View Single Post
Old 03-04-2012, 11:30 AM   #5
David Orange
Dojo: Aozora Dojo
Location: Birmingham, AL
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 1,511
United_States
Offline
Re: Attempted Assault

Quote:
Amir Krause wrote: View Post
Well, I believe the Aikido I am learning would have provided a good solution, it has helped some friends of mine in various situations of a fight.
Excellent. That is the ground of aikido. To approach it as something else first is, in my opinion, a mistake.

Quote:
Amir Krause wrote: View Post
On the other hand, it is the person and not the Aikido that makes the difference, and as long as I have not had to go down that test, I will never know. Further, seems to me my answer would have been much more definite a few years ago, when I was younger, and trained much more, these days, I have a family with small children to run after, and very limited training time.
The person is very important, but if you take someone with good attributes and foul their thinking about the purpose of aikido, it's really likely to confuse them and weaken their ability to defend themselves--especially the kind of aikido that assumes the attacker is an idiot and teaches techniques that leave not the appearance of openings in the techniques, but actual wide-open weak spots....

So I think the person has to be his/her best, but the aikido cannot contain any BS elements. It has to be grounded in combative reality at all points.

As I got older, I came to realize that the self-defense methods of aikido really are pretty simple and clear: they just get buried under form and ritual and the confusion of whether we're really supposed to intend to do what we're trying to learn to do....

But if you get clear grounding in the self-defense elements of aikido, then those can become simpler and clearer (another way of saying sharper) as you drop all irrelevant content.

Quote:
Amir Krause wrote: View Post
And since you were so damant about the style - I learn Korindo Aikido,
from a very good teacher, who has learned Judo and Karate to a high level besides the Aikido. and, as I wrote, I know other students of my teachers who faced attacks with their Aikido, and also a student of a friend who did the same, and this friend is a Kohai of mine, and i helped him to teach (replaced him) on days he couldn't.
It's certainly not a matter of the name of the system. What counts is the content and motivation of the training. Minoru Hirai was, I think, head of the Japanese Army bujutsu training. His korindo isn't even based on Morihei Ueshiba's aikido. He trained with Ueshiba and for a while ran the hombu dojo. So the focus there is on serious self-defense. I would add Iwama to the list of excellent systems, to the degree the teacher adheres to Saito Sensei's teachings.

Quote:
Amir Krause wrote: View Post
And as a side comment: It seems like a very low leel of confrentation, if he is willing to grab your arm just as you asked and does not take advantage in order to punch your face. Perhaps your original grasp of the situation was closer to the point?
Well, I did consider it a low-level confrontation, but thinking back, it looks very ominous. If my technique had not been instantly effective, I think the attack would have escalated quickly to a bad level. I might have had to resort to the shovel. But that idea alone would shock the sense out of a lot of aikido people. "You would have used a shovel on the attacker???" Oh, yeah.

The reason he grabbed my wrist instead of punching is that my arms were between him and me. He couldn't have punched effectively. I think he grabbed my wrist with the intention of getting my arms out of the way so he could punch. If he had tried to enter without getting my arms out of the way, I would have had tegatana to his face, as in shomen ate. That's why yoseikan taught that stance and the arm position as a kihon method before any waza at all.

Thanks for your comments.

David

"That which has no substance can enter where there is no room."
Lao Tzu

"Eternity forever!"

www.esotericorange.com
  Reply With Quote