Eva Antonia

Hi all,

I started Karate after training four and a half years in aikido, and I'm doing both in parallel since then. It is not a big problem concerning time input, since the dojo is very near to my house, and I'm training twice per week in aikido + many seminars, twice or three times in karate, + some few seminars. I don't progress very quickly in either, training is not sufficiently intensive or I am not sufficiently gifted for that, but it's fun, and every time more so.

I don't have the impression that the two arts are interfering too much with each other; it cost me some efforts to understand why tsuki in aikido needs better not to be the same as in karate, and why the very low positions in karate are sometimes an obstacle in aikido. On the other side, I still struggle with spins in karate, which seem so much more difficult to me than tai sabaki in aikido - but all these are not really important problems.

What is really fun is mixing techniques, like answering a karate attack with an aikido response, but there are not so many opportunities for doing so.

Anyway, I think the previous posters are right - taking two martial arts as a complete newbie might not be such a good idea since you might confuse the approaches without noticing and thus hamper your understanding of and progress in the art(s).

Wishing you much luck in the pursuit of krav maga, aikido or both,

Eva