It was a blast!! Everybody says it’s no good for fighting, but they never said it wasn’t fun! I learned the aikido way to knife an unarmed man! Weird, but true. I’m going back.
Who says that it doesn’t work!
Obviously they’ve never read any Ueshiba biographies.
See the man in action (you need Quicktime 4):
LOL You learned to tsuki with a tanto…? Were you practicing a kotekaeshi defense (rolling the wrist back into the forearm)? Perhaps a tenkan (turning to the outside)?
Aikido isn’t very good for sparring, but for fighting…it helps.
Enjoy! 
Aikido works. It can work better by keeping the elbow down when it does the Ba Gua type energy transfer to the outside (the I feel you coming and step out and let it pass move).
If I am punching with aHsing-I drilling fist type punch, leadning with the mass of my arm, intention in my elbow and power coming from the backwards draw cutting plane, the elbow out method will not safice. But the principle is great. Just a little turbo boost idea.
Wotk that up and down, like a toy soldier, shoulder to elbow, the mass producer.
O’ I think no one will understand what I’m saying anyway and line up and slam me so I’ll just stop.
Have fun.
Ray
I understand Bak,
elbow in allows you to “line up,” your body more creating a more stable structure for the movement.
Just for the record, I saw an aikido class today.
I wasn’t that impressed. This was at a fairly well respected aikido dojo, to my understanding.
I really hate to style bash, but it just looked silly. Nobody actually attacks the way they were practicing. I stayed for the whole thing and there was no randori
I will say this, however. All the breakfalls were FANTASTIC, and it was very pretty to watch.
aikido…
I studied aikido 3x a week for 30 days. Classes were always over an hour and a half, typically two hours, during the morning. It was great exercise! Falling and getting up again, and again. It’s very hands on and physical.
I agree, the attacker (uke) does not represent anything true to an attack, but, these are choreographed moves allowing us to learn.
The higher ranked aikidoka were truly skilled at aikido, but not self-defense, IMHO. They could not stop a TKD kick of any kind – and probably not a punch from a boxer either. But if they get hold of your wrist, arm, shoulder or catch you off balance (they train to get you off balance), YOU’RE DEAD!
I believe it’s an excellent MA, sort of like Chin Na for dancers – but it aint Chin Na for MA’s!
Godzilla
hey Bak mei, isnt it kinda long since you posted? Whats up?
I don’t know much about it, except what I’ve read here at KFO.
But I went to that website ( http://www.aikidojournal.com/Video) and watched a bunch of those videos. These were supposedly high level aikido types, and maybe they are true bad a$$es. But in regards to those demos, they were incredibly, stupendously, almost ridiculously fake looking, at least to my uneducated eye.
The knife attacks, where the attacker sticks his knife out at four feet away and then charges in with a straight arm, for example. Also, many of the take downs there was NO physical contact. The uke rushes in, the aikidoka(?) waves his hand NEAR the uke and the uke flips ten feet through the air. Or the aikidoka has a staff, the uke grabs the end and then goes flying through the air.
Again, my criticism is not about the MA or about these practitioners, of which I am basically ignorant. Only about the appearance, to me, of these demos.
I wonder if Aikido has changed from how Ueshiba created it. From what I’ve read, Ueshiba used to take challenges all the time including a “South American Pro-Wrestler” that I assume may have been a ground fighter. The Shambhala (sp.?) biographies that you see at Barnes and Noble book stores are what I’m basing this on. Maybe the books are incorrect, I’m not sure of that, but the video clips of Ueshiba in action are impressive.
I am so having deja vu right now…
To understand what aikido is takes a lot of research.
You can begin here www.aikidofaq.com
Some good stuff in Aikido, problems I have with how they practice is the flying Uke syndrome, where a wrist lock/break turns into uke flying 10 feet. Some Hapkido schools also suffer from this. The other is the uke over feeding the attacks to tori. Even in the vids of Ueshiba the uke have their attacks sticking out or telegraphed way before they reach him. Traditional JJ is usually trains in a more realistic manner.
I have no idea what the techniques were called. They just grabbed the knife hand and you broke the grip in traditional aikidoka manner and knifed the other guy. It was pretty fun. This is the Tomiki style so he says there’s a lot of judo in it. It’s a good changeup from the Wing Chun that I’ve been practicing. I don’t know how combat ready any of the students are, but then I’ve only been there once.
“The higher ranked aikidoka were truly skilled at aikido, but not self-defense, IMHO. They could not stop a TKD kick of any kind – and probably not a punch from a boxer either”
Did you try any of these things?
Saw some Aikido in Hawaii, a good freind was an instructor at one of the dojo. The older senseies where like little moveable / unmoveable rocks. One worked as a prison guard.
Like many high level arts (meaning takes a lot of skill to do) I feel many people underestimate them.
For those that think aiikido dont work…
or just dont understand it, i’ll explain…
Can a newborn run? no, he must first learn to walk, but before that, he must first learn to stand, but before that he must first learn to crawl…
Can a, lets say, Kung Fu practicioner use somethin that he learned his first day in class? not effectively…
with Aiikido, you gotta learn the building blocks, once u learn how to throw (Uke) easily when they are running at you, you will gradually build up so you can use it in hand-to-hand like steven segal(maybe dats a bad example)…it just takes a long time to learn, because its very advanced…it can take around 3 years before you start to get a feel for it…its something that requires great amount of patience…I’d suggest cross training with it, it would help as an addition, not really a baseIMO…that with a striking art, and you’ll be able to use their energy to pull them in and start striking relentlessly while they are totally off balance(like steven segal, hehe)…aikido is good when maybe your drunken relative or something is goin off on you, would u break his nose? would u give him a kick to the groin, finger jab to the eyes? no, but throwing him past you until he gets tired out while talking to him would work better, and you wouldn’t spend much energy(u train for it)…
Think of uke going along with you, as like, training slow to get the form down in another art, doesn’t look effective of course, but it will in the future…do boxers do good on the double end ball(for reflexes) their first time? i doubt it…its just like that, cept you gotta build it up slower, its complex…hope this helped…
boxers do good on the double end ball(for reflexes) their first time? i doubt it…
True… but if I went to a large venue to see a demonstration by a master boxer of how to hit the double end ball, I would expect to be impressed by the skill of what I was seeing. I would not expect to see very very lowest level of beginner basics abilities demonstrated to me.
Hence my problem with those videos.
It takes a long time to master because it’s very advanced?
There’s a perfectly wrong statement. Aikido is like Judo or boxing. It is neither advanced nor basic. It’s Aikido. It’s your understanding of the principles that is either basic or advanced. If the principles of Aikido are that difficult to grasp, then it is either too complex for its own good, or the teaching methods are fundamentally wrong.
I don’t want to train in something that I have to be as good as Ueshiba to pull off (guy was a nutjob about training) in combat.
I DEFINITELY don’t want to train in something that wears goofy looking pants! What the hell is up with those?! 
hammer time
what is sparring like in aikido?
a little ballroom dancing + a little squaredancing + a little judo + A LOT OF BULLSH!T = http://www.aikidojournal.com/Video/videoclip.asp?id=MV02&clip=AB02.mov&details=Morihei%20Ueshiba%20against%20one,%20then%20two%20attackers%20at%20Asahi%20News%20dojo%20in%201935