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Old 07-27-2014, 04:04 AM   #40
George S. Ledyard
 
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Dojo: Aikido Eastside
Location: Bellevue, WA
Join Date: Jun 2000
Posts: 2,670
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Re: Aikido as an actual Martial Art

Aikido is a system of martial practice. In my own opinion, it was intended to be the study of connection between human beings and humans and their environment. That said, I taught Aikido based Defensive Tactics to Police and Security folks for ten years and everything I taught was used on the street with real bad guys quite successfully. But it didn't look anything like class. It's a lot rougher and uglier. If you are interested in effective street application, you need to practice that way. Traditional Aikido provides a solid foundation but you have to take those principles and learn to apply them freely against people who don't know any ukemi. will break connection as soon as they don't like what is happening, will hit you any chance they get while you try to apply a technique, etc. Robert Koga, Bernie Lau, David Dye and many others used Aikido on the street but they all changed the training paradigm from the formalistic method we use for traditional practice. It just depends on what you want. In my opinion, too much focus on street application will prevent one from getting to the deepest levels of the art. You'll learn good tricks for prevailing but the kind of freestyle, oppositional practice required will be too chaotic to really isolate the most sophisticated principles of the art.

George S. Ledyard
Aikido Eastside
Bellevue, WA
Aikido Eastside
AikidoDvds.Com
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