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Old 06-09-2009, 08:39 AM   #85
Anjisan
Dojo: Aikido of Madison
Location: Madison, Wisconsin
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 189
United_States
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Talking Re: How effective is aikido in self defense?

"Like any MA the techniques are meant to be adapted to situations. An judo chop is the same motion as someone might use to hit you with a bar,hammer, bottle..ect.

Now if you look at a lot of the Aikido techs they represent general motions that you can see in the real world. You just have to think more open minded and not take method so literally. Yes, the attack is a chop but what other attacks use the same type of motion? I think if you do the same for the other attacks you can come up with similar ideas."


In my humble opinion, that really sums it up. The principals have certainly been proven over time, on many fields of battle and at the cost of many lives. If one makes the appropriate modifications to deal with modern attacks it really shouldn't matter who the attacker is so much as who the practitioner is.

It seems that the real issue is the Aikido practitioner who gets "locked" into the training patterns and doesn't make the necessary modifications for real combat which can be nasty, brutal, and short (ala Kant). They fall into the mental trap that they can somehow just "flip the switch" at the proper moment even though their training and resulting muscle memory say otherwise.Then there is the issue of executing technique after one has been "hit" a few times which Aikido practitioners typically are not exposed to--but that is a separate issue.
Just my 3 cents.
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