The reason I quit Aikido and stuck with Judo.

[donoraen]

Then There Was Stewey.......

The kid was out for no less then 6 weeks.And the worst part was, he missed his 1st year of wrestling. When I found out he was going to start wrestling, I got excited for him. I'd take 1/2 to 2 hours after class to try to cram things into his head. Proper 2 leg and when to hit it,proper stance,firemans carry,Jap whizzer,one-leg to hip toss. As well as sitting out, riding, and multiple pins and how to work them so one can't easily bridge out. This kid soaked everything in like a sponge.

When sensei finally noticed what we were doing after a few months of this, he immediately talked **** and put an end to it. How dare I use his mats for the purpose of an evil,vile sport like wrestling111!!! Stewey and I were going live, and this clown was acting like I was trying to kill him. Sensei seemed to particularly despise anything that could detract from Aikido.

Regardless of the context, using someone elses mat space without their express permission is a dick move.

[2groggy]

On the 1984, Animal Farm, Farenheit 451 subject: All my friends preferred Terry Gilliam's "Brazil". ...

That's because "Brazil" has already come true. We are not slaves to Big Brother. We are slaves to the bureaucracy. And besides, Robert DeNiro cast as the Robin Hood of heating and ventilation - hilarious.

[Adam Alexander]

WTF? I know kyokushin karate has been used against animals[bulls] before, but Aikido against animals? Did that guy specifiy what kind of animal he was talking about?

Gerbils.


I wish I had stumbled on this thread while it was still an Aikijoker Anonymous meeting. The timing of this post would have been right. But, I think I have a decent story just the same.

I trained Yoshokai Aikido in a branch dojo in Michigan. It was a pretty relaxed place: typical Aikido backbiting and rank worship but most of it disappeared when we bowed in and junior/senior BS wasn't evident unless, in my case, I had to line up with the one insecure shodan.

I became spoiled there. I just assumed that since, except for the one shodan, everyone stopped the pettiness on the mat, that it was like that everywhere.

I loved Aikido. Like, I'm sure, every weak-minded individual who falls for a cult, I was looking for meaning. I thought I had found it in the techniques. I was so foolish: a modern day Don Quixote looking to save the world by the transmission of relatively useless dance moves. I didn't need the philosophy; theoretically, my values were already consistent with Aikido's.

However, I was, in my mind, too big for Michigan and wanted something new. Naturally, as a cult adherent, my intended destination had to have a member dojo. I chose Portland, OR; just about as far away from home as possible.

I closed my business, which had just become successful, and did everything else you do before relocating.

The head instructor was, ostensibly, decent to me and the senior student, David Scheer, and others invited me out to welcome me. For a number of reasons related to being freshly relocated, I declined. I had the sense that the rejection was taken as a slight but nothing came directly of it.

During the, approximately, third class I attended, the instructor ran us through the standard course you get at any Aikido dojo: rolls, knee walking, etc. I believe it was during this class that everything changed.

As I recall, two people were on all fours, side-by-side and we were to do a jumping breakfall over them. Scheer, being senior, of course, was first. In dramatic Portland Aikido fashion, he did this big shuffle-run to get speed and then went over. All the other toads did the same. I, being new to the group, was about last and, just coming off of several months of high-quality and quantity breakfall work, walked up and went over without the preceding drama.

I believe that was the moment. Scheer, I believe, then introduced me to a common look I received there. It's the expression of rage accompanied by the refusal to look directly at the object of rage; in this case, I believe, me. When he came back around in line, I asked him about something and I think he was glaring at my forehead.

From there, it got bad. The higher kyus who were "in" started treating me awkwardly: snide comments on the mat, I believe one slandered me to the receptionist (community center dojo), when I brought my woman to the annual party, they'd evacuate any room we walked into. It was a mess.

However, I was there for Aikido. So, I kept showing up when I felt my solo practice wasn't progressing. It was always a joke.

Ultimately, Scheer took over the dojo. Bad news for me and, in my opinion, the style. I think I attended two of those classes.

The earlier was interesting. A 5th kyu who may have been a romantic interest of Scheer lead the class. Since I rarely visited, I always took low spot in line. That was the etiquette I was taught in MI. The 5th kyu directed me to the normal spot. Then, when the 5th kyu demo'd the first technique, he called me up to be uke. Then, when we began practicing, he called a partner switch repeatedly until I lined up with Scheer and, as I could have predicted, Scheer made some, in my opinion, asinine correction and, I swear, class was stopped within a minute of that.

I had never had my line position adjusted, never been called to demo and never had more than one partner switch in a class. Since this ended with Scheer's correction, my belief is that Scheer was carrying out some petty abuse of his fantasized samurai authority. But hey, what's a little abuse between samurai?

I went back again. On this night, Scheer, whose technique was, in my opinion, a laugh, was going to teach the finer points of a boxer's hook.

Note: About two years earlier, I watched a number of high level tests. The founder's son was testing for, as I recall, 6th dan (a huge rank in the org), the daughter testing for something, a 4th dan was testing and others. While everyone watched the tests, I watched the honcho watching the tests. He spent a lot of time watching their feet. I mentioned this to my seniors on the way home and they, as was a typical response to my dandy notions, laughed me off. In any case, I spent the next couple years watching feet, including Scheer's, trying to figure it out.

I thought I had unlocked something incredible but on my first day of Judo, the senior I was working with informed me that if my toes went up, it's a sign of imbalance.

So, Scheer's going to teach us Aiki-boxing. What does he do? He forces into the instructions,'Some people think the feet mean something.' I think, since his toes, when I watched, were up more than down, he didn't understand why I was watching.

In any case, over the preceding couple years, I had been giving up on the style. Father to son transition, different techniques, different focuses. It just didn't feel the same but what am I to do? I moved based on this crap.

But then, after Sensei Samurai taught us how to box, he said,'Now, for Aikido, you're going to throw your balance after the punch.'

I had lost my cult; my muse. Depression leading to much worse set in. I routinely babbled to the former head instructor via email; Much of it is so incoherent, I can't make it out. No one from the cult or Aikido, in general, lent a harmonious hand... Scheer was promoted. Thanks, Kushidas. Golly, did I fudge the whole harmony concept!


Finally, what made it a cult?

Wearing fancy pants, hollering "Osu!" for no good reason and talking in a Japanese accent didn't make it a cult. The defining characteristic of a cult is its destructive impact on the adherent's life.

For many non-samurai, it's a hobby rather than a cult. But for us quixotic adherents to bushido-- those of us who are perfectly rational in everything except matters of chivalry-- they'll accept everything you'll give.



I think Brave New World is the most contemporarily relevant. But, Don Quixote is the most relevant to fighting bullshido in the martial arts.

[datdamnmachine]

Jeez, all that hostility! I never had any problems between Judo and the other martial arts clubs at Tulane U. The karate/tkd/FMA club (known as the Tulane Martial Arts Club) always asked me to come and teach a couple of ukemi classes for them. They actually did spar, and I did some sparring with them for a while, before I pulled the **** out of my hamstring doing kicks. The head TKD guy was an incredible athlete and very good, the FMA/Karate guy was good too.

They used to watch me spar with their kyu grades and would always yell, "Don't throw him, Ben, don't throw him", because I was always positioning myself to do so but not actually doing it (hardwood floor). One TKD guy, blue belt or something, got pissed at me because the instructors kept laughing while we sparred, and telling him I'd killed him several times in 2 minutes already. He kicked me under my chest pad on purpose, and the TKD sensei told me to "go ahead, have some fun", at which point I not only punched him in the head but tossed him into the wall.

Good times, those guys were cool and fun to hang with.

Gotta love sparring. Instant ego destruction.

The aikido club was a fucking cult. I took a couple of classes and was pretty bored. Everything was so indirect and soft it didn't make much sense to me (this was in the 1988-'90s time frame). The head sensei was dorking as many aiki babes as he could, and he was in his 50s (yes, I was jealous!). The condescension was pretty thick at times towards the martial arts club and the Judo club, but WTF.

Oh and we had a Dillman disciple come for a couple of "clinics" to the MA club. I was skeptical to say the least. The guys name was Ed Lake. He was newly divorced and on the make for any hot college chicks he could shag, and was not ashamed to talk about "sexual" pressure points and offer to demo them. He even tried to put the moves on my girlfriend when we all went out to have a drink after dinner.

Wow, that brought back memories.

Ben

Had a guy in BJJ tell me about his Hapkido instructor. He was the same way. Always on the na-na hunt.

Aikido is still a personality cult built around their coach. I don't mind a bit of a coach idolisation, because I and the club idolise our coach a fair bit. The key difference being our coach has verfiable international Judo record whereas the Aikijoker has chero and acts as if he's the second coming of jesus christ.

I'll carry on inviting them to sparring sessions and making jokes about them until them man up and take us on.

I understand that. I try to work with the lower ranked students in our class with this. Going back to what I said before, because of the sparring and pressure testing, you don't have to rely on "faith" to determine BS when you see it.

At the same time, I've seem people who do martial arts that pressure test and martial arts that don't and that is a weird situation all its own...