Quote:
Dan Harden wrote:
Dave it isn't about fighting skills, never was. That's a different topic.
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Okay, Dan. That expresses perfectly what I've been saying. Aikido is a fighting art. It is an art of self defense and it has served me very well ever since I began training in it. It took me from someone who was next-to-last chosen for every game, afraid of all the bigger kids, to a 51-year-old who meets those old bullies and finds them much worn down by time, rather shrivelled and nothing like a threat to me anymore. The years and what I've trained in have been far kinder to me than to them. Their response, of course, is that they have a lot more money than me, now (most of them), bigger houses and cars and they're going to retire with big pensions.
But as a method of self-defense, I am very happy with aikido as I have learned it. This doesn't detract from what you do, but it does show that we are talking about different things. I am talking about aikido as I learned it from a meijin and I see the roots of that art in every child who learns to stand and walk.
David