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Old 10-30-2011, 03:11 PM   #1626
Ken McGrew
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

In Aikido and the Harmony of Nature Saotome Shihan describes being corrected by O'Sensei for not noticing and stopping two students from struggling with each other on the mat. O'Sensei told him that such training destroys the "system" of learning Aikido that he had developed. In other words, the cooperative training with movement and momentum teaches skills and principles that eventually allow Aikido to be used in a self defense situation. As Saotome Shohan wrote, ukemi is far more than simply falling or receiving a throw. It teaches Nage in the yin and yang "unity of opposites." What Ledyard Sensei wrote here is not just his opinion. It is O'sensei's instruction. It is Saotome Shihan's instruction.

I have often observed that the static mindset contaminates more than static practice (which might be better thought of as exercise rather than waza). Movement training whether slow or fast is inherently static when Uke, especially when motivated by ego, attempts to prevent or stop Nage. Of course Nage can change to work around such resistance, but not while simultaneously training what Sensei showed. Uke and Nage train a hypothetical situation, one of many possible ways that things could play out in a "real" situation. By providing idealized ukemi Uke helps Nage to learn to draw out of an attacker what is advantageous in that given circumstance.

Given that real attacks that are capable of causing injury must carry energy and momentum in the attackers body, it makes sense to simulate such attack energy while training. As O'Sensei and Saotome Shihan have indicated, however, that there are additional reasons for the cooperative training system.

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George S. Ledyard wrote: View Post
While this is clearly only my opinion, I would say that I see little evidence over the decades that training with muscle strength and physical tension for some lengthy period magically morphs into relaxed technique and a light touch later on. I am not saying that some work doing static technique with ukes who are not moving with you isn't important. But too much of this leads the ukes to think that "being strong" in this fashion actually has some function and that's how one actually attacks. Tension leads to lack of speed and functional power and a l freedom to move. That is bad martial arts no matter how you cut it.

Too much of the training in Aikido is derived from a notion of training that is fundamentally elitist, deriving from a Japanese notion of how hierarchy works. People train in a certain way. At some point, with very little assistance or explanation, they are supposed to figure out that they need to change certain things to get at what their teacher is REALLY doing. The end result is a very small number of people who have the goods, while the vast majority seem to exist merely to support the folks at the very top of the pyramid who are doing the real thing. Add to that the fact that the art is largely a "closed system" in which most folks only train within the borders of their own styles much less ever get out and train with folks who really know something about other martial arts, So, even many of the most senior practitioners are not necessarily seen as being terribly good martial artists. They are simply excellent at executing certain arcane skills within the rarefied environment of the Aikido dojo.

So, I am a firm believer in deciding what the end point of training should look like and designing a training regimen that will result in that end for the optimal number of practitioners who follow the program. I think there are systems like this. I have seen the methodology used by Chuck Clark Sensei's Jiyushinkai and it is rational, systematic ad progressive. How they train is clearly geared to develop a set of skills without some "magical" shift from what is really wrong to something that is really right. It's not that there won't always be a "pyramid" with someone at the top because there will always be the folks who have more talent and or drive to excel. Clark Sensei's son Aaron is a perfect example, being one of the most solidly trained martial artists I know. But everyone training with any degree of seriousness should have technique that is on track to become high level with only time and effort between them and the top folks, not some ill defined shift that needs to take place at "some" point in the process, which isn't explained or taught but you are supposed to "intuit". Clark Sensei's students are all on the same path as Aaron Clark, they are simply lower on the mountain than he is. Far to much of Aikido training simply will not, now or ever, yield high level skills, nor is it expected to do so. The "real" Aikido is for professionals (Shihan) while the rest of the folks do what I have called "Aikido-lite".

So, it's really "caveat emptor" operating in the Aikido world. Just because a certain teacher reached a given level doesn't mean that he can teach what he knows and produce other people at the same level. Just because a teacher has a big number after his name, doesn't mean that his Aikido is very good. There are clearly as many different standards operating at the top levels as there seem to be at the lower levels. Just one trip ten years ago to the Aiki Expos disabused anyone attending of the notion that rank meant anything at all. There were folks there whose Aikido was truly awful and there were folks there who were amazing. Nothing in common in terms of style or time in grade.

When picking a teacher to train with, it's really a good idea to look, not at the amazing teacher himself, but at his or her students. If the senior students are showing the kinds of skills one would strive for, then it is clear that the teacher has the ability to pass on those skills. But if the teacher is amazing but the students look as if none of them have a clue what the "big guy" is doing, then what is the benefit to you of being associated with an amazing teacher who can't pass on what he is doing?

Anyway, my point here is that just because a certain teacher was excellent and developed a certain training system doesn't mean that he was correct. After forty or fifty years one can now see the results of the training. Did these systems produce people of great skill who are credible martial artists or not? Now that there are a bunch of 6th and 7th Dans all over the place, one can easily evaluate the results of following certain methodologies. Did training that way result in the kinds of skills one is looking for at the end of the process or not?

My own take on it is that the majority of folks who trained stiff and strong when they started are still stiff and strong thirty years later. There are some very notable exceptions, but to me, they stand out as exceptions rather than demonstrating the functionality of a given training methodology. Some folks get really great despite the manner in which they trained...

Last edited by Ken McGrew : 10-30-2011 at 03:15 PM.
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Old 10-30-2011, 03:26 PM   #1627
Janet Rosen
 
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

Quote:
George S. Ledyard wrote: View Post
While this is clearly only my opinion, I would say that I see little evidence over the decades that training with muscle strength and physical tension for some lengthy period magically morphs into relaxed technique and a light touch later on. I am not saying that some work doing static technique with ukes who are not moving with you isn't important. But too much of this leads the ukes to think that "being strong" in this fashion actually has some function and that's how one actually attacks. Tension leads to lack of speed and functional power and a l freedom to move. That is bad martial arts no matter how you cut it....
....My own take on it is that the majority of folks who trained stiff and strong when they started are still stiff and strong thirty years later.
Thank you for saying it better than I could have.
I have rarely felt I learned anything meaningful from the person with the "clamp of death" on me other than successfully dealing with my innate desire to, depending on my mood, pinch his cheek or punch his lights out.

Janet Rosen
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Old 10-30-2011, 03:50 PM   #1628
Ketsan
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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I am getting mighty confused about what a "fight" is. I don't do boxing or MMA so I don't "fight" as a sport. Somebody said they meant "combat", well like many folks who train in m.a. I'm not in the armed forces so don't need to train for combat. I don't go out to bars where people drink, hang out with tweakers, belong to a gang, or in any other way live a lifestyle that puts me into the brawls folks seem to mean by "fights"...
HOWEVER...since I started traveling about the sidewalks and subways of NYC alone at age 13 I had to learn to deal with vibes, attitude, and the possibility of assault with intent to mug or rape. To those posters who suggest multiple attackers going for a wallet did not have intent to committ harm, I have to say how dare you presume to make such an assumption and on what mindreading? Where I grew up every mugger had a knife, if not a gun (which were rare on NY streets in the good old days). I say the fellow who successfully came away from a four person mugging attempt as he described it had an optimal outcome, and yes, won that fight.
And as I told a friend many many years ago surprised to hear I'd pulled a gun to investigate somebody coming thru my bathroom window in the wee hours (turned out to be the neighbor's cat): If I want to live I HAVE to assume anybody breaking in, even if their original intent is burglary, may decide to escalate to rape or murder if they think they can get away with it. Self defense has to make this assumption and not decide, "hey, it's not a fight or combat"....
A fight is when one or more people have an intention to do harm and are either attempting to strike or grapple with you with or without a weapon.
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Old 10-30-2011, 03:50 PM   #1629
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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Thank you for saying it better than I could have.
I have rarely felt I learned anything meaningful from the person with the "clamp of death" on me other than successfully dealing with my innate desire to, depending on my mood, pinch his cheek or punch his lights out.
Hi Janet! What folks really need to understand is that the uke doesn't learn anything from this either...

George S. Ledyard
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Old 10-30-2011, 03:51 PM   #1630
Ketsan
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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Joe Curran wrote: View Post
DearJanet,
Possibly the static form can be seen as the early stage [Go -hard] of Aikido as described in Saito Sensei s books?This is solid .Satos sensei says that this is the primary metheod of taining in aikido.The 1st stage, Then comes flexible -Ju, then flowing Ki. cheers, Joe.
Umm where I am the static is the advanced stage that has more in common with Tai Chi than anything else.
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Old 10-30-2011, 04:02 PM   #1631
Dan Rubin
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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A fight is when one or more people have an intention to do harm and are either attempting to strike or grapple with you with or without a weapon.
I would call that an attack, not a fight. For it to become a fight, I would have to counter-attack.
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Old 10-30-2011, 04:44 PM   #1632
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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Umm where I am the static is the advanced stage that has more in common with Tai Chi than anything else.
Dear Alex,
Difficult to assess whether we are discussing same principles.The advanced stage of Aikido is Ki Musubi ie when tori pre empts the movement of Uke .What I understand of basic 'Static'is when Uke takes the initiative and holds Tori firmly .Tori then has to neutralise ukes power and despatch uke accordingly.This process is useful in training the aikido body/conditioning.I suggest [if I may ]get a copy of Saito Senseis volumes of Aikido and you will get a much better idea of what I am stating.
Cheers, Joe.
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Old 10-30-2011, 04:47 PM   #1633
Ketsan
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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Katherine Derbyshire wrote: View Post
That wasn't the question, though.

Rather, must someone demonstrate that ability in order to prove that their art "works?"

Because, in the kinds of situations we're talking about, there are three choices: aikidoka gets hurt, attacker(s) get hurt, or aikidoka manages to disengage (or persuade attackers to do so). So is hurting the attacker -- at greater risk to oneself -- better proof of effectiveness than disengaging? And why?

Katherine
Perhaps not the ability to kill but they must, by definition, demonstrate the ability to defend themselves if they want to claim effectiveness. If you walked into an Aikido dojo and the instructor and his students were continually getting punched in the face when they practiced from jodan tsuki would you take them at all seriously? If they couldn't cope with shomen uchi would you train with them? And if they said "We know we keep getting hit but really we're practicing to disengage because we think that's better proof of effectiveness" would you in any way decide that this was a good martial approach to things?

It'd be interesting if we started practiced disengagement in the dojo. Uke bows, goes to make shomen uchi and tori just walks off or runs away or says "You know what, sod this, there's no point to it, neither of us is going to win and one of us might get hurt, let's go to the pub and I'll buy you a pint, what you drinking?"

I think that might slightly change the direction of Aikido.
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Old 10-30-2011, 06:17 PM   #1634
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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Perhaps not the ability to kill but they must, by definition, demonstrate the ability to defend themselves if they want to claim effectiveness. If you walked into an Aikido dojo and the instructor and his students were continually getting punched in the face when they practiced from jodan tsuki would you take them at all seriously? If they couldn't cope with shomen uchi would you train with them? And if they said "We know we keep getting hit but really we're practicing to disengage because we think that's better proof of effectiveness" would you in any way decide that this was a good martial approach to things?

It'd be interesting if we started practiced disengagement in the dojo. Uke bows, goes to make shomen uchi and tori just walks off or runs away or says "You know what, sod this, there's no point to it, neither of us is going to win and one of us might get hurt, let's go to the pub and I'll buy you a pint, what you drinking?"

I think that might slightly change the direction of Aikido.
In the example we were discussing the man was attacked by four, made some form of physical contact with three, and all four decided it was enough and ran away. THEY chose to disengage. Nobody was dead, nobody was maimed or lying on the street. Yet it has been said here by various posters that this is not aikido, not a fight, or not a good outcome. This defies common sense or at least the logic of the world in which I live.
Your reply spins way out of the context in which Katherine was addressing the specific issue.

Janet Rosen
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Old 10-30-2011, 06:19 PM   #1635
Janet Rosen
 
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

The man defended himself. Where in his post is this not clear?

Janet Rosen
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Old 10-30-2011, 07:32 PM   #1636
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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Perhaps not the ability to kill but they must, by definition, demonstrate the ability to defend themselves if they want to claim effectiveness.
Which the person confronted by four potential muggers did. Which Saotome Sensei did, in the incident I described. And yet people are claiming that those situations weren't "fights" and aren't relevant to the original topic.

So my question is, if fending off four attackers without getting hurt doesn't count as "effective" use of aikido in a "fight," what on earth would?

Katherine
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Old 10-30-2011, 07:34 PM   #1637
Ketsan
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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The man defended himself. Where in his post is this not clear?
A friend of mine got surrounded by a group of lads, they took his bag off him, kicked him, punched him and he being a tough bastard just stood there and took it because he figured fighting back wasn't really an option and he's not much of a runner. Eventually they got kinda weirded out by a guy that can take a beating with total indifference and left and even gave him his bag back.

Pretty much the same situation and the same result: nobody was dead, nobody was injured all that badly. If the original example is meant as an example of self-defence then really it's only marginally better than being a punch bag, this is what I'm saying, you wouldn't sell Aikido as a practical art off the back of it because really it's a case where a group of guys picked on someone they thought was an easy target because they themselves weren't willing to fight and anyone can fight people trying to avoid a fight. The same result probably would have happened if he was a totally untrained guy who decided to have a go, claiming the decisive factor or even the lion's share of credit for Aikido here is a bit much.

So if we're going to say Aikido is effective then we can only cite examples where at the start there are people who are willing and able to fight and at the end said people are on the floor unable to fight.
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Old 10-30-2011, 07:44 PM   #1638
Ketsan
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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Dan Rubin wrote: View Post
I would call that an attack, not a fight. For it to become a fight, I would have to counter-attack.
Yeah, true.
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Old 10-30-2011, 07:56 PM   #1639
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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Katherine Derbyshire wrote: View Post
Which the person confronted by four potential muggers did. Which Saotome Sensei did, in the incident I described. And yet people are claiming that those situations weren't "fights" and aren't relevant to the original topic.

So my question is, if fending off four attackers without getting hurt doesn't count as "effective" use of aikido in a "fight," what on earth would?

Katherine
If they don't make a serious attempt to hospitalise you or worse it's not really a fight: it's a scuffle at most. A fight is a full blown situation where people that aren't going to back down and are willing to use violence and are in the process of doing so and don't stop until they are forced to.

If someone throws a punch and the other guy blocks it and pushes him over and that ends it, it's a scuffle; there was never any serious intent to do harm it was just one guy trying to assert his dominance over another and failing. If the guy gets up and there's an exchange of blows or wrestling with the clear intention that one guy isn't going to be walking away from this then it's a fight.

If a mugger comes up to you and you give him a smack or a shove and he decides he doesn't want to bother then it's a scuffle. If he decides that actually he's going to go for it then it's a fight.

If you walk away from it unhurt, it probably wasn't a fight. You should have at least cuts and bruises, a black eye, all the usual injuries that go with fighting.
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Old 10-30-2011, 08:16 PM   #1640
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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If they don't make a serious attempt to hospitalise you or worse it's not really a fight: it's a scuffle at most. A fight is a full blown situation where people that aren't going to back down and are willing to use violence and are in the process of doing so and don't stop until they are forced to.

If someone throws a punch and the other guy blocks it and pushes him over and that ends it, it's a scuffle; there was never any serious intent to do harm it was just one guy trying to assert his dominance over another and failing. If the guy gets up and there's an exchange of blows or wrestling with the clear intention that one guy isn't going to be walking away from this then it's a fight.

If a mugger comes up to you and you give him a smack or a shove and he decides he doesn't want to bother then it's a scuffle. If he decides that actually he's going to go for it then it's a fight.

If you walk away from it unhurt, it probably wasn't a fight. You should have at least cuts and bruises, a black eye, all the usual injuries that go with fighting.
So, let me get this straight. I'll raise 2 completely hypothetical scenarios here.

1. Aikidoka 1 is attacked by 4 people with intent to kill. His aikido is so sublime that he walks away completely unscathed having effectively dealt with all attackers.

2. Aikidoka 2 is attacked by 4 people with intent to kill. After getting seriously injured and bloodied, he manages to beat all 4 attackers into a pulp.

Are you saying that in the first scenario aikido hasn't worked in a fight, whereas in the second it has? Leaving all questions of realism aside, that just seams weird to me.
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Old 10-30-2011, 08:26 PM   #1641
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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It'd be interesting if we started practiced disengagement in the dojo. Uke bows, goes to make shomen uchi and tori just walks off or runs away or says "You know what, sod this, there's no point to it, neither of us is going to win and one of us might get hurt, let's go to the pub and I'll buy you a pint, what you drinking?"
Very funny, but given the number of multi-attacker randoris that end with nage overwhelmed and buried under a pile of attackers, maybe disengagement is not quite so easy as that. If it's possible to "just walk off," maybe there wasn't much to the attack in the first place.

Which is part of my point. Disengagement is a completely valid, and non-trivial, response to a "real" situation, and ability to disengage is thus a valid demonstration of the effectiveness of one's art.

Katherine
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Old 10-30-2011, 08:41 PM   #1642
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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If they don't make a serious attempt to hospitalise you or worse it's not really a fight: it's a scuffle at most. A fight is a full blown situation where people that aren't going to back down and are willing to use violence and are in the process of doing so and don't stop until they are forced to.
That's just ridiculous. So it's only a fight if your attackers are on drugs or completely insane? Because any sane attacker is going to (at least potentially) recognize that (a) no, this person isn't as helpless as I thought, or (b) uh oh, I'm about to get my butt kicked, or (c) this is taking too long, they might get help, or (d) screw it, let's go find a little old lady instead.... and disengage.

Bad guys are just as capable of risk vs. reward calculations as anyone else. A "scuffle" could easily become a full-blown "fight" if the bad guy decides he can get away with it. A "fight" could easily moderate to a "scuffle" if the bad guy decides today isn't a good day to die. And yes, the behavior of the potential victim absolutely determines which happens.

Katherine
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Old 10-30-2011, 11:11 PM   #1643
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

OK Alex I'm out if this discussion because as you have defined "fight" we simply don't agree on terminology.

Janet Rosen
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Old 10-31-2011, 08:18 AM   #1644
Ken McGrew
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

In most if not all states in the U.S. a fight involves two willing combatants, legally speaking that is.

This machismo stuff gets old. Just let them win the argument. Aikido is about the most useless of all martial arts when it comes to a contest with rules or a "fight" where you are concerned about prison or law suits. Though Aikido holds the potential to minimize harm to an attacker, serious injury is possible and even likely. Moreover, the extent of injury is often beyond your control depending on just how stupid a fall the attacker takes, the object he falls on, Etc. As a self defense approach Aikido is as effective as any martial art, of course. It is particularly well suited for real world conditions and multiple attacker situations. But you can never convince these machismo types. They are thinking in terms of fighting rather than self defense. They ignore the numerous examples of people using Aikido to defend themselves, like the transit detective I trained with who used Aikido to take two guns from two suspects who drew with the intent of firing. The only way to convince these people is to risk seriously injuring them with all that goes along with it. There is no point in trying to win over students like this as these are not the students we want in Aikido anyway.
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Old 10-31-2011, 10:01 AM   #1645
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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So, let me get this straight. I'll raise 2 completely hypothetical scenarios here.

1. Aikidoka 1 is attacked by 4 people with intent to kill. His aikido is so sublime that he walks away completely unscathed having effectively dealt with all attackers.

2. Aikidoka 2 is attacked by 4 people with intent to kill. After getting seriously injured and bloodied, he manages to beat all 4 attackers into a pulp.

Are you saying that in the first scenario aikido hasn't worked in a fight, whereas in the second it has? Leaving all questions of realism aside, that just seams weird to me.
Leaving aside the questions of realism the question is unanswerable.
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Old 10-31-2011, 11:44 AM   #1646
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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Very funny, but given the number of multi-attacker randoris that end with nage overwhelmed and buried under a pile of attackers, maybe disengagement is not quite so easy as that. If it's possible to "just walk off," maybe there wasn't much to the attack in the first place.

Which is part of my point. Disengagement is a completely valid, and non-trivial, response to a "real" situation, and ability to disengage is thus a valid demonstration of the effectiveness of one's art.

Katherine
Randori starts at a rather late stage in the confrontation. You'd have to have pretty poor zanshin to end up in a situation where you were surrounded by four attackers and didn't realise it until you were surrounded.
It's rare that confrontations just happen. Usually there's verbal diarrhea first and there's usually something before that too where they test out your resolve, when you're aware that you've attracted attention and the verbal diarrhea is an esculation of that.
If someone gets all the way through the inital attention and the verbal diarrhea either they're really unaware of what's going on or they're quite happy to let things get violent.
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Old 10-31-2011, 12:21 PM   #1647
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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Alex Lawrence wrote: View Post
If they don't make a serious attempt to hospitalise you or worse it's not really a fight: it's a scuffle at most. A fight is a full blown situation where people that aren't going to back down and are willing to use violence and are in the process of doing so and don't stop until they are forced to.

If someone throws a punch and the other guy blocks it and pushes him over and that ends it, it's a scuffle; there was never any serious intent to do harm it was just one guy trying to assert his dominance over another and failing. If the guy gets up and there's an exchange of blows or wrestling with the clear intention that one guy isn't going to be walking away from this then it's a fight.

If a mugger comes up to you and you give him a smack or a shove and he decides he doesn't want to bother then it's a scuffle. If he decides that actually he's going to go for it then it's a fight.

If you walk away from it unhurt, it probably wasn't a fight. You should have at least cuts and bruises, a black eye, all the usual injuries that go with fighting.
If someone attempts to strike me it's an assault. That's a matter of the law. The subject can go to jail. The amount of force I get to use to defend myself is directly related to the threat. The definition of a deadly force situation is one that involves a threat of serious, lasting, bodily harm. Technically, that could mean almost any physical threat since any number of people have been either killed or seriously injured by a single blow. Realistically, there is no objective way of articulating the perception of threat. It is entirely situational. The standard in the US is the "reasonable man" standard. In other words, what would the hypothetical "reasonable man" believe the threat to be. It would vary based on size differential, sex, number of attackers, training, etc. Whatever you do has to be articulated to a jury and it has to be believable to them. That's how the law works here.

Judging intent before the blow comes is not only difficult, it's highly risky. There have been a number of instances in which a single blow killed the person who received the strike. Yo are not required by law to put yourself at risk in order to be "reasonable". In other words, if a guy throws a punch at me, I can and should do whatever is "reasonable" to end that threat. Unless I am convinced utterly that the assailant is incompetent and that responding with less force than I am capable of delivering will keep me safe, I am legally allowed to do what I need to to end the threat. As a civilian I am required to remove myself if that's possible. That's called pre-clusion and it's required of anyone except for law enforcement and security folks who are required to go towards the threat rather than away from it.

But if you can articulate that no "reasonable" escape could be made, then you can do what is "reasonable" to end the threat. Under-response to a given threat places one at great risk. The idea that a guy throwing a punch at you is a scuffle rather than a fight is absurd. First, it's legally an assault. Second, if you are waiting for a second or third blow before you decide what the intention was behind the assault you are simply asking to wake up in a hospital. Predatory types practice ending the fight with one blow. You don't recover from the first one. Unless you are "my psychic friend" I don't think you are going to be able to decide before it's on what level of intention the other guy or guys really has.

An attack is an attack. It's a fight if I don't end it instantly. What I choose to do with that situation depends entirely on how I "feel" about it. That's the law, here anyway.

George S. Ledyard
Aikido Eastside
Bellevue, WA
Aikido Eastside
AikidoDvds.Com
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Old 10-31-2011, 01:39 PM   #1648
Ketsan
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

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Katherine Derbyshire wrote: View Post
That's just ridiculous. So it's only a fight if your attackers are on drugs or completely insane? Because any sane attacker is going to (at least potentially) recognize that (a) no, this person isn't as helpless as I thought, or (b) uh oh, I'm about to get my butt kicked, or (c) this is taking too long, they might get help, or (d) screw it, let's go find a little old lady instead.... and disengage.

Bad guys are just as capable of risk vs. reward calculations as anyone else. A "scuffle" could easily become a full-blown "fight" if the bad guy decides he can get away with it. A "fight" could easily moderate to a "scuffle" if the bad guy decides today isn't a good day to die. And yes, the behavior of the potential victim absolutely determines which happens.

Katherine
No it's only a fight if your attackers actually intend serious harm. It's actually really quite rare for this to be the case, millions of people get mugged or assaulted very year and very few are seriously injured and many of these situations are resolved just as well by people with no training.

Demonstrating that you can get rid of four guys that don't want to fight by showing that you do want to fight isn't really a demonstration of martial skill, it's more a demonstration of the lengths even muggers will go to in avoiding harm to themselves. Confusing the two isn't helpful.
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Old 10-31-2011, 02:17 PM   #1649
George S. Ledyard
 
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

Quote:
Alex Lawrence wrote: View Post
No it's only a fight if your attackers actually intend serious harm. It's actually really quite rare for this to be the case, millions of people get mugged or assaulted very year and very few are seriously injured and many of these situations are resolved just as well by people with no training.

Demonstrating that you can get rid of four guys that don't want to fight by showing that you do want to fight isn't really a demonstration of martial skill, it's more a demonstration of the lengths even muggers will go to in avoiding harm to themselves. Confusing the two isn't helpful.
I have no idea what the case is in the UK but this simply is not the case in the US. You are not expected to somehow intuit the other guy's intention. It is your own perception of the threat that is the standard for how one responds. yes, it must seem like a "reasonable" assessment to a jury but the law gives the benefit of the doubt to the defender in terms of his or her own perception of a threat.

In other words if I were threatened by four subjects, it would be my perception that I was at serious risk. The subjects would fulfill all of the requirements for using force. Ability, opportunity, and jeopardy. Clearly four subjects have the ability to hurt me, if they are in my presence they have the opportunity, if they are acting in a threatening fashion, then I am reasonable in my assessment that I am in jeopardy. So the only operative factor would be "preclusion" which would be whether I could safely remove myself from the threat. If I could articulate in a reasonable fashion that I could not remove myself from the threat, then all of the required elements for use of force are present.

The idea that you are supposed to be able to tell what the subjects intend before they do it is ludicrous and is not the law much less a smart way of going about ones self defense. Truly predatory individuals make a study of how not to indicate their intentions before they start and assault. Even with folks who are not necessarily true predators, the "interview" as the interaction just prior to the attack is often called can be very short, even happening before you are aware it has taken place.

Take a look at the works by Peyton Quinn or Marc "Animal" McYoung as to the dynamics of violent confrontation. This stuff is a bit "earthy" for most Aikido folks but it is totally based on real world experience and not wishful thinking.

George S. Ledyard
Aikido Eastside
Bellevue, WA
Aikido Eastside
AikidoDvds.Com
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Old 10-31-2011, 02:27 PM   #1650
kewms
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Re: Aikido does not work at all in a fight.

Check your statistics. Total number of robberies and aggravated assaults combined in the US last year was around a million. Only about half of robberies were on the street or in vehicles (as opposed to residences or businesses), and only about a quarter of aggravated assaults were weapon less. So your notion of "millions" of mugging victims just isn't accurate.

In any case, I've argued all along that real situations -- especially "fights" -- are too rare to justify the time people spend worrying about them.

Katherine
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