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Old 03-26-2019, 02:07 PM   #5
Hilary
Dojo: Torrey Pines Aiki Kai
Location: San Diego
Join Date: Mar 2011
Posts: 107
United_States
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Re: Effectiveness -- From a Different Perspective - XX motivations

Corkey, too much to unpack right this moment. but in short.

"aikido is aikido no matter the gender of the aikidoka" I have some heartburn with this. Aikido is not aikido from practitioner to practitioner let alone across the sexes and differeinf body types. In my experience women do it differently than men, and to be clear I am not saying better or worse just different.

The aikiverse has been hijacked by the effectiveness trolls who attempt (often successfully) to define the effectiveness metric as ring combat. When this clip just showed up in the local news, it seemed a good starting point to assess what is effective and to whom. The silence of women has been deafening, only Mary here and one publicly and one privately over on reddit. Of the 20 or so female martial artist I have known, most originally got into it to learn to protect themselves. Often their motivations change over time. I believe (and I reiterate believe) that women are concerned more with casual attacks like the one shown.

What I had hoped to hear was
1. "holey crap that is a big guy"
2. I think I could have ducked the first and moved away before the second.
While those punches are a gift to anyone with the skills, I would not expect most women to try to throw or lock him (nor do they have to).

Elsewhere is was opined that this was a sucker punch, it is not. They were not good punches, they were not particularity fast. They were thrown without a moment of hesitation, I think that adds to the perceived surprise, and is mistaken for speed or stealth.
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