Aikido in the Military

Well, we do other things as well, Bronson, we've built schools and clinics all over the world, and provided US quality medical care in Third World nations, and relief efforts after natural disasters, etc. But anyone who thinks that war can be fought without the loss of life, often in great numbers, and invariably including civilians, is delusional.

The role of the military is to go to war, risking at that same time the lives of our fighting men and women, at the order of civilians (ultimately), freely elected by us all. But in a simplified version, yes, we kill people and break things, and we train hard to do it well. We practice daily to destroy what we are told to destroy, and it is difficult to destroy by degree. Civilians should keep this in mind, when their blood lust is urging politicians to enter into war.

...and just in addition to what Colleen writes above: The British in particular, but
also the other NATO members, are spending way more time stopping people from killing and destroying each other, than doing it themselves. (The UK is on what, 8 peacekeeping deployments around the world at the moment?).

Krzysiek asked:
Do we WANT Aikido to be taught in the military?

Sure - we want aikido to be taught to everybody. I don't think you'll suddenly see marines in the park biting the heads of squirrels and saying "Its OK, I was relaxed and responding to his negative ki".

Tim

Originally posted by Tim Griffiths I don't think you'll suddenly see marines in the park biting the heads of squirrels and saying "Its OK, I was relaxed and responding to his negative ki".

Tim... maybe you were trying to make a point in there somewhere, but I was too busy being disturbed by the above statement, to notice.

Back in the good old days, when the war on drugs was the only war we had going, I was deployed down south and operating a little clinic in a hanger, where there also sprung up a very popular snack bar/grill. Rats were the first occupants, and were not leaving gracefully. I had glue traps set (cardboard covered with strong glue). One morning my presence was demanded in that snack bar by the DETCO, and on the fridge behind the grill, lay two trapped rats, both still alive, one gnawing on the leg of the other, while the cook busied himself with breakfast orders.

In my best though limited Spanish, I tried to tell the cook he had to stop, and remove the traps. Finally, with a line of about 20 folks watching, I gently pulled him aside, grabbed a stool, and tossed the rats into a trash bag. A Marine, third from the front, muttered 'oh, man, I was going to order that'

Askanison:
My sensei actually teaches the police but i haven't had the opportunity to see it in action. But i guess if the malaysian police think it's good, there must a certain usefulness to it in the military aspect. Although yes, military men would be involved in more expert fights, I believe there would be a use for Aikido somewhere.

I've seen some books on police aikido and it seems to be quite established and even incorporates the use of guns.

Quite interesting stuff. just a thought!

Oh and i have a friend who is a policeman and according to his account this guy attacked him with a stick, and he did some sort of irimi or was it kaiten entering and the guy was so shocked to see him behind that he didn't bother fighting anymore. I think the founder would have been happy.

As to my current training, my sensei's son(4th dan) has also begun teaching me. He's a lot more youthful and aggressive and teaches a slightly harder form of aikido. He really atemis you and u just feel your hand go numb though no real damage is done. I believe i've seen something similiar in jujitsu where u put a strike in the nerve points though this one was more of a cut down as a tool to unbalance the opponent.

I can say that it was very effective and the attack i threw very real. Let's just say when i punch you can hear a whoosh even if i'm not wearing a gi. Some of the black belts in my old dojo in Kuching would ask me to hook them to test their technique and very often they would just end up blocking and being pushed to an open position. No such thing happened with my sensei's son.

So i can safely say that Aikido at the lower levels(as in the beginning black belts as compared to the shihans) can still be an effective martial art in the military if the atemis are placed harder to make up for a deficiency in other aspects of Aikido such as timing(though of course a certain proficiency is required). I believe most good aikidokas start off this tougher path and then as they grow older refine their technique and intuition making the harder aspects of Aikido less prominent. I think a good example is Shirata Sensei and maybe even O sensei himself.

If you have read any of O'Sensei's biography, then you know he taught hand to hand instruction to many police, soldiers, and military academy students. What is not clear, is did he teach to kill, or to disarm opening opportunity for the kill.

One of the early students, in this neck of the woods, was inducted into the army in the 1970s. During hand to hand training he use the Aikido techniques in the manner he had been taught against a black belt in karate teaching hand to hand. For about five minutes, he evaded, threw, and generally disoriented the teacher. But as all good things come to an end, an opening appeared and the instructor side kicked him from the ground so hard, he incurred internal organ damage ... and almost died. To this day, he will not do Aikido because his injuries were that severe.

The Aikido we learn, after WWII was not aimed at killing, or severe injury to an opponent. Although, with the right training it could revive the old Budo within the art, it would no longer be Aikido?

Did you know that all techniques were originally designed to kill with in three moves? Three pressure points on the same meridian, knockout, four pressure points on the same meridian, kill. Every year, I see more and more people writing books on this subject, but is that were we want beginners to go ... or children?

You have a valid question, but unless you want to learn to kill, or be killed, never trusting or expecting to live another day, I would leave it alone.

My father, a veteran of WWII and Korea, taught hand to hand, but never wanted to teach me what he knew, telling me he didn't want his children to live with the horrors of war the way he had to. Until I began to understand the hidden secrets in martial arts, along with the mentality it would take to use them, I didn't understand the logic of learning Aikido the way we do. Now ... I mind my own business, learn what I can, and try to develope safe methods of practice that do not delve into these killing arenas.

Yeah, the military could incorporate Aikido into their program, but the result would take this non lethal art and change it into something none of us wants to see ... or be.

Bruce: A very good point.

I guess it was O Sensei's ideal that they weren't any wars at all and there was no intent to kill but I can't imagine having a war with ppl performing aikido and they'll just be throwing each other for hours and hours until one gets tired.

War is killing, Aikido is not and although it can be adapted to kill, then it would not be Aikido would it? So although the technical aspects could be incorporated into the military, when it's adapted it no longer can be called Aikido anymore.

I made the mistaken assumption that police training would be similiar to military but then police do not have the intent to kill as in the military.

A very good point Bruce

Unfortunately, the military is more and more called to perform police work (from calling up the Guard for riots and disasters to all the recent military peacekeeping functions), and we are not really trained to do it. And just teaching Aikido won't turn us into policemen. It is an entirely different function, to police vs to wage war.

That's why I say, only a small number of military need hand-to-hand training, and those who need that generally do not plan on letting 'uke' scream, get back up, etc...if it has come down to hand-to-hand, well, in the line from some well-known movies 'there can be only one'. The rest plan on causing destruction from a bit more distance with a bit more power. What I do think Aikido would do for the military is emphasize focus, timing, etc that can be used in broader applications by the troops, as well as hopefully add an additional facet to personal development.

OK, this is my first time posting on this forum, so forgive me if I step on any toes.

I have been in the military (Coast Guard) for 19 years. I have trained in 4 different martial arts and I'm just starting Aikido.

As for being choreographed, all martial arts have some form or another of choreographed routine. They are the traditional forms, which are nothing but dances with an attitude. Don't get me wrong I feel that they are important in teaching technique. I'm just calling them like I see them. It's all in how you practice. All of the arts I studied also had staged attacks with responses. Although we did try and incorporate other attacks into the mix. Most MA places have sparing, but allot of this has been reduced to point type sparing. So Aikido is not that much different in this respect. Everything you do helps, it is how you practice. You must react like you would on the street and that is the hard part.

As Colleen stated, the military has taken over a larger portion of law enforcement type roles. In most cases any physical conflict should be handled with the least amount of force. When not in actual combat. The Coast Guard (CG), has a use of force policy that dictates our responses and what level of force we can respond with. So yes at least in my case I think that Aikido would be very useful, but the CG is also very different from the other Armed Services.

As for the over weight gentleman pumping gas, he is part of what makes the U. S. what it is today. He and everyone else is the reason that I serve. I may not agree with what he says, but I'll give my last drop of blood to defend his right to say it!

Although my experience with them military violence in a bar fight, living on a ship, and shooting a five in gun, Military people are just like most of the people you know in your life ... so capable of fighting, some are not?

As for Aikido for military means ... it is a piece of the martial arts puzzle, yes it is capable of killing, but only in knowledgable cross-art trained teachers who can use its opportunities to use its strikes/pressure points on the human body. Learning to change it's large circles into small circles when needed for military application couldn't hurt either.

Hopefully were are talking theory and not practicallity, because once in practice these techniques become Jutso/jujitsu again.

The entire basis of Aikido is to not acquire the killer mind to harm the world, but to still be able to disarm/neutralize the most vicious of opponents with compassion for life.

If we revert to original killing of the jujitsu, then it is no longer Aikido.

I have been getting a lot of razzing for bringing up pressure points, or small circle jujitsu, but when you begin to understand the pillars of Aikido you will find small circles, and pressure points a part of Aikido that is preserved in classic style moves of Ueshiba, Morehei ... O'Sensei.

Now here we are talking about military applications, causing pain (which is a result of striking nerve points) and how effective Aikido could be for the military?

Are we regressing to killing to relearn the lesson of our World Wars?

Aikido is about finding another way to resolve violence, make the world better. Using it for something else ... that is not Aikido.

FYI : I came to Aikido to learn to control my violent tendancys. Every day is another chance to do better than yesterday, and all I can do is try to do better. Try to do Aikido.

Originally posted by AskanisoN Hi all, I came accross this article and was curious if anyone has any experience with or knows of what Aikido techniques if any are taught to Marines or other service branches in the U.S. or other countries. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...08-marines.htm Also, I was a little miffed by this statement. I certainly don't feel that way about my training. Please tell me what you think. Thx, Scott

The problem with teaching aikido for military applications is that aikido is so subtle. After a year of regular training, would you have confidence in your ability to defind against an attacker bent on killing you with a knife? How about after six months of training? How about after two months? Military basic training doesn't allow much time to learn a 20-year throw, know what I mean? Striking arts like TKD are much easier to learn in the short time the average foot soldier is allotted for training. Punching and kicking come natural to us, even if we don't do them well. Shihonage doesn't come naturally to anyone.

I would disagree in calling pressure points useful in a military application:

first, they are unreliable; several senior yudansha have tried to find a painful point on me, trying different techniques and locations. And failed, due a combination of high pain threshold and (probably) aberrant anatomy. ONE did, on ONE of the six things he tried, find a nerve, but I was willing to suck up the pain to make him think he failed. Most soldiers would be willing to suck up pain to achieve an objective. Unlike joint locks, the only thing pressure points do is cause pain, and pain can be ignored. Torn joints are more difficult to ignore.

second, if hand to hand is being used in a war situation, the objective is not to let the enemy get up later and talk. Pressure points are not the teachnique of choice, something a bit more---final---is.

Originally posted by ca Pressure points are not the teachnique of choice, something a bit more---final---is.

Clearly, no one ever taught you the secret death touch.

About Pressure points.

Ikkyo

Nikkyo

Sankyo

Yankyo

etc, etc

ALL Activate pressure points.

"pressure points" is the short way of saying pain from nerve endings that have been struck, rubbed, pressed, or manipulated to cause pain.

Take any manipulation in Aikido too far ...

It is not about pain, but about shutting down a meridian to internal body function ... TWO pressure points or nerves that cross whould not damage internal organs, although some pressure points do cause grievious pain when activated. This is one of the reasons there are only pain applications found in Aikido techniques, whether you, your teacher, or even their shihans know it or not? (There are some other health concerns I am looking into, but that will come later.)

Never interpret a scratch on your arm to be the same an assasin using an ice pick to an internal organ. Pain is one thing, activating a knockout from three pressure points on a meridian is quite another.

The ice pick may be a bit much to put forth my point, but both the scratch and ice pick leave small bleeding holes with quite different effects, don't they?

These threads have been leaning toward violence lately? Is this the dark side of humanity, or have we forgotten the goal of Aikido? Harmony.

I need to get more coffee ... My tummy needs more harmony.

Well, I really hate to dispel this MA version of an urban legend, but stimulation of pressure points and/or meridians, or any other name you want to give, will not result in damage to internal organs, or even--as often hinted at--death. Nor excruciating pain, nor total helplessness, nor control of the victim's body or mind. How do I know? Well, our knowledge of this UL is supposed to come from ancient Oriental hidden knowledge. If the Japanese had this capability, it would have been used in WWII; more conventional torture was applied to POWs. Same for the Chinese. Same for the Koreans. Same for the Vietnamese. None of our POWs reported this particular type of torture or mind/body control, and if they had it, they would have used it. They beat them. They starved them. They dislocated joints and broke bones. They did not stimulate anyone's meridians, in any combination.

As for the joint locks, they are not pressure points. Some people feel pain with the lock from tendon stretch. I don't, but do feel the tendons tighten and tap when I know the slack is gone, to preserve the joint. Pressure point pain is the result of direct pressure being placed on an accesible nerve, usually overlying bone so compression is facilitated.

Colleen,

just because they didn't use it at the POW camp, doesn't mean the knowledge is not there. It could be because of many reasons...

1. the expert didn't like torturing prisoners
2. too difficult a subject for every oriental to learn (just because he's japanese doesn't mean he knows karate)-reminds me of a joke i'll narrate later
3. they did use it, unfortunately the POW didn't survive. (who knows rite? from what I heard was done to my predecessors, Malaysians being occupied by japanese during ww2, the torture was more sadistic involving soap water, lots of bamboos, gang rapes and other stuff. certainly a lot less precise then pressure points)

I think, pressure points as a techniques exists. Its not the only one unexplainable by science. Science, is human knowledge. Humans are constantly learning new things and correcting old things (Remember the Dawn man fiasco that dispelled the evolution theory put forward by Darwin? It was a theory accepted for 50 years before being disproved as a hoax. Some 40 books were written by experts about that subject during that time though). So maybe we should accept that pressure points are something we have as yet been able to fully understand. The hype that surrounds it though, maybe can be scaled down a bit. Instantaneous death like those scenes in Kiss of the Dragon (2nd latest by Jet Li) are a bit disjointed from reality IMHO.

and the joke:
spielberg was walking down a street and saw this chinese guy coming from the opposite direction. he proceeded to give the guy a tight slap. the chinese guy then asked why did he do that. spielberg said, "cause you attacked the pearl harbour". The chinese guy said, "that wasn't us, that was the japanese. I'm chinese". Spielberg said, "chinese, vietnamese, japanese... its all the same to me".
suddenly the chinese guy slapped spielberg. spielberg asked angrily, "hey, what did you do that for?". "because you sanked the titanic," said the chinese guy. "No, I didn't!," said spielberg. "Iceberg, carlsberg, spielberg... its all the same to me," responded the chinese dude.

Muscles, tendons, bones do not transfer signals of pain to brain, nerves do.

Wires do not send signals, electricity does.

Muscles and tendons and bones press on nerves to causes nerves to send electrical signals to the brain ... pain ... sometimes a knockout is aused from an overload of pain.

Now that this lesson is over .... let the dispelling of the dispelling begin.

Every time you feel pain from a technique it is the pressing of a pressure point, the striking of a pressure point, or the rubbing of a (let's change pressure point to nerve ending, how about that?) NERVE ENDING sending a signal to the brain. Poke your muscle, no pain. Poke the bone, no pain. Poke the tendon, no pain. Poke the nerve ending, crossing, or press it to the bone ... OUCH!!

You can resist pain to a certain point .. Then the body shuts down, accident or injury is the crude form but still a valid everyday visual confirmation if you haven't experienced it.

I am not going to go into how to knock people out because you must learn revival technique and understand what you are doing before you injure someone. Once you find a teacher who will help you understand how to use these nerve endings to activate pain, you will learn how to overload the human nervious system for knockout.

Hey, if there is no such thing as knockout, why do most fighters striking muscle and bone have so much trouble getting a knockout, while some boxers strike people with one punch and accomplish a knockout?

Correct angle and direction of a nerve crossing the bone, crossing another nerve, or branching off in a 'Y'.

There is your first lesson. Go learn more so you can bring



and its harmony with a little less violence.

Think of learning as unlocking a door with a key card instead of a key, rather than hitting it with a sledge hammer until it unlocks?

Hey, if you have used the sledge hammer your whole life, I wouldn't believe me either? Them doctors with them medicines, shots, and weird tests ... they are too weird, too violent for me.

Abasan,

You mentioned it yourself, there was plenty of inventive torture going on. And not just the Japanese, there are Western and Middle East examples as well, but we are talking about Eastern techniques of causing pain and destruction via pressure points. But the inventive Eastern torture did not involve pressure points. If you have a way of causing sudden, dramatic, easy to apply pain/death, you do it to one prisoner in the view of others (employed by officers of several different armies with a handgun to the head, occasionally caught on film). This is to encourage cooperation with the remaining few. If you had the capability to kill with ease via a touch, this is much more psychologically destructive to the captives, and you do it to assert your complete control and superiority. They did not. Because they could not.

Since there were some very highly ranked practioners in the military, who had learned before joining the military, if there were 'secret' deadly techniques they'd have known them. Their senseis wouldn't have held back for fear of military use, if they weren't in the military yet.

We are talking about a military that killed and raped its way across a good part of the pacific, and as you pointed out, had some particularly vicious torture techniques. And whose country had two atomic bombs dropped on major cities. Why wouldn't they use pressure points if they were effective?

I don't know why some folks cling to the thought that there is a magical pressure point of death out there--- other than Bart Simpson, who used the thought to terrify Lisa. I am not knocking accupressure/accupuncture, I think it helps in certain pain conditions, probably through endorphin release and/or the power of suggestion.

Pressure point techniques (as a method of control via pain, NOT through organ damage or death) do exist, but are too unreliable to put a lot of stock in. Anatomy is too variable (we are not machines), and many can and will suck up enormous amounts of pain to achieve an objective. Or may be on drugs that deaden pain.

In another thread I explained how carotid sinus massage works, and that it does not 'always' cause loss of consciousness. There are things you can do to some/many bodies by stimulating nerves. But not to all bodies, nor even to the same body every time.

Bruce: sometimes people faint at the sight of blood, or the mention of dental work. It is not the technique, it is the vasovagal reaction of the individual to pain or the suggestion of it. Luckily, those individuals are the minority.