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Old 09-15-2012, 09:45 AM   #14
Cyril Landise
 
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Dojo: Midwest Aikido Center (USAF-Chicago)
Location: Chicago
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 11
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Re: Did aikido ever fail you?

This thread is moderately disturbing to me.
Aikido is a training method which allows the practitioner to become better..at being a person as well as at being capable of defending oneself.
The only failure possible of Aikido, as I see it, would be that someone, after training in Aikido, became a WORST person or LESS able to defend themselves.
This is not to say that I don't appreciate how interesting street fighting tales can be...and personal stories of how Aikido training influenced the story teller's behavior.
Living in center Chicago most of my life has given me plenty of blood and gore stories, some mine, some not. Just recently, as a senior citizen, I had to re-train my "street ready" hanmi stance to a higher hand position after a drug crazed attacker got a hand thru my defenses to my face. I was just a millisecond late and it turned out okay. I have retold this story several times at the dojo...but that doesn't make it a story about how Aikido failed me. It is just a story about an Aikidoist who failed.

However, on 2nd thought, I have a situation in which you might say Aikido failed me. I'll let you decide.
Many years ago, as a young man with less than 10 years of training, I used a jo to eject 3 rowdies from my bar where I was Chairman of the Board, janitor and bouncer simultaneously. I was admittedly quite full of myself as I kept all three at bay with my jo in full sight of an audience of all the patrons. After a randori amount of time, the last of the attackers backed off from the attack in face-twisted frustration and shouted at me that he was going to go home for his gun and kill me when I left work that night. I skulked out of the back door at closing like a coward. He didn't kill me, but he made me feel very, very stupid.
Did I win or lose that one?
I survived, is that an Aikido success or failure?
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