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Old 02-18-2008, 06:58 PM   #42
Ketsan
Dojo: Zanshin Kai
Location: Birmingham
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 865
United Kingdom
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

Quote:
Brian Dewey wrote: View Post

Seriously, of course Aikido works in a fight, it all depends upon how you train.

That's all.
I think it's slightly more than that. Good training produces good technique but techniques are just tools and frankly if my Sensei handed me the best hammer and chisel ever made it wouldn't automatically make me the next Michelangelo.
I think you need an experience base and with Aikido I think the only real way to get that experience base is to go and get mugged and assaulted a lot.
I'm sure Kevin can back me up when I say there's a difference between a soldier who is highly trained and a soldier who is highly trained AND has combat experience.
History is repleat with highly trained but green armies, often with superior technology, getting their ass handed to them by bearly trained, poorly equipped, but highly experienced armies. If that makes sence. Isandlwana stands out in my mind as the perfect example of this.
As good as we make our training, it is still training. Even if we take a training exercise like sparring, make it full contact and hand out prizes for winning it, we're stil not providing the student with anything like real world experience.
Like it or not despite being highly trained most of us are green as can be and the people we're training to deal with are probably quite used to violence and have tons of real world experience.

Also I think that the most important self defence skills are just the kind of things you just can't teach, or at least can't fully teach. Can you teach someone to be creative and to adapt? Can you teach grit and aggression?
Again I'll use an example from the military: If we want a special forces soldier we have to go and look for them in the regular army, you can't just grab anyone and train the kind of qualities into them that the special forces want.

So maybe the important question isn't "Does Aikido work?" or even "Does my Aikido work?" so much as "Do I and my Aikido work?"
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