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Old 07-26-2007, 08:52 PM   #106
Paul Sanderson-Cimino
Dojo: Yoshokai; looking into judo
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 434
United_States
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Re: Aikido Techniques are Weapons Techniques

This evening, I ended a reasonably long non-training spell (a month or more?), and did aikido with some friends who are also "stranded" from a dojo post-college. I tried out Chris' suggestion, and found the results pretty striking. (Although of course this is only a preliminary experience.)

We started out as for normal grappling, but one person had a tanto slipped into his or her belt. (We began with maybe slightly closer than normal kamae distance.) We pretty much stopped it as soon as one person had clearly got the knife and could strike with it, in part to avoid injuries. Aikido techniques appeared seemingly very naturally, and worked out rather well. (I felt that there was also a lot of room for judo-style sweeps.)

We also tried other setups, like the person having the tanto out and the other person having a grab of their choice. We also tried both people having tanto in their belts. We then did some with a bokken in the belt instead. The bokken actually seemed nearly useless at close range; also, body grapples seemed much more functional for the unarmed person.

Now, I should emphasize that we were a trio of aikido people, so we're arguably more prone to expecting the techniques to happen -- we might have been biased that way. I might end up trying this with a friendly wrestler or BJJer too -- I'm anxious about it appearing to be a challenge rather than an experiment, but I think it might work out with some of them. (I'll see if they wander up to us in free grappling and ask what we're doing with that wooden knife, perhaps.) I suspect there might be a wrestling way of doing this too -- but it's possible that it will end up looking a lot like aikido.
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