How appliable is aikido for self-defense?

[Chris Parker]

I am absolutely sure aikido has some applicable techniques.

Techniques aren't the important thing…

However those techniques are shared with other martial arts I believe is more worth your time.

How so? Considering that the primary role of a martial arts techniques is to give you a particular tactical response?

Being thrown on soft mats don't hurt that much.

You get that the throw happens because you're having your wrist broken… and the "throw" (as well as the soft mats) are so you and your partner can practice that safely and repeatedly, yeah?

Also, competitive aikido is a watered down version of competitive judo without submissions.

Please back this up, as it can be seen as a rather inflammatory (and hugely inaccurate) statement… neither of which are really ideal here…

 

[Tez3]

Being thrown on soft mats don't hurt that much.

Clearly you have never been thrown by someone who is really good, it also depends on whether you know how to breakfall or not. We had a chap who didn't know and when he was thrown he landed with his head first and KO'd himself, serves him right though for thinking that being thrown as you say on 'soft' mats was easy. Not that our mats are actually soft, softer than the ground but not pillow soft lol.

 

[KangTsai]

Clearly you have never been thrown by someone who is really good, it also depends on whether you know how to breakfall or not. We had a chap who didn't know and when he was thrown he landed with his head first and KO'd himself, serves him right though for thinking that being thrown as you say on 'soft' mats was easy. Not that our mats are actually soft, softer than the ground but not pillow soft lol.

I have been hip and arm thrown on a mat with softness just enough to make your ankles ache when you box on top of it for too long. Also I do know how to break falls for the most part, it was the first thing I learned right before a takedown.

 

[KangTsai]

Techniques aren't the important thing…



How so? Considering that the primary role of a martial arts techniques is to give you a particular tactical response?



You get that the throw happens because you're having your wrist broken… and the "throw" (as well as the soft mats) are so you and your partner can pPlease back this up, as it can be seen as a rather inflammatory (and hugely inaccurate) statement… neither of which are really ideal here…

Please back this up, as it can be seen as a rather inflammatory (and hugely inaccurate) statement… neither of which are really ideal here…

Yep this was inaccurate and I do apologise. The competitive tomiki style includes one designated attacker with a "knife," and only allows 17 techniques. Universally, not just in this style, aikido rulesets state that force applied beyond scoring a point in prohibited; a takedown is a point, is broken up immediately, and there are no submission techniques written as scoring moves.

 

[Tez3]

I have been hip and arm thrown on a mat with softness just enough to make your ankles ache when you box on top of it for too long. Also I do know how to break falls for the most part, it was the first thing I learned right before a takedown.

I didn't say you didn't know how to breakfall, I said that if you ( the generic 'you' not personal) don't it hurts a lot. I can't see how your ankles aching when you are boxing though is relevant, being slammed on your back or side with enough force to wind you won't affect your ankles.

 

[KangTsai]

I didn't say you didn't know how to breakfall, I said that if you ( the generic 'you' not personal) don't it hurts a lot. I can't see how your ankles aching when you are boxing though is relevant, being slammed on your back or side with enough force to wind you won't affect your ankles.

By that I meant that the mat is soft to a degree that my foot slightly sinks into the surface when standing so it strains sometime when boxing while fast, reactive footwork is key and I'm always on my toes.

 

[Chris Parker]

Yep this was inaccurate and I do apologise. The competitive tomiki style includes one designated attacker with a "knife," and only allows 17 techniques. Universally, not just in this style, aikido rulesets state that force applied beyond scoring a point in prohibited; a takedown is a point, is broken up immediately, and there are no submission techniques written as scoring moves.

Tomiki Aikido (Shudokan) is the only competitive form of the art… and to use the rule set of one system to judge another is not an accurate way to do things…so, while Kenji Tomiki was both a Judoka and Aikidoka, and it was his Judo training that inspired much of his ideals with a competitive format, that doesn't mean that it's even close to Judo competition in application, form, design, ideology, and more.

There are no such things as "Aikido rulesets" stating anything you're suggesting, is what I'm getting at… there are no "points" that are scored, so nothing you put there is accurate at all.

 

[Tez3]

By that I meant that the mat is soft to a degree that my foot slightly sinks into the surface when standing so it strains sometime when boxing while fast, reactive footwork is key and I'm always on my toes.

Ah I see, cheers for clearing that up. I've never been on mats that soft before, we've got two types, jigsaw and quite hard, heavy old fashioned Judo mats.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I think that application requires a broader experience than just gaining the knowledge or ability to perform a task.

Let's see if I can come up with some good examples...

Okay, programming. Or language learning, even. Yeah - let's use learning a foreign language as an example.

Very few people, even after taking years of classes, are able to speak a foreign language. Actually, I would contend that noone can speak a foreign language, but that sentence is misleading without further explanation. More on that later.

It seems that people think that some day, after having mastered all of the content in their textbooks, they will magically be able to speak a foreign language. Usually, they wait until this theoretical moment to use and practice the language outside of the confines of classes and textbooks, because when they hear/read/try to speak it in the real world, it is still much to difficult for them to understand; there's too much adversity.

But, there's a problem with this approach. Textbooks and classes can be helpful for teaching you the fundamental skills; for giving you the basic knowledge and understanding -- a framework, if you will. But you absolutely have to expand on that knowledge and learn to utilize that framework in the adversity of the real world to make it functional. Language encompasses every aspect of human experience; every emotion, every thought, every thing and every action or condition that we might experience in life. That's far more than anyone could ever pack into any class or textbook, and it's something that you can only gain from using the language in the real world. There's lots of adversity to overcome at first. You won't have the words or the natural expressions to express yourself and your ideas, and you will struggle letting your personality come through. You will struggle using the language naturally, and adapting to any conversation or contect. This is because you have not yet made the language yours; it's still foreign to you. It's still a foreign language; one that you have knowledge of, and even competency in; you might even ace a grammar test, but you have not yet made the language your own. To do that, you have to struggle and use it, and use it, and use it in all of the diverse and adverse situations that you have never experienced before. You have to experience every facet of life once again through and in that new language, so that it becomes as intimate and familiar as your first language. It has to cease to become a foreign language, and become a part of you.

The same is true of martial arts which might be useful in self defense. The demands of self defense in the real world go far beyond what one might practice in the dojo. Traditional practice in the dojo does impart skill and understanding which may be of some applicable use in the real world, but it will be awkward and clumsy and unreliable until you have honed it through a diverse array of real world experience and adversity, or at least come close in your training to replicating and addressing these things. Your average person speaks a very different "language" physically than your fellow aikidoka does, and will not respond or act like your training partners; it's kind of like bringing your textbook Japanese to Japan, only to find that people don't quite speak like that in the real world, and having to adapt. If you've never experienced it before, it will take quite a bit of time to familiarize yourself with and adapt, but your formal knowledge base will serve you well in doing so.

I think the comparison to a foreign language is apt. And after studying in classes (never visiting a fracophone country), I was able to translate for someone who visited the hotel I worked at in college. Was I great at it? No. But then I'd only had a few years of experience and not a lot of practice.

I don't think there's any way to say that "a diverse array of real world experience" is necessary nor to measure its helpfulness, since most people will never have a chance to gain such a diverse array in the real world - at most, they can expect to use their physical skills once or twice unless they are a bouncer, LEO, or other profession that puts them in those situations on a regular basis. Does real world experience help? Yes, that seems almost certain, but it's impossible to tell how much. It might be a lot. It might be a little. There are too many other factors at play to make a valid conclusion on that, since we can find plenty of examples of martial artists from TMAs and similar training who competently handled themselves in real world situations without having any past experience in real world situations of physical defense.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I am absolutely sure aikido has some applicable techniques. However those techniques are shared with other martial arts I believe is more worth your time.

Being thrown on soft mats don't hurt that much.

Also, competitive aikido is a watered down version of competitive judo without submissions.

No, being thrown on soft mats doesn't hurt much, and I'm not sure why that's relevant to a discussion of defense applicability. That's why they are used - so we can take those throws over and over, to get more practice. Taking the throw isn't the part that the student is learning for dealing with an attacker (since the attacker is highly unlikely to bring throwing skills). The throwing is the part of that pairing they are learning to use for defense, and the mats provide the ability to practice that more.

 

[hoshin1600]

in my opinion, soft mats are cheep and horrible. you get broken toes all the time and your impact points like hips, shoulders and sometimes elbows and knees tend to go right to the sub surface floor.
but to the actual point, what does matting have to do with anything ? ive worked out on good and bad mats, carpet covered concrete, wood flooring, a specialized rubber vinyl floor for dance, outdoor dirt and grass and even done grappling on the broken up pavement in the parking lot behind the building. it does effect your training but not in the way you are implying. training on concrete and asphalt only decreases attendance and those that stay are the ones that ate lead paint chips as a child and been dropped on their head to many times.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

in my opinion, soft mats are cheep and horrible. you get broken toes all the time and your impact points like hips, shoulders and sometimes elbows and knees tend to go right to the sub surface floor.
but to the actual point, what does matting have to do with anything ? ive worked out on good and bad mats, carpet covered concrete, wood flooring, a specialized rubber vinyl floor for dance, outdoor dirt and grass and even done grappling on the broken up pavement in the parking lot behind the building. it does effect your training but not in the way you are implying. training on concrete and asphalt only decreases attendance and those that stay are the ones that ate lead paint chips as a child and been dropped on their head to many times.

I'm curious about your first sentence on this one. Perhaps you and I have a different opinion of what is "soft"? The mats I'm currently using (admittedly quite cheap) are very soft to me, but there is no penetration to feel the concrete floor under them. If I set up my older mats (dual-density Swain home mats) next to them, the difference is simply how much of the impact is absorbed (far more in the softer, thicker mats) and the squishiness underfoot. By your description of toe issues, I suspect you're talking about mats even softer than these, which do sound horrible. My personal preference is for somethimg akin to the 2" mats Swain and Zebra offer, which are much firmer than the ones I'm using, but the students prefer the softer ones.

 

[hoshin1600]

I have visited dojos where the mats feel like your walking on sofa cushions. many schools can't afford decent mats and at times they use the older elementary school gym mats or worse and use make shift egg crate covered by vinyl.

 

[Steve]

I'm curious about your first sentence on this one. Perhaps you and I have a different opinion of what is "soft"? The mats I'm currently using (admittedly quite cheap) are very soft to me, but there is no penetration to feel the concrete floor under them. If I set up my older mats (dual-density Swain home mats) next to them, the difference is simply how much of the impact is absorbed (far more in the softer, thicker mats) and the squishiness underfoot. By your description of toe issues, I suspect you're talking about mats even softer than these, which do sound horrible. My personal preference is for somethimg akin to the 2" mats Swain and Zebra offer, which are much firmer than the ones I'm using, but the students prefer the softer ones.

Wrestling mats will catch your toes. When I first began training, we had wrestling mats which were very soft. I caught and broke my little toes so many times, my career as a foot model is over forever.

When the school moved, we went to zebra mats, which are firmer, but the tatami surface can give the top of your foot a nice friction burn every once in a while. I'll take that over the broken toe any day, though.

 

[Argus]

I think the comparison to a foreign language is apt. And after studying in classes (never visiting a fracophone country), I was able to translate for someone who visited the hotel I worked at in college. Was I great at it? No. But then I'd only had a few years of experience and not a lot of practice.

I don't think there's any way to say that "a diverse array of real world experience" is necessary nor to measure its helpfulness, since most people will never have a chance to gain such a diverse array in the real world - at most, they can expect to use their physical skills once or twice unless they are a bouncer, LEO, or other profession that puts them in those situations on a regular basis. Does real world experience help? Yes, that seems almost certain, but it's impossible to tell how much. It might be a lot. It might be a little. There are too many other factors at play to make a valid conclusion on that, since we can find plenty of examples of martial artists from TMAs and similar training who competently handled themselves in real world situations without having any past experience in real world situations of physical defense.

When I say a "diverse array of real world experience" in the context of training Martial Arts, I should probably better define this, because, of course, I'm not expecting practitioners to go out and get in street fights or some nonsense, nor do I think such experience should be limited to LEO and bouncers. What I mean is practicing in a RBSD sort of setting/environment, or even just varying your training with your friends and experimenting; learning to deal with things intuitively, and becoming familiar with using the concepts and instilled habits of your art freely.

The trap that I think many Aikidoka and even TMA artists in general fall into is just practicing rigid technique where A does X and B does Y. I'm speaking of training where A does, and continues to do whatever he/she can to challenge B, and B learns to adapt and flow. But this should not take the form of mutual sparring, if you are attempting to practice skills that may be useful for self-protection (and a sparring format is not really suited to Aikido in the first place) -- rather, A should consciously take the role of the attacker and focus on developing his/her training partner. It's useful to do this with people who have not trained your particular art, because often trained habits of an uke are very different from that of your average person, or even martial artist, and you may find that you have difficulty making many of your locks/controls/throws/etc. work, and need to adapt.

I'm surprised that you had such success with translating French, though! I've mostly studied languages that are not in any way related to English, so I suppose it's more difficult to adapt with them. Granted, you can get by with really basic fluency if you're very creative and are just using communication as a basic means to an end. As for actually being able to use a language naturally and being able to engage in a diverse array of settings and activities that you might meet in every day life with fluency, I still stand by my assertion that you have to experience and familiarize yourself with those things, and I think our goal in martial arts should be somewhat similar.

I think that most people over specialize and refine their practice, whereas our true aim should be to diversify it and make it naturally intuitive and adaptive to any situation (as opposed to one, very specific situation/context). Martial Arts should impart general concepts, mindset, skill, and ability, rather than specific recipes.

One more quick analogy; cooking.

Most people are quite fond of cooking with recipes, and I think that is a sort of low-level, unreliable, and unskilled method of cooking. Recipes are aids for beginners or people who haven't made a particular dish before, but we should aim to be able to cook intuitively, and adapt to the situation (what ingredients we may or may not have at hand).

I actually get quite frustrated with recipes, because it's sometimes difficult to separate the essence of a recipe from the fluff. Recipes given to you might often be very complex and specific, with lots of ingredients and specified amounts. But what ingredients are non-essential additions? What other ingredients might the recipe benefit from? What ingredients are essential for the essence of the dish? What substitutes might work? How might the amounts vary, depending on the quantity that I am making or the varying strength or size of my ingredients? What do I do when I follow the recipe to the T and for some reason it just tastes bland, or the flavors are out of balance?

Formal training is like giving someone a handful of recipes. But how does one use them in real life, intuitively? By becoming familiar with cooking, and the ingredients as a whole, using the general concepts and guidelines found in those recipes. You learn what components are essential, what ingredients are related and how they interact or balance out one another; you get an intuitive feel for how much of this or that to add, and how to balance out flavors when something is amiss. And, you develop an intuition that can go beyond the scope of your current list of recipes, and can create entirely new things on the fly.

I'm to the point with cooking that, at most, I will glance over recipes for inspiration, if I consult them at all. I don't measure anything, and I can come up with something almost regardless what ingredients I have at hand. I regularly experiment and rely solely on intuition and experience, and rarely do even my boldest experiments go awry.

Martial Arts are no different -- at least, for me, and my goal is to develop them in the same way that I've developed my culinary skills. I want not just the curricula, but the essence of what that curricula is meant to impart.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I have visited dojos where the mats feel like your walking on sofa cushions. many schools can't afford decent mats and at times they use the older elementary school gym mats or worse and use make shift egg crate covered by vinyl.

Okay, yes. That sounds horrible. I'm now imagining trying to pivot properly on my couch. When my wife complains about my new practice regimen, I'm blaming you.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Wrestling mats will catch your toes. When I first began training, we had wrestling mats which were very soft. I caught and broke my little toes so many times, my career as a foot model is over forever.

When the school moved, we went to zebra mats, which are firmer, but the tatami surface can give the top of your foot a nice friction burn every once in a while. I'll take that over the broken toe any day, though.

Apparently I've never been on a wrestling mat like that one. It sounds doubleplus ungood.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

When I say a "diverse array of real world experience" in the context of training Martial Arts, I should probably better define this, because, of course, I'm not expecting practitioners to go out and get in street fights or some nonsense, nor do I think such experience should be limited to LEO and bouncers. What I mean is practicing in a RBSD sort of setting/environment, or even just varying your training with your friends and experimenting; learning to deal with things intuitively, and becoming familiar with using the concepts and instilled habits of your art freely.

The trap that I think many Aikidoka and even TMA artists in general fall into is just practicing rigid technique where A does X and B does Y. I'm speaking of training where A does, and continues to do whatever he/she can to challenge B, and B learns to adapt and flow. But this should not take the form of mutual sparring, if you are attempting to practice skills that may be useful for self-protection (and a sparring format is not really suited to Aikido in the first place) -- rather, A should consciously take the role of the attacker and focus on developing his/her training partner. It's useful to do this with people who have not trained your particular art, because often trained habits of an uke are very different from that of your average person, or even martial artist, and you may find that you have difficulty making many of your locks/controls/throws/etc. work, and need to adapt.

I'm surprised that you had such success with translating French, though! I've mostly studied languages that are not in any way related to English, so I suppose it's more difficult to adapt with them. Granted, you can get by with really basic fluency if you're very creative and are just using communication as a basic means to an end. As for actually being able to use a language naturally and being able to engage in a diverse array of settings and activities that you might meet in every day life with fluency, I still stand by my assertion that you have to experience and familiarize yourself with those things, and I think our goal in martial arts should be somewhat similar.

I think that most people over specialize and refine their practice, whereas our true aim should be to diversify it and make it naturally intuitive and adaptive to any situation (as opposed to one, very specific situation/context). Martial Arts should impart general concepts, mindset, skill, and ability, rather than specific recipes.

One more quick analogy; cooking.

Most people are quite fond of cooking with recipes, and I think that is a sort of low-level, unreliable, and unskilled method of cooking. Recipes are aids for beginners or people who haven't made a particular dish before, but we should aim to be able to cook intuitively, and adapt to the situation (what ingredients we may or may not have at hand).

I actually get quite frustrated with recipes, because it's sometimes difficult to separate the essence of a recipe from the fluff. Recipes given to you might often be very complex and specific, with lots of ingredients and specified amounts. But what ingredients are non-essential additions? What other ingredients might the recipe benefit from? What ingredients are essential for the essence of the dish? What substitutes might work? How might the amounts vary, depending on the quantity that I am making or the varying strength or size of my ingredients? What do I do when I follow the recipe to the T and for some reason it just tastes bland, or the flavors are out of balance?

Formal training is like giving someone a handful of recipes. But how does one use them in real life, intuitively? By becoming familiar with cooking, and the ingredients as a whole, using the general concepts and guidelines found in those recipes. You learn what components are essential, what ingredients are related and how they interact or balance out one another; you get an intuitive feel for how much of this or that to add, and how to balance out flavors when something is amiss. And, you develop an intuition that can go beyond the scope of your current list of recipes, and can create entirely new things on the fly.

I'm to the point with cooking that, at most, I will glance over recipes for inspiration, if I consult them at all. I don't measure anything, and I can come up with something almost regardless what ingredients I have at hand. I regularly experiment and rely solely on intuition and experience, and rarely do even my boldest experiments go awry.

Martial Arts are no different -- at least, for me, and my goal is to develop them in the same way that I've developed my culinary skills. I want not just the curricula, but the essence of what that curricula is meant to impart.

Okay, I'll need to go back later and re-read to make sure I didn't miss anything, but I think we're on the same page. The RBSD point is very apt. If I trained my students on the classical techniques and set applications, and let them practice those only in that context ("you attack him with a right straight punch, and he'll do an arm bar"), they will get set into very fixed routines that don't adapt well.

We have a common practice in NGA that is usually called an "attack line", where all of the students line up. One student steps out, and the others attack him/her one at a time without the defender knowing what's coming. This will usually be a lot of the usual suspects (straight and round punches, some backhand and forehand slaps, various grabs and tackles, and some combos, a few kicks, etc.). When the attackers get bored, they start to introduce...um...less-common attacks (ankle grabs from behind, grabbing the belt, goofy 2-hand punches, etc.). I try to keep the weird stuff to a minimum, but I don't want it to vanish, because it lets me and the defender see how good they are at adapting the techniques. I obviously don't teach defenses against goofy 2-hand punches, so if they can defend against those, they are adapting to something new.

 

[drop bear]

Clearly you have never been thrown by someone who is really good, it also depends on whether you know how to breakfall or not. We had a chap who didn't know and when he was thrown he landed with his head first and KO'd himself, serves him right though for thinking that being thrown as you say on 'soft' mats was easy. Not that our mats are actually soft, softer than the ground but not pillow soft lol.

Hopefully you are not likely to get thrown through the floor before you can deal with it though.

 

[drop bear]

Wrestling mats will catch your toes. When I first began training, we had wrestling mats which were very soft. I caught and broke my little toes so many times, my career as a foot model is over forever.

When the school moved, we went to zebra mats, which are firmer, but the tatami surface can give the top of your foot a nice friction burn every once in a while. I'll take that over the broken toe any day, though.

Depends on the floor a bit as well. You train in a old building with a wooden floor you get more give than a modern building that has a slab.

The best would be a sprung floor like gymnastics.