Why do some people hate Aikido?

Michael Fooks wrote: Important difference. Boxers are training specifically to deal with other boxers playing the game of boxing. So of course they ain't gonna train to deal with kicks ....

True, but do you have to be a kicker to deal with kicks? Not necssarliy. Look at the Gracies. They took on all comers, including kickers, and beat them with ground grappling. So it can be done.

My point is Aikido and boxing are systems that specialize in certain areas and don't worry about other areas, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. Just as there's nothing wrong with TKD systems that spcialize in high kicks but that don't do much with the hands. That Aikido doesn't do much if anything with kicks, and that I haven't seen any formalized kicks in either of ths dojos I've trained in -- Seidokan in the '80s and the one I'm in now -- does not bother me in the slightest. Every art has something to offer; Aikido's "something" just does not happen to involve kicks. Thai Bosing, in contrast, has kicks, punches, knees, and elbows, but no throws and locks; is that a problem? Guess where MMA guys go for striking? Guess it's not.

David Sim wrote: My point was that concluding that kicking is basically martially useless based on having thought about it a bit and decided that the disruption to your balance makes it a bad idea is the sort of thing that tends not to endear (some) aikidoka, or anyone else for that matter, to the martial arts community as a whole...

Well, I haven't heard that line from any of the Aikido people I train with, and I haven't heard that particular complaint about Aikido people from the other martial artists I've trained with (including my Kali instructor who, as I said before, thinks it's great I'm doing Aikido). Then again, they say Ithaca, NY is ten square miles surrounded by reality, so I shouldn't be surprised if in this regard, the local martial arts community is cut off from the rest of it. But I'll keep my ears open in case I'm wrong.

Don Magee wrote: I have no idea what is going on

Just blend with it and remember not to take ukemi face first.

Paul Boswell wrote: People hate Aikido because of its many pretentions.

Actually, the pretense is merely an affectation ...

Paul Boswell wrote: If a person believes it is the best they have not seen enough martial arts.

Anyone who has trained for a long time in martial arts realizes that there is no such thing as the best. There is only what is best for me. What gets me interested and motivated enough to practice consistently year after year. What's congruent with my goals. What do I enjoy enough to endure some pain and fatigue or risk injury.

Those practicing any martial art on a regular basis is a vanishingly small portion of the population (not including all the kiddies been driven after school to the local babysitting establishment by Mom or Dad).

The rest is just hot air.

People hate Aikido because most Aikidoka are brilliant at performing kata in the dojo but useless at anything else. Our demos look fake because basically they are; they're well rehearsed routines; uke without making any kind of attempt to defeat tori beyond the initial attack will end up on the floor and so tori will win in a suspiciously clean and efficent way. As an example of this let me outline an experience I had a couple of weeks back. I was on a multi-style course for charity and my association was forming the Aikido component. So to demonstrate how great Aikido was we talked about moving our center and making sword cuts (without a visable sword) while teachning ai hamni ikkyo to a large group of seriously unimpressed Taekwondo dan grades. We looked like a bunch of nutters.

This is not to say anything negative about Aikido per se. It's just that our public image is one of being decidedly fake. Most Aikidoka wouldn't even recognise Aikido unless it was in kata form.
As an example of this I take my own and another Aikido instructors shock on the last class which was taught by Chris Crudelli who's instructions were basically "Take a knife between two and fight over it". Now my friend and I were beating the snot out of each other with "Aikido techniques" but because it wasn't nice clean kata with a recogniseable uke and a recogniseable tori and the taisabaki was shorter, with loads of atemi, it provoked shock from other Aikidoka.
We'd get into situations where kote gaeshi didn't quite work because of the dynamics of the struggle and the other person would resist and try to counter it, which was fine because we just put some atemi in and harmonised with the resistance to make another technqiue. This to me is Aikido but most Aikidoka take the view that it's competition and so cannot possibly be Aikido.
If people saw this kind of thing and if Aikidoka learned to apply the lessons taught by kata against a resisting opponent then we wouldn't get such a bad rep.

Ok. I am stunned by how unconsciously arrogant that last post was.

Some good realizations for your training, but the presumptions about knowledge of the way others are training across the planet was breathtaking.

but the presumptions about knowledge of the way others are training across the planet was breathtaking

which leads us nicely back into the topic of the thread... although to be fair he does have a point about many of the aikido demo vids you can find littering youtube - I still blame the skirt-wearing myself.

Do not question the skirt! The skirt wearing is sound!

Ian Hurst wrote: which leads us nicely back into the topic of the thread... although to be fair he does have a point about many of the aikido demo vids you can find littering youtube - I still blame the skirt-wearing myself.

I would understand a claim such as "I've seen too many demo videos of Aikido, but no fighting videos or aikido used in real life videos". But why bash a demo for being a demo?

But why bash a demo for being a demo

because they're often not presented as such (and anyway, shouldn't even a demo at least indicate how well the art can perform martially). The standard aikido bashing I've seen normally goes...

detractor: "never seen decent aikido, just crappy dancing"
[cheers from the crowd]
aikido cultist: [lots of outraged sputtering followed by] "look at this, this is true (TM) aikido" [link to demo on youtube]

then the fun begins, normally with aikido cultist alternating between defending the demo, claiming alternative training practises at his/her "one true" aikido dojo - add a failed attempt at self-deprecation and humour, a small sprinkle of hero worship, references to unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence and stir to provide some admittedly amusing threads.

Perhaps the uber-warrior members of aikiweb could give us some new demos, thankfully I'm an aiki-bunny so I get to just sit back and watch.

Don, trust me, it's the skirts, we need new skirts, A-line is so unflattering on the more mature hara.

because they're often not presented as such (and anyway, shouldn't even a demo at least indicate how well the art can perform martially).

Hmm...please post a link to an aikido "demo" on youtube that is not presented as such...come to think of it, HOW do you not present a demo as a demo? I've seen demos that were modeled on a normal training class, I've seen demos that were basically pre-arranged scripts, and I've seen demos that were fairly spontaneous (admittedly more rare). But they were all demos, and it was obvious that was what they were meant to be.

One of the best ones I've seen was on a 30 minute or so film of Gozo Shioda on youtube. He takes on about 5 guys in what seems to be a pretty impromptu fashion. Some really good stuff on that. In no way would I think that it represents a fight. It is obviously a demo. Even when Kancho sent someone to the hospital with a concussion, it was still obviously a demo.

Best,
Ron

I can't comment on the quality or fakeness or whatever of Aikido demos either in general or in particular, not having seen a lot and not being much of a judge of their quality, but I don't entirely understand the argument that seems to be being made that a demo is supposed to be fake, and that people should 'obviously' know that. Isn't a demo supposed to be demonstrating _something_? Doesn't the word 'demonstration' imply an attempt to demonstrate the art accurately? If people set out to do demos as fake things, then wouldn't that mean they were choosing to demonstrate fake Aikido?

I certainly get why someone might want to do a 'tutorial' or a 'practise' that is intentionally fake, e.g. by slowing it down enough that you can better see and understand the constituent parts, or by going over the same thing over and over again or whatever, but I'm not sure a lot of people really get the 'point' of an intentionally fake 'demonstration' -- do you mean they're pretending to do Aikido for an audience?

Kind of like 'this is a dramatization to give you an idea of what it might actually look like'? That sort of makes sense, if that's what they're doing, but if that's what they're doing, do they make it clear to the audience that that's what they're doing? If the audience isn't clear that it's _supposed_ to be play-acting, and that the demonstrators _know_ they're play-acting, they're not going to get a very good impression....

Hmm...please post a link to an aikido "demo" on youtube that is not presented as such...come to think of it, HOW do you not present a demo as a demo

Obviously still not being clear - the youtube link presented as evidence for the effectiveness of aikido is not described as a link to a demo by the argumentative little aikidoka in the webforum they are battling in and the youtube titles given can be unclear.

This leads to the standard death spiral of "that's not real" to "where are all the good real aikido vids then" as mentioned and on down the usual aikido bashing path.

I've seen this happen not only with aikido, but other arts where a link is misrepresented by someone on a web-forum as other than a demo. Now if you know anything about martial arts, I agree it's normally obvious they are demos, but many internet fauna don't (and often don't care). I'm not bashing the people doing the demo, but the ones misrepresenting the demo.

damn - cross posting, Basia says what I mean I think

Craig Hocker wrote: Ok. I am stunned by how unconsciously arrogant that last post was. Some good realizations for your training, but the presumptions about knowledge of the way others are training across the planet was breathtaking.

Ok, I'll accept that but please understand (should have made this clear) that I only ever talk about what I see.

Roy Klein wrote: I would understand a claim such as "I've seen too many demo videos of Aikido, but no fighting videos or aikido used in real life videos". But why bash a demo for being a demo?

I just talk about the reactions people have to the demo. You and I know it's a demo and we know what the art is in reality but if you've not trainned in Aikido, and often if you have in the case of people that train for years and then leave and end up putting down Aikido, you wont understand what is going on. You'll just assume the art is fake because it's all just a little too polished and that doesn't help with our reputation.

Michael Gallagher wrote: True, but do you have to be a kicker to deal with kicks? Not necssarliy. Look at the Gracies. They took on all comers, including kickers, and beat them with ground grappling.

Well, afaict they were reasonably good at using kicks as a distraction to help close distance and get into grappling range without getting pummelled. But the real point is that although they weren't kicking specialists, they had enough understanding of how a kicking specialist would work not to leave the sort of openings that such a fighter would be able to exploit. You're right that this doesn't need you to have trained in a kicking style yourself (although personally I'd take that option as being fun and interesting) but I think you do need to have put in some in depth study of kicking systems and preferably trained with people with practical experience of them.

My point is Aikido and boxing are systems that specialize in certain areas and don't worry about other areas, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. Just as there's nothing wrong with TKD systems that spcialize in high kicks but that don't do much with the hands. That Aikido doesn't do much if anything with kicks, and that I haven't seen any formalized kicks in either of ths dojos I've trained in -- Seidokan in the '80s and the one I'm in now -- does not bother me in the slightest. Every art has something to offer; Aikido's "something" just does not happen to involve kicks. Thai Boxing, in contrast, has kicks, punches, knees, and elbows, but no throws and locks; is that a problem? Guess where MMA guys go for striking? Guess it's not.

There's a difference between using a given technique yourself and being prepared to deal with a technique coming from an opponent, though. If your aikido dojo doesn't claim to teach you to deal with kicks (and mine doesn't and it doesn't bother me) then that's fine. But if you claim that aikido gives you a reasonably complete stand-up fighting / self defense system then kicks are something that you have to consider, even if you don't intend to use them yourself.

Btw, kicking isn't the classic example of the sort of thing that leads some aikidoka (generally inexperienced and/or stupid ones at that) to represent themselves badly (particularly on the internet) - groundfighting might be a better one. Whenever the subject comes up, you get at least a few people claiming that either groundfighting is easy enough to make up as you go along or that for one reason or another it is impossible (or at least highly improbable) that a self defence situation could end up on the ground. Generally without having any direct experience of groundfighting themselves. I don't study any groundwork myself, but I accept that if I was concerned with self defence this would be an omission, and I also don't try to make pronouncements about the details of groundfighting.

And yeah, I'm not saying that this is true for most or even for many aikidoka, but such people do make fools of themselves on the internet on a fairly regular basis, from what I've seen.

I've been tuahgt groundfighting and defences frm kicks and both have been in an aikido dojo. The reason some aikido schools donlt teach it is because most feel if you close the distance and getinto the classic aikido stances (as so many peopel do in every day fights) then kciks become obsolete. This is true, but it;s very rare you as the defendedr gets to choose the distance you;re fighting from. But there's a few other reason kicks can be overlooked. One is that the person kicking needs skill to perform a good kick and if they have this skill they are responsible (complete bollocks but I;ve heard it said). Another reason is that to fight a kick is exactly the same as fighting hand to hand. Legs bend in the same way, move in the saem way, the only difference is it;s lower. Even minimal practicing can overcome that and then you have all your aikido knowledge! And in contrary to Dave, you do not need to be taught how to graple, grappling is extremely pointless unless you do juijutsu. If a fight does go down to the floor, ignore everythign it says in the dynamic sphere about leaving the person unhurt and go for ribbs, neck, pins, breaks, kidneys; pretty much anythign you can hit. Most people I know who claim to 'know grappling' swiftly rekant that statement after I bite them! Not hard of course (Shifty eyes). Soby the nature of aikido trying to groundfight, they will represent themselves badely, unless they know how to cause real pain with whatever they've got!

Hi David, Right you are!

And in contrary to Dave, you do not need to be taught how to graple, grappling is extremely pointless unless you do juijutsu. If a fight does go down to the floor, ignore everythign it says in the dynamic sphere about leaving the person unhurt and go for ribbs, neck, pins, breaks, kidneys; pretty much anythign you can hit. Most people I know who claim to 'know grappling' swiftly rekant that statement after I bite them! Not hard of course (Shifty eyes).

The experienced grapplers will be right along to correct your misunderstandings. Just thought I'd warn you to duck! Oh, and aikido is a form of jujutsu...

Best,
Ron

Ron Tisdale wrote: The experienced grapplers will be right along to correct your misunderstandings. Just thought I'd warn you to duck! Oh, and aikido is a form of jujutsu...

And a form of grappling!

But there's a long and intermittently informative thread on aikido, groundwork and self defence somewhere already, so it'd be best not to derail this thread much further. I didn't really want to get into a 'does aikido have defences against kicks / elbows / flamethrowers / whatever' argument so sorry for launching that, too. I was just trying to point out an instance of an aikidoka generalizing about other arts from minimal experience.

To get somewhere close to on topic, one thing that annoys me rather about some aikido demos is the tendancy for ukes to make a run at tori starting from three or four mats away before finally diving in towards them to attack with no regard for their own balance. Is there a good reason that people do this? As far as I can tell, it conceals part of the skill that tori could be demonstrating (for the benefit of both other aikidoka and non-aikidoka) - judging ma ai such that uke has to move in to attack, reacting quickly enough to get the timing right without three seconds warning, and blending with the attack / taking uke's balance without needing the attack to be overcommitted.

Ron Tisdale wrote: Hi David, Right you are! The experienced grapplers will be right along to correct your misunderstandings. Just thought I'd warn you to duck! Oh, and aikido is a form of jujutsu... Best, Ron

I'll take a grappling challenge with strikes and biting any day of the week with someone who is not a trained grappler. Of course I admit to the weakness I personally have with dealing with guys more than 50 pounds heavier than I.

Mathias,

What you are describing is flailing wildly. Anyone who has been on the ground with an experianced grappler (lets say more than 6 months training) knows that doing this exposes your limbs, and you will get broke. Of course I also get to strike, eye gouge, rip at your throat, and bite you as I see fit. The difference, i'm trained to control my position and be in a much better position to do these things to you. So while you bite my arm, I'll break a joint or remove your eyes, or choke you out cold. Then I'll stand up and beat you senseless for biting me, then i'll go get my wound dressed.

Simply, you can not learn how to fight on the ground with kata. You have to spar, you have to learn how the body works on the ground, and how to get dominate position. Otherwise you will be in much more danger of these dirty tricks than the guy who knows what he is doing. If you spar at all in grappling you would know, reaching or extending the arms, letting your arms leave the body so the elbows are exposed = broke arms, chokes, sweeps etc. Once you are mounted you have nothing to bite, and reaching to eye gouge = arm bar. Not to even mention blows raining down on you. So rather the working on getting a safe position (hey bjj guys, position before submission!) you are going to rain punches and blows without proper leverage (thus no damage worth paying attention too), trying to bite and eye gouge yoru attacker (exposing yourself to submissons and not using your hands and head in a way that can help you get a dominate position). This doesn't make sense.

Let's put this in stand up range for a second. I'm going to make some stupid statements.

I do not need to know how to fight standing up because I can just pull the guy down on top of me.

I do not need to know how to fight standing up because I can just eye gouge my attacker.

I do not need to know how to fight standing up because it's just a myth fights start standing.

I do not need to know how to fight standing up because if the guy is beating me senseless I can bite his arm. This will draw him off so I can escape.

I do not need to know how to fight standing up because the principles of bjj can be applied standing just as easy. I mean its just like the ground, only there is nothing on my back.

Maybe (hopefully) these sound silly to you. This is how people sound when they talk about ground fighting. The simple fact is if you end up in a range of fighting you are not prepared for, then you are in trouble. I do not pretend to be able to fight boxers in the standup, but most boxers don't pretend they can beat me on the ground. The trick is, can I get the boxer to the ground before he knocks me out, and can he stay on his feet long enough to knock me out. If I want to make sure I can handle this, I need to go find highlly qualified strikers to spar with. I can't just get my bjj buddys to throw punches at me and say, well I learned how to deal with boxers.

I know a guy who came into our club doing dirty tricks. He would grind his knuckles into your ribs, hit pressure points, push on the bridge of the nose with his palm, etc. He was a karate guy and good at what he did. But by doing all these tricks he always opened up a nice fast submission. While he's busy causing me mild pain, i'm sweeping over the arm he's trying to preasure point me with, now i'm in the mount, and I can have my way with him because he doesn't know how to escape. He reaches across my guard to push on my face and eyes, I move my hips, boom armbar.

Think of it like this. People say aikido works because the attacker is committed to his attack. He makes himself vunarable. That is exactly how bjj works. Everytime you make an attack, you expose yourself. If you are focused on getting anything, you are exposing yourself to a submission. Without sparing to know how to feel out what is happening, and training to know safe and efficent ways of moving the body on the ground, you might as well be throwing lunge punches at O'Sensei.

Uninformed comments tend to make me hate martial arts vs sports in general. Most sport guys are honest about their ablities.

Thank you Don, well done. I couldn't have done it as well, and you save me a bunch of typing!

Best,
Ron

I never miss an oppurtunity to ramble.

Don has ignored the flailing and bite attempts to tap out the correct.

David Sim wrote: .....I'm not saying that this is true for most or even for many aikidoka, but such people do make fools of themselves on the internet on a fairly regular basis, from what I've seen.

I see. Well, I'm not one of them. It's just my belief, based on the influence of my kali instructors, that there's nothing wrong with any martial art being the way it is; there are perfectly valid reasons why it does things the way it does, and this holds true for everything. That western boxing just has hand techniques, that neither it nor Aikido has kicks -- there's nothing wrong with it. You can critique it,surely, but I try to look at it without being perjoritive one way or the other.

As to how "some Aikidoka" represent themselves, yeah, some sound foolish. But then some arguments are valid. Kicking does leave you vulnerable because you're weight is on one foot; the angles you can move to to evade different kinds of kicks sound reasonable to me. Pulling that off when you've never formally trained against kicks is another matter, but on the other hand, if our hypothetical kicking specialist has never formally trained against what the Aikidoka wants to do, they're even on that score. If our Aikido person has internalized the art's underlying principles, then I think he could make somethng up as he goes along. But he'd have to be really good at it!

Personally, I think reality lies somewhere in between the extremes of "Aikido can handle absolutely anything even if you never train against it" and "Aikido's ok but don't even think of using it for self defense." I just don't know where it is yet; I'm still at a very beginner stage in Aikido. But I think I'll figure it out in time.