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Old 08-30-2012, 09:35 AM   #15
David Orange
Dojo: Aozora Dojo
Location: Birmingham, AL
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 1,511
United_States
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Re: Kyokushin + Aikido

Don't let the slamming nature of kyokushin fool you, though. Mas Oyama trained in daito ryu with Yoshida Kotaro--the man who introduced Morihei Ueshiba to Sokaku Takeda. I used to wonder why the "self-defense" section in Oyama's books were almost all aikido techniques. That's why.

Also, kyokushin incorporates (or used to) a nice "nagashi" tai sabaki, which can set you up for an outside or inside position on the attacker.

The leg kicks tend to be the real shocker for people who've never run into kyokushin or MMA. You either know how to take that or you don't. And if you don't...it puts you in another dimension.

Less famous, perhaps, but maybe even more effective, is their tendency to come out of the starting gate with a jumping front kick--not to the head, but straight to the solar plexus. From a maai that normally requires edging toward one another, the kyokushin covers the "edging in" space for both fighters and drives a straight front kick to the gut, with plenty of room for extension. I've seen this on tape, probably the Strongest Karate series. But here's a nice treatment of Mas Oyama's early days, proving himself in Japan, that was made in Korea within the last decade. Oyama had just come from some months training alone in the mountains. It's stylized, but I think this pretty well shows the spirit of the kyokushin and Oyama really did stuff about like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBjmuuNcsqA

Kyokushin tournament fighting. Watch this and say those guys are not as relaxed as almost anyone I've ever seen in aikido:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...FY-YYLcwk&NR=1

Mas Oyama himself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtqQx...eature=related

At the yoseikan, whenever I was the attacker, I normally came in with the kyokushin shuffle, putting neither foot too far forward, both hands up by my head, getting close enough to launch the actual attack with either foot and/or hand. I liked to drop a hand and bring it up in an uppercut, or just shoot the hand from beside my head, directly to their chest/solar plexus or chop down with either hand to their collar bone, or turn that move into yokomen uchi. The few people who taught me about kyokushin were all direct students of Mas Oyama and he was still in his late fifties when I was training with them. Everything else I learned was from his books and my own practice.

So, in my experience, kyokushin fit well with aikido training. I used it in class. But this was yoseikan aikido, in Japan, under Minoru Mochizuki and I don't know if you could do that much anywhere else in the world.

I think there are some old yoseikan guys up your way, though. Roger Roy has a dojo in Sherbrooke. And Michel Martin may be around Montreal.

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

"Eternity forever!"

www.esotericorange.com
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