Aberdeen Banyu Aikido Club

[s558]

So I'm confused. I watched that one, as well as the 'part 3' of that test.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8BUKXZ8PFbI

Are you saying that is good Aikido or not?
How long would you say it takes a regular student to become somewhat effective in applying aikido?

Most aikidoka would think it was good. I don't, I think it's dancing.

Effective? Depends on the student really. For the best, 3-4 years minimum, it was more like 6-7 for me. However, the term effective is a misleading one. For something to be judged effective it has to be tested against a standard. MMA or BJJ standards do not translate well into standards for other arts. For example, how do you judge whether BJJ is effective against say Kendo? You wanna roll with a guy armed with a big stick and wearing armour? Doesn't work.

Mike

[Hammond]

Most aikidoka would think it was good. I don't, I think it's dancing.

Looked quite good to me.

Was it Shioda that said Aikido should look a little like dancing, a little false or it's not real Aikido. (And I think he proved that his Aikido was effective to the satisfaction of many other martial artists).

There's always the Ikeda quote:

Aikido works, your doesn't. Don't confuse the two.

[PSanderson]

It's a shame you prefer not to post vids, s558. If you're an honest-to-God "Aikido with Aliveness" school, I suspect you have a lot of insights to offer aikido students. And I'm sure that many on this board -- from all different arts -- would be curious to see a friendly live sparring match between an aikidoka and someone from a more MMA-esque art.

As for the YouTube link posted (just to toss in my two cents): I didn't watch all of it, but it looked about typical of most aikido tests/demonstrations. It shows a pretty good (better than mine) understanding of the techniques and so forth; smooth execution, good balance and posture, and so on. That by itself tells us nothing about how well the person would fare in a sparring match or fight, any more than demoing an armbar or kimura for someone gives insight into one's ability to roll.

[Iscariot]

For example, how do you judge whether BJJ is effective against say Kendo? You wanna roll with a guy armed with a big stick and wearing armour? Doesn't work.

Mike

Are you honestly trying to tell me that you'd match your Aikido against a Kendo practitioner worth his bogu whilst you aren't wearing any protection?

[Sophist]

For example, how do you judge whether BJJ is effective against say Kendo? You wanna roll with a guy armed with a big stick and wearing armour? Doesn't work.

Yes, it does; for evidence I present the Dog Brothers, a rather more hardcore (much more minimal ruleset) stickfighting group than the kendo crowd, who realised after meeting the Machados that they had a certain hole in their game and trained BJJ to fill it, creating what they call stickgrappling.

I could also cite Kimura's bayonet training experience, found in My Judo, which involved pretty much the same thing.

Make that stick a katana, and sure, BJJ won't help you - but what will?

[magnumo]

It would be helpful if the persons using the term aliveness to describe their Aikido training, stopped and seriously make an effort to understand aliveness. Not knocking Aikido, but if you truly understood aliveness, then you would know that Aikido as a 'style' does not train with aliveness.

You can however, apply aliveness to any art, including Aikido.

And how would we know that aliveness was being applied to Aikido? Well, because it would look like bad judo.

There is an optimal way to move a body around at each of the ranges (Aikido being at grappling or clinch range, same as Judo, Thai, Greco, and BJJ) and this can only be discovered through aliveness. But none of those delivery systems resemble Aikido. Why not? The answer is of course aliveness.

This is why MMA athletes train using the delivery systems that have been found to be the most efficient at each of the the three ranges. And they all draw from combat sports (all trained alive in the true sense of the word) boxing, Thai boxing, kick boxing, judo, greco, wrestling and bjj (submission grappling).

Forget about what some of the fighters claim to train in. Ask yourself what it is you actually see them do when they fight and it is always the above delivery systems. Only very occasionally do we see the odd goofy move from traditional martial arts in an alive environment.

Why do you honestly think it is that MMA athletes do not prepare for combat using Aikido?

Truly understand aliveness and answer all these questions and more honestly for yourself.

Most people on here are familiar with this but it is the video of Straight Blast Gym president Matt Thornton explaining aliveness as well as the 4 qualities of a good fighter and more

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...22756738846126

Also, for a more detailed explanation, try Thornton's aliveness blog here http://aliveness101.blogspot.com/200...aliveness.html

or there is a briefer version posted by Aesopian on bullshido here http://www.bullshido.net/modules.php...article&id=254

For those still unaware, Matt is the person who coined the term aliveness to help people understand functional training methods and has posted on this forum in the past.

I would be delighted for anyone coming from a traditional martial arts background who adopted aliveness and made that the overriding philosophy at their gym or training group (for all the reasons that Thornton states in his blog). But you would lose about 95% of your current curriculum and very few TMA instructors have the courage to do that.

Please take this as some friendly help and advice from someone who shares the same passion as you (martial arts for want of a better term). You are not the first and certainly will not be the last person to use the term aliveness to describe their training inaccurately.

It's only those who do not train with aliveness that do not understand it.

You obviously are attracted to the term or you would not use it. The next step is to truly understand it, train with it and let go. If you are not prepared to let go, then you will never train with aliveness.

In other words you can have aikido AND train with aliveness, but you cannot have both at the same time.

[s558]

Are you honestly trying to tell me that you'd match your Aikido against a Kendo practitioner worth his bogu whilst you aren't wearing any protection?

Lol, course not and if you had actually read what I wrote you would have noticed that that wasn't what I was saying at all.

[s558]

In other words you can have aikido AND train with aliveness, but you cannot have both at the same time.

This is a strawman argument. I understand the concept of aliveness just fine, our aikido training could be said to contain aliveness once you reach the level of shodan and above, though not in the same way perhaps as you might commonly expect and not from the outset as we build up certain skills in a different fashion than an MMA approach. Your idea of distancing is plain wrong when you apply it to aikido unfortunately. Aikido techniques derive from the distancing of sword work it doesn't work at the clinch range but once you get to be proficient and understand the nature of the art better you can start moving into the clinch range and still be effective. Unfortunately many aikidoka don't understand this properly and things start to look quite weird. My aikido teacher was taught by a guy who was primarily a kendoka, I too am a kendo student and I also study iaido. Once you get the weapon distance concept things tend to snap into place (it also teaches you to be somewhat more proactive in your approach unlike the confused psudo-pacifism often seen in aikido, the founder was never a pacifist, he was at ties a soldier and military combat insructor). As fars as making aliveness an overiding priority that simply doesn't work for all situations. It leads to the cherrypicking of techniques we see in MMA whereby if you can't make it work in a few weks or months then you abandon it as being ineffective. There are plenty of things I learned 10 years ago in aikido that I couldn't make work untilo quite recently. So, not to denegrate MMA as an approach to combat (I like MMA!) but if you want to train yourself up quickly to a point of being fight-ready MMA is the way to go, if you want something that'll last a lifetime then aikido. thats why I'm in aikido and not MMA.

Lastly, no it doesn't look like bad judo, if anything it'll look like good judo with the defender moving far less oweing to the ma ai. But you are right in one thing, you can't train for MMA using aikido, simply because aikido isn't MMA and MMA isn't aikido.

[Nihonto]

There is an optimal way to move a body around at each of the ranges (Aikido being at grappling or clinch range, same as Judo, Thai, Greco, and BJJ)

Agree with your comment on aliveness but not the above. Aikido does not really work at the same ranges as BJJ or Judo. For Aikido to work you must maintain certain "mai-ai" distance. Once the attacker gets in BJJ range its all over. Some Aikido techniques have similar mai-ai to stand-up Judo - That's why some of the throws are exactly the same - example: koshinage. But most Aikido requires slightly greater distance than Judo, and a more comitted attack to work. Some say that the level of blind commitment required in these attacks in order to make Aikido work is unrealistic. I think this is true for some Aikido techniques - but this is relative to the situation. Just my opinion ...