rob_liberti

My impression of aikido LONG AGO was that it was the ultimate martial art available to us in the States. That the inventor took on all challenges and defeated them all easily. I continued with my practice thinking that I was learning something beyond the normal.

When I got into fights - and let me tell you - I got into many fights as a kid, and I tried things I was doing in aikido (not ikkyo, but entering and turning as people are coming at you trying to hurt you) and things didn't match up exactly to my hopes - I just chalked it up to:
1 - I need more training
2 - Some people are like Michael Jordan, and I'm not one of them

I just assume Osensei was a Michael Jordan of martial arts who trained like a nut in an inspired way.

I couldn't will myself to have natural talent, but I could train like a nut and be the best my natural talent level would allow.

As I got older, and I mellowed, I still wanted to excel martially - but my fighting days were clearly over. I wanted the health benefits of the martial training for sure, I wanted the martial (physical) testing/gauge of my emotional/spiritual development, and I wanted to give back to the art itself.

I found bullshido and thought that it might be about martial arts in general and just against people pretending to have credentials. There are many fakers in aikido (3rd kyus pretending to be 6th dans in their own self created independent organization). I read their stuff. I realized just how far aikido's image is generally from what my initial image of what aikido was supposed to be.

I got interested. I wondered if I could learn the aiki I was learning in aikido well enough to apply it to MMA and dominate in that arena. The problem is that I don't learn such skills so quickly, and I was not sure I'd still have a good enough body to do MMA with aiki by the time I extracted enough aiki from aikido to do what I wanted (have a good throwdown with a bunch of bullshido folks). Work gets pretty frustrating, and a good "fight" takes out a lot of stress (even if it is not an all out try to kill the other guy type of street fight). So I started looking for other people who went this direction. And I found some help. We'll see what happens...

I think aikido deserves a better martial reputation. If that's not your thing, FINE, but you might benefit (your dojo numbers for sure) might benefit from SOMEONE - ANYONE in aikido actually helping the martial credibility a bit.

Anyway, something to think about. (or not - that's okay too, I'll think about it myself).

Rob