It traces a year or so he spends in Japan and the Aikido riot trainning course he attends full time for a year.
The most revealing chapter of the book for me is when the head of the Aikido school dies and all the top teachers from around the world come to the funeral. they go out drinking (in tokyo) and get in a string of fights. When asked one of R Twigger fellow students who witnessed the fighting said that all thease guys didnt use any fancy wrist locks or cool throws but just waded in with haymakers!!!
This kind of worries me as Tai Chi is not that from removed from Aikido. But at least the drunked bums won.
Sez, who?? NO established link exists between Aikido and either Taiji or Bagua.
sHey jumpy!
Im not talking about direct links or any thing I am talking about ‘principle’. i.e the ideas behind Tai Chi are not soi far remover from those of aikido.
I am not saying that anyone who was responsibale for aikido ever learnt tai chi.
"I have never read the book nor have I personally trained in Yoshinkan Aikido.
I wouldn’t necessarily consider the aikido bar fight a dark mark on the effectiveness of the style. Most styles don’t work so well when drunk, some moreso than othes. Yoshinkan Aikido requires a keen sense of distance, timing, and center combined with fast flowing reflexes and rooted in calmness. All of these requisites would be effected after a few drinks and be almost non-existant after a night of binge drinking combined with grief misdirected into random anger and violence.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but it is something to consider."
This is my quote from the last time this debate raged oh so long ago (last month :rolleyes: ). Nobody cared to comment on it, but which style works when you are out of your mind with grief and hammered with alcohol? Unless you are studying a streamlined system based on gross motor movements and requiring no depth-perception or balance, heavy alcohol intake will erode your skills.
Maybe we can have one of those great KFO discussions wherein Ueshiba $ucks, the Japanese are naught but poor aping martial arts goons, and aikido is directly drawn from just about every KF style, despite the complete lack of any compelling historical argument or bit of evidence suggsting so)?
:rolleyes:
Heard that once before,and I still can´t think of it as anything but a joke…
Not once I have heard of any link to this from any single practitioner&even boards like aikidojournal and various others…
It seems like these would be the last ppl on earth to do that,and WHY? I may,I just might believe this but these are either lower class practitioners,whose names I have never heard of…or aikido community is so sensitive about these guys ruining their reputation that it has been buried like Andy Kaufman from pop-culture…hmmm.
Simple logic. That’s all it takes. These are all martial artists. Odds are pretty good that a number of them are familiar with various styles.
Now, they are grief stricken and drunk, remembering the death of teacher. They get in fights. Fists go flying. Now, do drunken people run around going ‘I’m gonna restrain that guy like he’s never been restrained before’? I don’t think so.
Of course, now these guys are ‘low level’ because they mourned their teacher’s passing in their own way, or just thugs(as if that precludes them from being high level practitioners of a fighting art, even aikido). Exactly how many of the legends of asian martial arts involve drunken ‘masters’ beating people up? Those dang low class unknown thugs. Always making things harder for those upper class even lesser known guys.
Also, aikido has way more in common with pa kua than tai chi.
I think most of what has been above is true…but I am still kind of disapointed with the niggiling feeling that I have at the back of my head that it all comes down to wild haymakers in the end.
Originally posted by Liokault I think most of what has been above is true…but I am still kind of disapointed with the niggiling feeling that I have at the back of my head that it all comes down to wild haymakers in the end.
Police restrain people all of the time. And knives beat haymakers a good amount of the time.
They eventually broke all “fundamental” rules of the art,one of them includes looking like a graceful flower.
They did not represent harmony,instead they got drunk and went to beat up some random bouncers,which is not very defensive.lol
And besides this,I do not consider it an important point that they went to wreck those doormen with their fists (well if going smart,they could not have attacked using aikido,theoretically)
The point is they participated in criminal and suspicious behavior.
“Simple logic. That’s all it takes. These are all martial artists. Odds are pretty good that a number of them are familiar with various styles.”
lol.Yeah.
That is possible of course,I hope it still does not qualify them to go ruling the streets…
Unless they are allowed to because they also practiced other arts besides art of peace.
I train my hook quite a bit..However, I don’t think this is sufficient evidence that it all comes down to haymakers. It’s one anecdote. Involving drunken people who also are probably fighting drunken people. Also, drunken practitioners of an art entirely unlike my art. How could I draw any conclusions? I don’t even generally do grabs in fighting, unless the opponent is already trashed.
Former Castlevania,
I know very few japanese stylists who don’t have knowledge in more than one japanese style. And sure, they broke the principles of that one art, but in all arts they studied?
I just think there’s too many people who think that morality is a determining factor in the fight arena. There is no good or bad that is important in a fight. There are only those who did the right move to make it through and stick it out at the right time, and those who did not.
To draw conclusions about a whole art from a retelling of that art in a context in which that art wouldn’t do well is somewhat silly. Now, if the teachers were attacked, and failed to use their aikido, that’s something different. But they attacked, and chose not to use aikido in a way the author noted. I’d say that was a good decision for them to have made, since aikido is not about attacking.
“I train to dislocate the elbow of people that throw haymakers.”
Does that work?..Ever done it?
If I throw a hay maker with my right arm that lands on anything hard it kills my elbow. BUT I broke my elbow when I was a kid and so now I can vastly over extend it.
The only times it bothers me is when throwing hay makers or when hitting the heavy bag, catching it just wrong over extending my elbow and then the bag is trying to fold my arm up the wrong way…hurts loads.
Originally posted by Liokault So if it all comes down to haymakers why bother with all the training?
that’s a BIG question. i wonder the same thing all the time. not about aikido, in particular. but a lot of us have facets of our styles that 1) we’ve never used or 2) we’ve never seen applied successfully. that’s not to say it won’t work. but we don’t have any evidence to support it.
and that’s definitely cause for worry. or at the very least curiosity.
