Your thoughts on these locks?

[JowGaWolf]

I have to read this question as your statement that aikido is not functional in fighting. Is that what you believe?

I am not following what your message is in the rest of this.

It's simple. If you do not train something for fighting then the chances you'll be able to use it for fighting is slim. It doesn't matter what the system is. If you only use a system to learn the subtle things, then that is not the same as using it for fighting.
1. Learn beyond fighting is not learning how to fight.
2. Learn how to unbalance someone is not the same as learning how to use it in a fight.

If I do not train Jow Ga Kung Fu in fighting then I will not be able to use it in fighting. Aikido is no exception. I trained students who only saw and use Jow Ga as an exercise. As a result they didn't develop the ability to use it as a fighting system.

So if you aren't training Aikido as a fighting system then yes, it will not be functional.

 

[JowGaWolf]

If you consider "head lock" as joint lock, it has high successful rate. All you will need is to separate your opponent's arms away from his head.

I would consider the neck as a joint. Any structure that bends does so because it's a joint.

 

[JowGaWolf]

Did you watch the whole video?

This was part of a prank that Rokas pulled to “test people’s critical thinking skills”, i.e. see whether his audience members would accept that a certain technique (kote gaeshi) works just because an MMA coach assured them that it did.

He originally published just the first half of that video, with the kote gaeshi being demonstrated cooperatively and stating that they had been able to make it work in live sparring. Then a little later he published the full version in which he confessed in the second half that it was a trick and that they were not actually able to make it work in real sparring.

I was not particularly impressed with this little “experiment.”

Edit - I see from your follow up that you did watch the whole thing and posted it as evidence against the use of kote gaeshi. Bear in mind that based on the bit you quoted and the beginning of the video, some people are going to misinterpret the message.

He has another video that he made and he was able to pull off some Aikido techniques but it didn't look like what we would normally would think of as Aikido. Based on that video I think he's gotten better with Aikido. But he has also been doing a lot of System A vs System B sparring. So he's learned to adjust his Akido so that his approach to non-Aikido practitioners is better. From the video below it looks like he should be able to look more like akido against lesser skilled attackers. I'm not downing Aikido. It's just a fact that lesser skilled fighters make everything easier. Higher skilled fighters make you really work for it and the set ups become more challenging.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

I would consider the neck as a joint. Any structure that bends does so because it's a joint.

The neck joint and spine joint can kill. All the other joints can't.

 

[Taiji Rebel]

You are mistaking these joint-locks for Aikido. Yet again, you are missing the point of the original videos. It is difficult to comprehend these kind of approaches if your thoughts and experiences are solely focused on fighting applications. And if this is the case then it will be difficult to explain alternate perspectives.

MMA (Modern Martial Arts) have skewed the viewpoints of most people - Modern Martial Arts are really only seen as fighting arts

 

[marvin8]

He has another video that he made and he was able to pull off some Aikido techniques but it didn't look like what we would normally would think of as Aikido. Based on that video I think he's gotten better with Aikido. But he has also been doing a lot of System A vs System B sparring. So he's learned to adjust his Akido so that his approach to non-Aikido practitioners is better. From the video below it looks like he should be able to look more like akido against lesser skilled attackers. I'm not downing Aikido. It's just a fact that lesser skilled fighters make everything easier. Higher skilled fighters make you really work for it and the set ups become more challenging.

Thanks, haven't been following his videos lately. It seemed futile chasing and grabbing the guard or punches. Now Rokas enters the clinch, arm control then throws. I believe Jeff helped by not going 100% offensive.

Some aikido in competition.

Pedro Olavarria
Mar 17, 2020

"I have always interpreted judo and aikido as being basically the same, unified thing. Technically, they are one. " - Kenji Tomiki

 

[drop bear]

Maybe Rokas isn’t the shining example of aikido competence that some people seem to believe he is?

Honestly, I had never heard of him until his name came up here in the forums relatively recently (last year or maybe two?). I still fail to understand why anyone would look to him as any kind of authority on aikido. Or anything, really. Lots of incompetent folks put their crap on the internet for the world to gawk at.

You just don’t have shining examples of competence.

Eg. Like this.

 

[Taiji Rebel]

"I have always interpreted judo and aikido as being basically the same, unified thing. Technically, they are one. " - Kenji Tomiki

Jigaro Kano considered the physical aspects of Judo to be the lowest level of his philosophy. Unfortunately, the physical and competitive side of Judo has overshadowed the deeper thoughts, philosophies and vision that Jigaro Kano originally had in mind

When Kano first came across a demonstration of Aikido by Ueshiba he said: This is the ideal Budo, and promptly sent some of his top guys to train in Aikido

What is Budo?

Budo aims to unify the spirit (heart), technique (skill) and strength (body) as one, teaching discipline and respect to develop one’s character. Unlike games played simply to win, Budo can be understood as having to aim to train one’s mind and body while also building character.

 

[drop bear]

He has another video that he made and he was able to pull off some Aikido techniques but it didn't look like what we would normally would think of as Aikido. Based on that video I think he's gotten better with Aikido. But he has also been doing a lot of System A vs System B sparring. So he's learned to adjust his Akido so that his approach to non-Aikido practitioners is better. From the video below it looks like he should be able to look more like akido against lesser skilled attackers. I'm not downing Aikido. It's just a fact that lesser skilled fighters make everything easier. Higher skilled fighters make you really work for it and the set ups become more challenging.

He is getting a bunch of gifts there. Which how an experienced guy will let you explore concepts.

 

[Cynik75]

Maybe Rokas isn’t the shining example of aikido competence that some people seem to believe he is?

Honestly, I had never heard of him until his name came up here in the forums relatively recently (last year or maybe two?). I still fail to understand why anyone would look to him as any kind of authority on aikido. ...

Maybe because he is the only one aikidoka who tested his owns aikido skills in fight?
There is a lot of aikido channel on YT.
And only Rokas dared step into the ring.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Maybe because he is the only one aikidoka who tested his owns aikido skills in fight?
There is a lot of aikido channel on YT.
And only Rokas dared step into the ring.

One day, my friend Armando Flores visited me. I threw him a pair of gloves and we all fought in a local Karate tournament. Armando hit his opponent too hard and got disqualified in the 1st round. A week later he got kicked out of his Aikido Association.

Back then, if you belong to an Aikido Association, you are not allowed to fight in any MA tournament.

 

[Cynik75]

One day, my friend Armando Flores visited me. I threw him a pair of gloves and we all fought in a local Karate tournament. Armando hit his opponent too hard and got disqualified in the 1st round. A week later he got kicked out of his Aikido Association.

Back then, if you belong to an Aikido Association, you are not allowed to fight in any MA tournament.
....

Sad.
But this is only anegdotical story. We live in YT times, and any aikidoka can put on YT anything. I do no know why only Rokas has dared to show to the world how dooes his aikido work.
Some aikidokas criticized him that he is low level, it is not true aikido etc. but no one of them has shown he/she can do better.

So for this moment Rokas is the only one commonly available reference point for "aikido in combat".

 

[Taiji Rebel]

He is getting a bunch of gifts there. Which how an experienced guy will let you explore concepts.

Hey drop bear - I keep asking but have yet to get an answer.

What martial art are you currently practicing?

 

[Taiji Rebel]

Sad.
But this is only anegdotical story. We live in YT times, and any aikidoka can put on YT anything. I do no know why only Rokas has dared to show to the world how dooes his aikido work.
Some aikidokas criticized him that he is low level, it is not true aikido etc. but no one of them has shown he/she can do better.

So for this moment Rokas is the only one commonly available reference point for "aikido in combat".

Your words make little sense

 

[drop bear]

Hey drop bear - I keep asking but have yet to get an answer.

What martial art are you currently practicing?

MMA at the moment.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Maybe because he is the only one aikidoka who tested his owns aikido skills in fight?
There is a lot of aikido channel on YT.
And only Rokas dared step into the ring.

He's not the only one who has. I can think of a couple others who had similar sparring experiences that I saw video of. I know of a few others who did it without the video (was for their own learning).

The bigger issue, as @JowGaWolf pointed out, is that it's not widely trained with a real combat perspective, so folks aren't developing its combat capability. Aikido wouldn't be the most effective approach to fight training even if it were approached that way, but it's hard to find practitioners who are good at sparring within an art that rarely spars, so we don't get to see its potential.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

One day, my friend Armando Flores visited me. I threw him a pair of gloves and we all fought in a local Karate tournament. Armando hit his opponent too hard and got disqualified in the 1st round. A week later he got kicked out of his Aikido Association.

Back then, if you belong to an Aikido Association, you are not allowed to fight in any MA tournament.

There are many in the aiki world who look down at anything viewed as competitive, including actual resistive sparring.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Sad.
But this is only anegdotical story. We live in YT times, and any aikidoka can put on YT anything. I do no know why only Rokas has dared to show to the world how dooes his aikido work.
Some aikidokas criticized him that he is low level, it is not true aikido etc. but no one of them has shown he/she can do better.

So for this moment Rokas is the only one commonly available reference point for "aikido in combat".

The criticisms are fair, in my opinion. His Aikido, from what I saw in some of his videos, wasn't bad, but wasn't at a high level, either. More importantly, his approach to using it in the sparring sessions he posted was...not at all good. What we saw was evidence he wasn't trained for sparring (which is a valid problem for Aikido, if you're looking at it from that view). I'm still seeing him focused more on the techniques than the aiki principles. To be fair, Aikido could flow and adjust more for a modern context by dropping less-useful techniques and absorbing more useful ones that still allow a focus on the aiki mechanics. While training the traditional techniques with a different perspective could improve effectiveness in sparring, it'd still be slow development, because you have to get to a much higher level of competence for principles to override techniques (where you start to move more with the principles, not needing to stick to the techniques you learned them with).

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Your words make little sense

Seemed pretty straightforward to me.

 

[O'Malley]

I'm not a fan of Rokas, I don't think he was that good to begin with and I'm not into the whole youtuber persona he built for himself. That being said, he had the balls to set clear goals for his training and publicly tested himself against those standards. That alone is worthy of respect in my book.

It's ultimately a matter of claims and critical thinking. If one asserts that his aikido training makes him better at fighting, there exist ways to test that, and if he doesn't do it people have the right to question the claim. And there are aikido people who say it's effective without supporting the claim. If they said they're just training for fun, it would be completely fine.

Budo people tend to chalk up the whole ethical, moral and spiritual aspects of their arts and often suggest that modern (especially western) arts are completely devoid of these or even encourage bad behaviour. I wonder whether it stems from an inferiority complex from traditional martial artists regarding fighting effectiveness. "My dad couldn't beat your dad in a fight, but spiritually he would kick your dad's ***".

In any case, the situation is much more nuanced. Even in the West, since Antiquity, sports have been associated with moral and spiritual development, and this continues today. Conversely, Budo have been used in pre-war Japan as a way to condition the youth for the country's upcoming wars of expansion. In aikido, a good example would be Tadashi Abe, who was reportedly dejected that the war ended as he wished to die in a suicide torpedo (kaiten) attack, "like a samurai".

To MMA's Joe Schilling KOing a rando in a bar, aikido can raise Bruce Klickstein, 5th dan under Morihiro Saito (a direct disciple of aikido's founder), who was convicted for abusing his underage students in the 90s and was recently convicted again for possessing and diffusing child porn.

My moral values certainly don't come from my training and in general I find it difficult to have meaningful conversations about things as nebulous as the ethical, moral or spiritual concepts of martial arts. In order to discuss the spiritual aspects of aikido I would need to study the founder's incredibly complex and personal worldview, including things like the Chinese Classics and Oomoto-kyo cosmology. Ain't nobody got time for that. That's one of the reasons why I'd rather talk about technique.