Even Aikidoka think Aikido is fake

[XXIV]

That gentleman is a 7th degree black belt and can in a few movements break your arm in 3 different places. Also, he taught the front kick to Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida, two professional fighters that won their respective fights after that with the Seagal Front Kick.

I read your response and all I could picture in my head was two kids mashing their GIJoes together but you're the kid that's screaming "NUH UH I HIT YOU FIRST WITH MY MISSILE GUN SWORD LAUNCHER" over and over again

[Ignorami]

I think most if not all of you secretly want to be Nico Toscani.

Nico Toscani wants to be me!

[BKR]

Heres a little nidbit that you might find interesting.



Now this is from MAP. http://www.martialartsplanet.com/for...ad.php?t=27710

In Judo that is called Jita Kyoei, on of it's fundamental principles. We take care of our training partners all of the time.

Ben

[BKR]

It isn't some ultimate realization, just a recognition of the what and why of Aikido's formation and dissemination. It isn't a combat art, it is an attempt to build a spiritual technology out of elements drawn from a combat art. His direct students knew it. Some agreed, some didn't and what they chose to teach of what they learned reflects their understandings.

I'm going to make an assumption, which you can tell me if I'm right or wrong. You aren't terrbily familiar with the theoretical, philosophical or religious dimesnions of the Hindu yogic tradition and you've never read too deeply into Ueshiba's own writings on spiritual topics. Because of this you think I'm dismissing Aikido as "Oh, its just sissy bending exercises" when I call it a form of yoga. If so, you're wrong.

A cursory reading of Ueshiba's writings on misogi is probably the best place to start, provided you have an understanding of the yogic traditions influence on Japanese religious thought. If you want a look at a more detailed look at Aikido as a form of yogic practice check out John Stevens' _Secrets of Aikido_ which doesn't work form the assumption that the reader is already familiar with either topic and might make a better first stop.

I do believe "yoga" means "unions" in sankrit. Not sure if it is exactly "ai" (sorry can't put in the correct kanji) in the same sense as in Japanese...

I can see aikido as a form of yoga in perhaps similar goals. Of course, there are different kinds of yoga some more esoteric than others. The commonest, hatha yoga, is I was told in my several years of yoga, a method to prepare the body for the more esoteric methods.

Aikido is budo, so it's not primarily concerned with fighting of any sort, other than the struggle for self perfection.

Ben

[BKR]

I'm going to echo what Lord Asia said about this, but also provide a little more detail as I have actually trained SOME DRAJJ and am somewhat familiar with it's methods. This will be a long post, but I hope to clear up some of the confusion about this little known style, which most aikidoka have never seen, let alone trained in, yet constantly talk about.

The unarmed techniques of DRAJJ are divided into three sections:

1) Jujitsu (Shiden Mokuroku), 118 techniques

2) Aikinojutsu, 53 techniques

3) Aikijujitsu, something above 2000 techniques


When a student begins to learn to DRAJJ, he tradionally was taught the jujitsu part of the curriculum first. This is a fact often overlooked by many, but actually very important. The jujitsu techniques are very linear, and are fairly typical of most koryu arts. These take up about a year or two, sometimes more, of training. When training a soldier, who might see battle at any point, one wants him to be able to learn how to kill as quickly as possible, and these techniques are meant to be learned quickly for this very reason. This kind of no-nonsense, linear techniques complete with strikes, kicks, chokes, breaks, is one of the main things missing from ALL kinds of aikido. Balance is broken by strikes preceeding grappling.


Aikinojutsu are techniques that rely on 'aiki'. Aiki in DRAJJ is explained as proper way of holding your body and angle of attack based upon opponent. THere is nothing metaphysical about it. It is similar to sword work, with the difference between a technique working and failing being at times a few inches. Should a technique fail, one can fall back on the jujitsu. There are no strikes in most of these techniques.

Aikijujitsu are the techniques which combine atemi with 'aiki' (aiki meaning, once again, a more refined sense of angles of attack and posture, timing). The movements are still much more linear, and though I myself never learned any of these, I had some preformed on me while resisting. They hurt. The strikes hurt. The locks hurt.


Once a student moves on to aikijujitsu techniques, he will use 'aiki' with even the jujitsu techniques, as well as the atemi.

I don't think you could jump into DRAJJ and begin learning the Aikijujitsu techniques, because the idea is to get to that point after years of understanding the basics of control. However, some schools of DRAJJ do teach these techniques first now, skipping over the jj because this is what people want. For this reason alot of DRAJJ resembles aikido and is about as effective (not very).

Aikido presuposes a knowledge of 'basics', and therefore students never learn how to make the aiki techniques work, nor what aiki even is. As Lord Asia said, the best aikido practioners were those who came from judo. In this context, this fact makes perfect sense.

DRAJJ is often called a 'battlefield art', and I can see why. When preforming some of the techniques I can picture a samurai who has been given a specific target moving through the lines to kill him, evading others along the way.


That's it.

Thanks for this comprehensive post. It's good to have some fact injected into the discussion.

Amazing how DRJJ was/is progressive in it's training. Simple basics/fundamentals that are also effective followed by higher level principles that can the be applied to the effective fundamentals to make them even more effective.

Who'd have thought?

My primary Judo isntructor studied aikido as well. He discovered some interesting stuff to apply to our Judo training. Primarily to do with angles and posture, amazingly enough, but also movement. His brother was studying akikai aikido seriously at the time (he was also a judo brown belt). The guy was very centered and had excellent posture and movement. But in Judo randori he was relatively easy to throw when he was trying to only use Judo. You could see him concentrating so hard on being centered (which he was...you could feel it), but in the end because of the contact with grips, he was vulnerable nonetheless.

My experience is that, as apparently the judoka who Kano "sent" to study aikido, judoka of sufficient skill and experience can see the connections pretty easily and adopt/adapt them to their Judo, or Judo to aikido.

[erezb]

Steven Seagal to Ikido is what Bruce Lee to Kung Fu.
And...Steven could totally kick Bruce's ass (when he was younger).
I also think his fight scenes are better and more realistic than Bruce's.