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Old 04-04-2014, 07:02 PM   #67
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Location: Kawasaki, Kanagawa
Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 1,276
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Re: Why Aikido has such strange strike defense.

Quote:
Joshua Landin wrote: View Post
The aikido techniques done in paired practice have zero use in and of themselves outside of the dojo. They are not street fighting or self defense techniques. Their purpose is for training on applying aiki in a paired practice setting (training aiki itself is a whole separate thing). It teaches you to move freely, in opposition with yourself, while standing on the floating bridge of heaven. The ultimate goal, and the martial implications of all this, is to attain what O-sensei called "Takemusu Aiki' - where when you move, technique happen spontaneously. Because when you move aiki is present at every point on your body, with no one able to stop you. They are defeated on contact.

This is the Way of Aiki. The way of freedom.
It is not really true that the techniques have zero use. Aikido has a lot of technical idioms that you can find all over the place in other martial arts, including systems that were developed for real use. It is just that, as you say, in Aikido we practice the techniques to learn to express aiki. IMO the generalization of attack patterns helps us learn to express Takemusu aiki, by giving us an earlier exit from static kata practice.

The other thing I would point out is that you could take the time you spend sidebarring aiki training and train something like boxing or whatever...
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