Quote:
Mark Murray wrote:
Hi Toby,
I can make the statement because your post just goes to confirm it. With a broad brush, I can say there is no aiki in BJJ just as I can say there is no aiki in aikido.
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Mark,
You must have a affinity for boxes and really big brushes.
With a broad enough brush you can justify saying anything, but that's not what Kevin Leavitt was referring to. He used a very specific brush based on Rob's Liberti's definition, and concluded that given Rob's definition BJJ was aikijujutsu. Nobody asked for your definition of aiki. Nobody said anything about your definition of aiki, and frankly I couldn't give a rats butt how anyone defines "aiki" because no one will ever agree. It's all rather pointless semantics. Look, even the greater Daito ryu community can't agree on what defines "aiki" but you think you can define it for the rest of us? Good luck with that!
As far as BJJ and internal skills go.....
Sure people early in BJJ only taught the high level stuff to high level practitioners. Are you surprised? The problem only becomes systemic when the high level representatives don't have the skills. This is what makes BJJ different from Aikido. In Aikido we had advanced practitioners totally devoid of skills coinsidered absolutely necessary. That's a very different situation from BJJ where the crucible of using and applying these skills is much more direct.
Now, we can argue all day whether its good or not for these skills to be considered advanced foundational or beginning foundational, but if guys like Helio obviously had the skills and actively taught these skills to his best students.....and these skills are now being taught farther down the food chain in open seminars like that taught by Rickson ( Invisible jujutsu - Tim Fong ), your proposition is simply......wrong.
Toby Threadgill / TSYR