Poll: Have you been taught pressure points in your aikido training?

AikiWeb Poll for the week of April 14, 2002:

Have you been taught pressure points in your aikido training?

• I don't do aikido
• Yes, I rely on them extensively
• Yes, I rely on them sometimes
• Yes, but I never rely on them
• No, I've never seen them taught
  

Here are the current results.

I guess that this comes from the recent thread on pressure points. I don't post here often but on this point i feel that i must.

To those of you who have voted "i never use them", have you never done Yonkyo?

I am glad to see that no-one has voted i rely on them a lot (so far). Pressure points are found in most Aikido techniques and if ever you are Nage to someone who gets them right then you'll know about it. But they are not the reason that the technique works, just an added bonus should you get them. Off hand to name just the basic techniques, Ikkyo, Nikkyo, Yonkyo, Kote-Gaeshi, ShiHoNage, IrimiNage, KaitenNage, TenChiNage all have pressure point applications that i know of. I'm sure there's one for Sankyo too but who needs it? If you get the technique right then it'll work. If not then a pressure point may help, but more practice would be better.

The words are 'never rely on them' not 'never use them'. My yonkyo does not 'rely' on pressure points, because I know that anyone who is relying on a pressure point to make yonkyo work on me will fail. I fall if you take my balance, but can laugh in your face all day if you are messing around with my nerve. So we are taught where some are, but I've never been taught a technique that "relies" on the pressure point, and would question the wisdom of doing any technique BASED on a pressure point. They all work without them, and pressure points are way too unreliable to count on them. So my yonkyo focuses on taking uke's balance. If in doing so pressure is placed on a nerve that encourages him to move, fine. If not, I don't care.

Which is exactly what i meant! See why i don't post often, just can't express myself in type! Doh!
Most techniques i know have a pressure point application and Yonkyo is the perfect example but to rely on that application is a mistake. I didn't understand the people voting for the last option, we're not taught pressure points. To them i say what about Yonkyo. Have you never been taught the pressure points? What are you teachers doing?
For the record i too voted never rely on them.

I am glad we are starting to get this in the open, simply because, in laymans's terms whether we take a doctors prescription or and aspirin it is a medication. So too with Aikido's deliverance of pain with technique or individual pressure point, we advance to that level of practice using the pressure points available in any given situation or technique by practice and knowledge. My point being, denying pain being delivered by nerves, whether called pressure points or pain submission, is a moot point. (Moot being a philosophical arguement. That, in working man's terms, means nothing because them educated scholars are beating a dead horse while the world goes on around them, at least in working man's terms.)

Before I practiced Aikido, I had a variety of pain submissions from various jujitsu lessons, but sometimes to get there there were many offensive and defensive dirty tricks to get past punching and kicking? Eventually, judo and jujitsu were that more effective than striking and kicking. When I began to get the hang of Aikido, I saw even more openings, beyond the actual physical manipulations, which became easier to get to with Aikido's flowing harmony.

Now with Aikido training, I see it works well with many other styles training providing openings for other techniques, which I call my old friends from other schools of training.

So, not to rely on what works is foolish. But learning to make other things work within Aikido? You decide.

How long did it take to begin to understand Aikido, and will you or I ever Master IT?

Probably not, but practicing is a lot of fun!



Bruce (did you know Bruce was an ancient Scottish name meaning "of the thicket"? Guess that's better than crusty old thorny #$%^%^?)

Colin,

I would guess they learn the technique without the pressure point being taught as an integral part (but they will have to tell us)... perhaps some of them are beginners in formal beginners classes only, and yonkyo may not be on the program...