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Old 01-30-2003, 02:19 AM   #15
Edward
Location: Bangkok
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 803
Thailand
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Hello Jason, I fully agree with you. I am a hard trainer myself (7 days a week, about 15 hours). I do believe that you only develop your skills through very hard practice. But I think that if aikido becomes too concerned with practical situations, it is not aikido anymore. At least not in the way its founder viewed it. I think that for people concerned about their safety and would like to learn self-defence, there are special courses exactly for that purpose. For people concerned with fighting and beating each other, well, I won't comment so that I won't sound too harsh. I believe that aikido comes as a package, that it is not a practical way of self-defence although it could be used as such in certain situations, but the purpose of aikido is at a completely different level. That's why I am completely against advertizing aikido as a self-defence art, because this would be misleading the students. With a minimum of 10 years training to gain some efficiency, I wonder if there aren't quicker and more practical ways to learn self-defence.

Now some occasional training against guns, rifles, knives and some other potentially lethal situations is very valuable, but not training in Katatetori because no body will grab like that on the street is totally missing the point.

So basically we say the same thing different way.

Sorry for the long post.

Cheers,
Edward

Last edited by Edward : 01-30-2003 at 02:22 AM.
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