have not been clearly established, NAGEs frequently are not applying good and correct techniques that will really throw the UKE; nonetheless, it appears UKE is being thrown. In such cases, the UKE has implicitly agreed to act as though the technique is working regardless of its actual effectiveness (effectiveness is determined primarily by whether the body is used correctly to generate power). Because of this, the issue of whether the technique will work or not has been reduced to utter irrelevance.

Although it should be obvious that a corrupt relationship between UKE and NAGE has profoundly negative implications for a martial art, this kind of training is very common. Everyone should clearly understand that as long as people engage in what is, in reality, a fake practice in which they are doing nothing more than merrily playing at being martial artists, the true AIKIDO will never be learned or understood.

The entirety of the relationship between NAGE and UKE is called SOTAI KANKEI, and is based upon the basic principle of acknowledging that their relationship is fundamentally confrontational. Each of the training partners must abandon thoughts of independence from each other and must accept that the fundamental issue is how to make use of the AIKIDO knowledge to deal with the UKE through the use of effective, correct techniques based on AIKIDO's principles.

It is absolutely imperative that each technique employed is real, that is, that each technique handle the opponent by using one's body structure (and each of the five principal parts of the body) in a dynamic and optimally efficient way.

If people were to understand these points, and could use them as the basis for their AIKIDO practice, the door to understanding would open. It is through this door that the practitioner must pass in order to learn how to execute the true AIKIDO in a rational manner taking into account all aspects of the body's principles and SOTAI KANKEI. Without this, the practitioner will be doomed to patching together makeshift and incorrect techniques."

Note on terminology: The words UKE, opponent, other, and partner are closely related, but each has a specific meaning. If one is being attacked, or in a confrontational situation, the word "opponent" (or AITE) is most appropriate. The term "other" is like opponent, but adds a connotation of including everything other than the self, e.g. the concept of MA-AI or the distance between the self and other. When we are describing the practice of techniques, including taking UKEMI, then it makes most sense to say "UKE". Finally, there is the term "partner" which is most appropriate when describing exercises (as opposed to techniques), for example stretching the back, or practicing TENKAN movements.

© Mitsunari Kanai 1994-96

Doctor X, I was kind of hoping to find an Aikido which was a little more practical, so I could transfer some of the stuff I learnt over. I will have to hold my breath until I see if there are any Tomiki groups close. At the moment Im practicing WC, but I might take Judo as a primary but theres always a boxing and thai gym close by.

Shinshoryu, so its the practioners who are to blame not the art? Is this what your really trying to say?

why does aikido ALWAYS seem to walk hand in hand with wing chun ?