Aikido.. The reality?

[Flying Crane]

This is called takemusu ("birth of martial") aiki, i.e. spontaneous martial techniques. As long as you respect these principles, your movement will turn into an aikido technique. This also means that as long as you respect those principles, you can use punches, kicks, single legs or machine guns and it will still be aikido. That's also one of the reasons why we practice with different weapons.

Very interesting what you are saying here. I understand a similar concept in the Tibetan White Crane that I train. It’s never been formally described to me and I’m not aware of an official term for it. But It is something I have come to understand through the training.

 

[O'Malley]

In fact, Morihei Ueshiba would often see someone do a technique and then say "Neat! In aikido, we do it this way."

 

[Gerry Seymour]

The principle is actually illustrated with gross body movement in aikido's fundamental exercises, where you move along two equal opposing force vectors around the point of contact (on your wrist).

This removes the slack from your opponent's body and binds you together, allowing you to move him with your full-body power. This is called "musubi" ("knot").

In a fight, aikido is irimi (entering), atemi (striking), awase (moving in relation to other things, which includes timing) and musubi (the knot). All of these must be done with aiki (unified opposing forces) inside your body. This is called takemusu ("birth of martial") aiki, i.e. spontaneous martial techniques. As long as you respect these principles, your movement will turn into an aikido technique. This also means that as long as you respect those principles, you can use punches, kicks, single legs or machine guns and it will still be aikido. That's also one of the reasons why we practice with different weapons.

Can you expand a bit more on the idea of "unified opposing forces"? I want to make sure I'm understanding your meaning.

 

[Xue Sheng]

This is called takemusu ("birth of martial") aiki, i.e. spontaneous martial techniques. As long as you respect these principles, your movement will turn into an aikido technique. This also means that as long as you respect those principles, you can use punches, kicks, single legs or machine guns and it will still be aikido. That's also one of the reasons why we practice with different weapons.

There is the similarity to Taijiquan

 

[O'Malley]

Can you expand a bit more on the idea of "unified opposing forces"? I want to make sure I'm understanding your meaning.

Ha! Here's the million dollar question!

Unfortunately, I can't go very deep into detail: I'm not a certified instructor and I'm not sure I even get it. I've tried to write an explanation but I don't want to misrepresent the material. Best course of action would be to go and see someone who teaches it.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Can you expand a bit more on the idea of "unified opposing forces"?

From a genera MA point of view (not sure it will fit into the Aikido definition),

- You move yourself out of your opponent's attacking path.
- Leading him into the emptiness.
- You then add your force into his force.
- When he resists, you reverse your force.

In other words, if your opponent wants to

- move forward, you help him to move forward.
- move backward, you help him to move backward.
- sink down, you help him to sink down.
- raise up, you help him to raise up.
- ...

 

[drop bear]

Actually, nothing you said contradicts my post. I agree that drills are not sufficient for reliably developing fighting skills (I think it's possible, but don't know how you'd know without sparring).

Aikido's "randori" isn't the same thing as Judo's. It's a different kind of drill, with more dynamic feeds, but isn't anything like sparring/rolling/Judo randori. I prefer Judo's use of the term.



You do this a lot. You're citing a different art than what I trained in. They'd be fast to draw that distinction. I do use flow drills. They are a favorite tool of mine. I learned them from two of my instructors, though I use them more than either of them did. I also use sparring (strikes only), rolling (groundwork only), randori (grappling only, Judo-style), and free sparring (any and all of the above). But you should know all of that, since I've told you before. You just choose to ignore it and cling to your early assumptions about what I teach. Kinda lazy.

Can you show me a video of that please.

 

[drop bear]

I was actually impressed with that one. I usually only see the standard stuff. But even though what they did was great it's style A vs style A. A continuous drill. And like everyone else, there's that Room we all have to walk into if we want to get to the next level.

Yeah. I like the ones that are more of a game.

 

[drop bear]

Ha! Here's the million dollar question!

Unfortunately, I can't go very deep into detail: I'm not a certified instructor and I'm not sure I even get it. I've tried to write an explanation but I don't want to misrepresent the material. Best course of action would be to go and see someone who teaches it.

This has been my best example of the concept. How close do you think I came?

 

[JowGaWolf]

This has been my best example of the concept. How close do you think I came?

Biggest thing that I see here vs Previous Aikido videos is the misdirection that is use to hid the technique that he wanted to actually do

We've seen that same movement in Kung Fu techniques

Sorry in advance for the long post.

I'll start with a quick intro, so that you know what I'm talking about (I'll have to simplify to keep it short so please bear with me).

Aikido is a variant of daito-ryu aikijujutsu (DR), a martial art founded by Sokaku Takeda. Takeda was a wandering martial artist with formal training in classical Japanese swordsmanship and in a family martial conditioning method, probably of Chinese origin, that is known in DR as "aiki". Aiki means "to unify forces" and, in this context, it means "creating a balance of mutual opposing forces within the body". It's an internal "tensioning" process that makes it harder to apply force on the user and conversely puts the user's entire body into his movements. Aiki happens within the body and has nothing to do with "blending with the opponent". It's actually a Chinese concept: a crucial teaching of aikido is to stand in "roppo", which is called "liu he" in Chinese and means "six directions". Tai chi and xing yi practitioners should know the idea. [Edit: the concept exists in internal CMA but I'm not sure it's called liu he]

Takeda also loved sumo and despite his small size, he could do frontal force outs (yorikiri) on much bigger opponents, probably due to the aforementioned conditioning. In seminars, he would make people pay a fee per technique and so to earn more money he'd make up stuff on the spot. Sometimes he would imitate techniques he had seen in other styles. That's why DR has a very high number of techniques (118 basic kata in mainline DR, over 500 in the Takuma line).

Enter Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido, who was essentially a DR instructor. Like Takeda and his top students, he also displayed the ability to shed off forces and uncanny full-body power (the abovementioned "aiki"). This made him famous and earned him some top-level politicians and martial artists as students. He renamed stuff several times, including the art, and the name "aikido" stuck. Also, he was a religious fanatic and had close ties with extreme right-wing and ultranationalist movements. His vision of "peace" and "harmony" involved a world unified under the rule of the Japanese emperor, which descends from the gods.

Kisshomaru Ueshiba (Morihei's son) was the second head of aikido. In an occupied Japan, he swept the religious blabbering of his father under the rug and pushed the narrative of "old master Morihei invented the peaceful art of aikido". He simplified the techniques, made them flowing and circular, taught that "there's no attack in aikido", etc. That's where the emphasis on "blending with the opponent's energy" comes from. In a sense, he was more of an innovator than his father.

Fast forward today. Most dojos teach Kisshomaru's version of aikido, which was never meant to be functional (and in many ways has even been "defanged"). You can still find aikido groups that branched off pre-Kisshomaru that teach the older forms from DR (Iwama, Yoshinkan, etc.) or their own stuff (Tomiki). To make things even more complicated, Kisshomaru kept his father's top students in his organisation and let them do their own thing (many were senior to him) so there is strong variation even in mainstream aikido. And since there's no competition, there's no "metagame" that makes aikido technique converge. Lines that descend from Morihei's first disciples tend to have more mechanical validity but also have their own bad practice (e.g. lack of live training). As for the aiki that allowed Takeda and Ueshiba to be so strong in the first place, it's mostly lost today, although some people do preserve the method.



Tohei was strong, and had some good aiki. In the video you posted, he couldn't risk injuring his clearly unskilled sparring partner. Here's an excellent article on this incident: It Aint Necessarily So: Rendez-vous with Adventure



Yep. For context, the guy learned aikido from this teacher:

Most aikido lines don't teach striking. This is because their practice focuses on the collection of kata inherited from DR (and if you've read the above, you know that these were not designed as a complete functional fighting system in the first place) and/or modified by Kisshomaru. But Morihei Ueshiba considered that "in a real fight, aikido is 70% striking" (in a large sense, this includes also shoves/throws, remember Takeda's sumo background?). Some lines do teach striking, though. Here are two aikido headbutt entries by Tadashi Abe:

This is the direct result of how the curriculum was formed, and of people mistaking it for a complete fighting system.



I agree with your analysis but, for these very reasons, I think that "your" definition of aiki is harmful. If aikido practitioners keep understanding aiki that way, they are hosed. Judo, for example, is much better equipped to train "that" aiki, because that concept is simply the "ju" in "judo"!



Non-Kisshomaru lines take the initiative:

In fact, non-Kisshomaru lines (and other branches of DR) train their techniques statically, without relying on overcommitment:

Agreed. Such training methods would benefit the art's functionality, if that's what people are after (many are very happy practising the flowing aikido, and that's completely ok).

This definitely fills in the gaps that I had.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

As long as you respect these principles, your movement will turn into an aikido technique.

What advantage do I have if my technique can turn into an Aikido technique?

MA styles such as Aikido and Taiji just remind me the PINK project developed in the Apple Computer back in the 80. Pink is an object oriental operation system. Even a character and a line are designed as an object. Since a call from one object to another object has to go through layer and layer of objects, the performance is so slow to be useful.

If you start with object oriental programming, you then try to design an operation system, the process is going backward. The operation system doesn't need the object oriental programming. But the object oriental programming tries to prove it can be used to designed an operation system.

Trying to apply MA style such as Aikido or Taiji in fighting is just like to use object oriental programming to design an operation system. A Taiji guy trains how to yield into a chest push. But in combat his opponent will punch on his head. No matter how good the Taiji guy's training to deal with a chest push, the experience that he has developed cannot be used to deal with a face punch.

IMO, you first define your goal (such as fighting), you then find a path (such as a punch to the face) to reach your goal. You just don't start with a MA system such as Aikido or Taiji, and then see if it can be used in fighting or not.

 

[Flying Crane]

What advantage do I have if my technique can turn into an Aikido technique?

MA styles such as Aikido and Taiji just remind me the PINK project developed in the Apple Computer back in the 80. Pink is an object oriental operation system. Even a character and a line are designed as an object. Since a call from one object to another object has to go through layer and layer of objects, the performance is so slow to be useful.

If you start with object oriental programming, you then try to design an operation system, the process is going backward. The operation system doesn't need the object oriental programming. But the object oriental programming tries to prove it can be used to designed an operation system.

Trying to apply MA style such as Aikido or Taiji in fighting is just like to use object oriental programming to design an operation system. A Taiji guy trains how to yield into a chest push. But in combat his opponent will punch on his head. No matter how good the Taiji guy's training to deal with a chest push, the experience that he has developed cannot be used to deal with a face punch.

IMO, you first define your goal (such as fighting), you then find a path (such as a punch to the face) to reach your goal. You just don't start with a MA system such as Aikido or Taiji, and then see if it can be used in fighting or not.

I’m not convinced that this is a relevant analogy.

I think it can sometimes be a mistake to attempt to understand something else through the expectations you have already developed by previous experience. Sometimes the two methods are simple different and operate with a different approach and even different assumptions and expectations. They can both be functional, yet utterly incompatible when viewed through previous experience. To understand something, sometimes your previous education can be a hindrance. You need to let go of that prior experience if you really want to understand the new thing. I think both aikido and Taiji are examples of where this is true, when people come into it from certain kinds of prior background. If you can’t let go of that prior experience, you will never understand it.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Can you show me a video of that please.

Nope. I don’t have any.

 

[drop bear]

Nope. I don’t have any.

Oh well can't blame a guy for getting the wrong impression then.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

If you can’t let go of that prior experience, you will never understand it.

Is C++ (object oriental design) better than C?

Since C is faster than C++, if your goal is speed, you will choose C instead of C++.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C is low level, procedural, and top-down. C is still in use because it is slightly faster and smaller than C++. For most people, C++ is the better choice. It has more features, more applications, and for most people, learning C++ is easier.

C++ vs C: Which Language Should You Learn? | Career Karma.

 

[Flying Crane]

Is C++ (object oriental design) better than C?

Since C is faster than C++, if your goal is speed, you will choose C instead of C++.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C is low level, procedural, and top-down. C is still in use because it is slightly faster and smaller than C++. For most people, C++ is the better choice. It has more features, more applications, and for most people, learning C++ is easier.

C++ vs C: Which Language Should You Learn? | Career Karma.

Again, an irrelevant analogy.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Again, an irrelevant analogy.

If your goal is

- fighting, will you choose Aikido, or Taiji as your training path?
- speed and small code size, will you choose C++ as your program design language?

 

[drop bear]

Again, an irrelevant analogy.

It all works because it all works.

Understanding the ethos of a system is kind of like trying to understand why breaking a mirror gives you bad luck.

 

[Flying Crane]

If your goal is

- fighting, will you choose Aikido, or Taiji as your training path?

. I might. I find it interesting, and if I find a good teacher then yes, I’m open to the possibility.

- speed and small code size, will you choose C++ as your program design language?

I have no input in this. I don’t understand coding and I find it irrelevant to the discussion.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Oh well can't blame a guy for getting the wrong impression then.

For choosing to assume something without evidence? Yeah, I can.