Tomiki Aikido Nationals Tournament

**RaiNnyX4** · Posted On: 10/13/2006 10:15am

I meant to put this up a while ago but totally forgot. Anyways, the Tomiki Aikido Nationals Tournament is this weekend. I'll be heading up with my girlfriend to watch. I believe NasalInfection is competing. I'm going to try and video tape and take lots of pictures and come back and post them as soon as possible.

2006 U.S. National Tournament
October 14-15, 2006
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, NY

tomiki.org

**NasalInfection** · Posted On: 10/13/2006 3:06pm

The subtitle for the tourney is "I can't believe its not kata".

**PirateJon** · Posted On: 10/13/2006 4:57pm

Teh R34l aikido? I'd really love to see some vid from this.

**RaiNnyX4** · Posted On: 10/18/2006 9:03pm

Mods: I started an identical thread in YMAS because I think most people interested in Aikido probably don't scroll down far enough to see this section of the forums. Feel free to close one if you feel it's appropriate.

Ok, so I was able to get all of the videos up on youtube finally last night. Here's some of my thoughts from the tournament.

It was much smaller than I expected. It seemed like there were only 3 or 4 different dojos there. This really surprised me as this was supposed to be a "National" tournament. And I know that NYC has a fairly high Tomiki Aikido contingent and seeing as that's only about an hour and a half drive from the tournament, I expected there to be a lot of people.

The Kyu Randori (non black belt matches) was REALLY boring. I think I only saw three genuine throws total for both Toshu and Tanto Randori. I only managed to catch one of them on tape and from NasalInfection's decription of himself I think it's actually him landing an Ippon. Most of the matches were won by penalty points and they were constantly being stopped to explain to one of the competitors what he/she did wrong. I guess it's a good thing to really explain to them what they did wrong but it made it incredibly frustrating to watch.

The Open Randori was a lot more exciting. Once the black belts were able to compete the matches started to become more fast-paced with a lot less stopping. Here there were plenty of landed throws and joint-locks applied which resulted in matches that were won by something other than penalty points.

Conclusion: The best strategy for the Tanto Randori seemed to be to stay light on your feet and block the stab with a knife-hand chop until you could find a moment to catch your opponent off-gaurd and land an Atemi throw or to be able to catch the stabbing hand just long enough for you to close the distance and apply a joint-lock to the other arm. I didn't get to see any of the Open Toshu Randori so I can't really comment on that.

The Kyu ranks seemed quite ineffectual with their techniques. Like I said, I think there were only three landed throws during the whole of their Randori. This is in stark contrast to Judo competitions where Kyu ranks (even yellow and orange belts) can still apply their techniques with some regularity. Most of the black belts looked very athletic and were much quicker and powerful in their movements.

The tournament didn't provide the vindication for Aikido I was hoping for. I guess it really came down to the fact that the Kyu ranks couldn't really do anything. I think in order to make Aikido effective in a short amount of time (the amount of time that the kyu ranks had probably trained for) you'd need to either train extremely hardcore and/or have previous experience in another art (Ueshiba's Hell Dojo anyone?). This again, is another point that is different than say Judo or Kyokushin, where you can become a better fighter in a relatively short amount of time. Anyways, here are the clips. I'm not a Tomiki Aikido guy but I did my best to name them according to that style.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mPUGJwG-Dg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiZodaZbRBA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZaYVeR7FtM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUp5u7_kUQM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZcUsFX-yFs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFNxBj-A_cU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDmWRazjQMo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PQpI4Ss0tY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXKwht_80UM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d3d2Zx8SHk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXCPE9YR5jA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvfyvQIJiGo