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Old 12-14-2008, 07:29 AM   #250
RonRagusa
Dojo: Berkshire Hills Aikido
Location: Massachusetts
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 824
United_States
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Re: The continued Evolution of Aikido

Quote:
Kevin Leavitt wrote: View Post
I love discussing martial effectiveness. We should try and define that. I have been trying to get folks to do this for years on Aikiweb.
Martial effectiveness is relative to the conflict situation at hand. A single person may be martially effective against one or even more than one other person, but once the group of adversaries grows large enough the single person's martial effectiveness will drop off considerably. A platoon of marines will, in many situations, be martially effective. But when confronted by an armored regiment the platoon's martial effectiveness will be reduced.

It would seem that martial effectiveness is highly dependent on the scale of violence that one person or group can deliver upon another while at the same time defending against the violence being inflicted by the other person or group.

I would define martial effectiveness as the ability to prevail in a conflict situation. Fighting systems, in and of themselves are neither martially effective or ineffective. It is the application of the fighting system that will be effective or not. Some fighting systems may contain the potential for greater martial effectiveness due to: greater number of tools that can be deployed, training methodologies that are based on fighting applications, the absence of a moral based code of conduct etc.

As such, I don't think Aikido presents itself particularly well as a fighting system. The toolbox is too limited, training is obviously not fighting based and there is a moral subtext that underlies its application. To enhance or evolve Aikido to the point where it becomes a so called "complete fighting system" with a high potential of martial effectiveness in a wide variety of conflict situations would necessarily change the art beyond recognition.

Ron