Aikido hate

[kuniggety]

I agree with you that application matters. But I disagree with you that competition is what produces the most consistent and efficient results. What is necessary for any application of a martial art to be effective is for the practitioners of that art be pressure tested and competition is not the only means of doing that. In my opinion it is not the best means of doing so either.

I'm not much of a competitor, but what, in your opinion, is a better way of pressure testing someone than pitting them against another person in a match?

I disagree with this as well. It IS the person and not the style. Some people are good at competing but don't have what it takes to take care of business where it really counts outside of the sporting arena. Just because a person has racked up a closet full of trophies does not mean that they really know how to fight where there are no padded cages, referees and rules.

Any incidents you see of experienced full contact competitors getting steam-rolled on the streets is going to be more the exception than the rule. I don't want to put words in Steve's mouth but I think the problem is the style of training, not inherently the particular flavor of martial art.

 

[Tames D]

Thanks for posting. I liked it. But was hoping to see him in action against a skilled opponent. I asked because I haven't found anything in my research.

 

[Tames D]

Why would I post videos of him fighting?

I asked you to post footage of his fights because you said this: "Joe Rogan is an accomplished martial artist who knows his way around a ring". I havn't been able to find any footage of him in competition, or of him fighting a skilled opponent.

 

[kuniggety]

I asked you to post footage of his fights because you said this: "Joe Rogan is an accomplished martial artist who knows his way around a ring". I havn't been able to find any footage of him in competition, or of him fighting a skilled opponent.

I say this because Eddie Bravo, who has rolled with him a lot, gave him a black belt. The same for Machado. That means quite a lot.

 

[Tames D]

I say this because Eddie Bravo, who has rolled with him a lot, gave him a black belt. The same for Machado. That means quite a lot.

Ok

 

[Steve]

Joe Rogan is a Stand up comic.He should stick to that. I wish Howard Cosell was still alive. I'd like to see those two fight. A couple of "authorities" on fighting, that could never fight

Joes actually a pretty tough dude. TKD and BJJ at least. He knows what he's talking about. he's definitely not just a comedian. He's been doing color commentary for the UFC for a very long time.

Lol. Nevermind. Didn't realize Joe rogan is being held to a higher standard than anyone else around here.

 

[Hanzou]

This. Sakuraba proved through competition that BJJ was flawed. And BJJ responded by scrambling like hell to fix those flaws.

BJJ is now a better martial art than it was due to the methodology that we are suggesting makes a martial art better.

I find this interesting since Bjj is currently dividing itself between sport and self defense camps.

Honestly if it weren't for MMA, Bjj would be in a lot of trouble. MMA keeps Bjj "honest" so to speak.

 

[Steve]

I'm not much of a competitor, but what, in your opinion, is a better way of pressure testing someone than pitting them against another person in a match?




Any incidents you see of experienced full contact competitors getting steam-rolled on the streets is going to be more the exception than the rule. I don't want to put words in Steve's mouth but I think the problem is the style of training, not inherently the particular flavor of martial art.

Yeah, mostly. I'd say there are people who are violent professionally who have ample opportunity to pressure test a martial art outside of competition. But for most of us, competition is the best, most reliable, most efficient way to build expertise and skill.

Scenario based training well done is also great, but that's a much more difficult thing to achieve consistently.

 

[drop bear]

I find this interesting since Bjj is currently dividing itself between sport and self defense camps.

Honestly if it weren't for MMA, Bjj would be in a lot of trouble. MMA keeps Bjj "honest" so to speak.

Keeps a lot of systems honest. It really is a very useful testing tool. And one that nobody had access to back in my day.

And the speculation was pretty rampant back then because of it.

 

[drop bear]

I'm not much of a competitor, but what, in your opinion, is a better way of pressure testing someone than pitting them against another person in a match?




Any incidents you see of experienced full contact competitors getting steam-rolled on the streets is going to be more the exception than the rule. I don't want to put words in Steve's mouth but I think the problem is the style of training, not inherently the particular flavor of martial art.

Still not really.You could be the best boxer and be taken down and flogged because your system just doesn't set you up to prevent it.

You have to be given the right tools as well as be the right person.

 

[Tez3]

I asked you to post footage of his fights because you said this: "Joe Rogan is an accomplished martial artist who knows his way around a ring". I havn't been able to find any footage of him in competition, or of him fighting a skilled opponent.

and even if he is an accomplished fighter ( jury is still out, we do know that he has never fought MMA though however 'good' his TKD and BJJ is) it doesn't make him a 'better person', he's still the fan boys hero, the guru of the UFC who they follow and make people's lives a misery.
A friend of mine fought in the UFC and lost, Rogan made some very harsh remarks, personal ones not relevant to the fight while commentating. My friend remonstrated with him on Twitter afterwards. Rogan laughed my friend off but his followers, well they went to town on my friend, death threats, personal remarks including those about my friend's son along with threats to him, really nasty stuff, all on Twitter all hash tagged to add Rogan so he knew but did nothing to stop his little friends sustained attacks. It was nasty. It's not the first time this has happened, now people can say Rogan isn't responsible, it's arguable but on the other hand he knew about this campaign and did nothing to try and stop it. Being politically incorrect is actually just another way of being rude and nasty and very hurtful. I guess he takes his money and laughs all the way to the bank.

 

[Psilent Knight]

Sure there are other ways to develop skill. You could develop them as a professional. Otherwise, competition is absolutely the best way to,develop,skill.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

Take Care,
Osu!

 

[Psilent Knight]

This. Sakuraba proved through competition that BJJ was flawed. And BJJ responded by scrambling like hell to fix those flaws.

BJJ is now a better martial art than it was due to the methodology that we are suggesting makes a martial art better.

Just to be clear I wasn't implying that BJJ is a "flawed" system. I just wanted to point out to Steve how his opinion can be used to make that argument. Fwiw, I do think all of those particular PRIDE FC fights were a case of a fighter being better than the people he beat and not because between catch wrestling and BJJ one grappling art is better or worse than the other or one is "flawed".

I'm not much of a competitor, but what, in your opinion, is a better way of pressure testing someone than pitting them against another person in a match?

Two ways I can immediately answer with are 1) what Geoff Thompson refers to as Animal Day in which there are far less rules than a sporting match and you have a go in different environments outside of the training hall. And 2) is line ups combined with scenario training.

It is often said that in a real fight a person will fight the way he trains. One flaw with sporting competition is the "back-and-forth" mentality that it instills in people. Say what you will but I have learned this to be absolutely true through observation and personal experience.

Any incidents you see of experienced full contact competitors getting steam-rolled on the streets is going to be more the exception than the rule.

Not sure how you came to that conclusion. If you have research and statistics to validate this statement then I would be more than happy to have a look-see. Anybody getting steamrolled by another person in the streets is a demonstration of the steamroller being a better overall street warrior than the steamrollee. I stick to my viewpoint that it's the person and not the art.

I don't want to put words in Steve's mouth but I think the problem is the style of training, not inherently the particular flavor of martial art.

Well, I've already mentioned that myself indirectly when I said how I think all martial arts can be effective if they are trained the right way.

Take Care,
Osu!

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I think you owe it to yourself to roll with an elite level BJJ black belt. It will blow your mind, my friend. Seriously. It's exactly what you describe. techniques become effortless when they are executed correctly. I've swept guys that weigh over 300 lbs effortlessly because I could feel the moment they committed their weight, just as you described.

A BJJ black belt, who also is a black belt in aikido, suggests (paraphrasing) that the difference between purple and brown is that a purple belt can identify these opportunities while a brown belt will begin to create them.

Oh, I agree that the really skilled BJJ guys use it. It's not as common on the ground was my point, because there's less total movement. High-level Judo folks will use it, too. Tony and I have actually had some discussions about this in the past. The main reason I refer to myself as "workmanlike" on the ground is that I don't possess the skill down there tap into the aiki moments very well. Aiki is not the sole domain of the aiki arts. We just focus on it more (some too much, IMO). The main identifier to me for aiki is when the opponent provides the energy for taking themselves down. Watch a Judo competition, and you'll see that most of their throws aren't like that. Why? Because they know a throw is coming, and they are playing all the weight and structure counters, so speed has to be increased, more muscle is needed, etc. I would assume the same would happen if two elite-level BJJ guys were really trying to stop each other, and weren't willing to play a waiting game (so, let's add in strikes, which adds that urgency).

 

[Buka]

I've never met or trained with Joe Rogan, but I know Joe Rogan is an extremely knowledgeable Martial Artist, and a one tough fighter. Friends who've trained with Joe tell me so and I trust their knowledge completely.

A good friend of mine was his first instructor in Massachusetts when Joe was just a little kid. (Kenpo) Several people I know have rolled with Mister Rogan, talented people, who not only are tacticians, but tell me he has a freakish "monkey strength". If you aren't familiar with that term I hope you never will be.

But I'm a Joe Rogan fan boy. If I was a member of congress I'd push for a law that made in mandatory that Joe Rogan did the commentary for any important MMA fight from any organization. I really don't want to hear anyone else explain to me what I'm seeing.

He can kick, too, that boy.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Sure there are other ways to develop skill. You could develop them as a professional. Otherwise, competition is absolutely the best way to,develop,skill.

Competition is the best way to verify skill against competitors. I've outlined before the limitations I see in competition. I think competition (at least "competitive" sparring/rolling within the school) is a necessary element - I haven't seen an alternative I think brings the same benefits. And for some arts, open competition (within the art and beyond) seems to foster better effectiveness. But when techniques don't work in competition (meaning the opportunity for them doesn't come up often enough to be worth trying), but are among the most commonly used in altercations (having to depend upon reports from LEO and bouncers, who have enough encounters to draw any conclusions), then competition isn't developing some of the skills that art brings, and a focus on competition would eventually lead to the de-emphasis of those techniques that worked so well in non-competition application.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

In which case you are on the same playing field as everybody else.

If we take away the aiki focus, sure. That puts us in the realm of Judo, with more small joint locks, and more striking. But you may recall that we are an aiki art. Aiki is a primary principle we work with, and something that does (contrary to your assertions) present opportunities in real-world encounters (again, working from reports from LEO's and bouncers who have enough encounters and aiki training to give some reasonable input). So, if we stopped focusing on the aiki, we'd be changing the art. And I don't see a good reason to do that. It's a useful part of our toolset that works for the context it's intended.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Just to be clear I wasn't implying that BJJ is a "flawed" system. I just wanted to point out to Steve how his opinion can be used to make that argument. Fwiw, I do think all of those particular PRIDE FC fights were a case of a fighter being better than the people he beat and not because between catch wrestling and BJJ one grappling art is better or worse than the other or one is "flawed".



Two ways I can immediately answer with are 1) what Geoff Thompson refers to as Animal Day in which there are far less rules than a sporting match and you have a go in different environments outside of the training hall. And 2) is line ups combined with scenario training.

It is often said that in a real fight a person will fight the way he trains. One flaw with sporting competition is the "back-and-forth" mentality that it instills in people. Say what you will but I have learned this to be absolutely true through observation and personal experience.




Not sure how you came to that conclusion. If you have research and statistics to validate this statement then I would be more than happy to have a look-see. Anybody getting steamrolled by another person in the streets is a demonstration of the steamroller being a better overall street warrior than the steamrollee. I stick to my viewpoint that it's the person and not the art.



Well, I've already mentioned that myself indirectly when I said how I think all martial arts can be effective if they are trained the right way.

Take Care,
Osu!

I'll say the art does matter. I think it's the person and the art, not one or the other. If I get tapped out on the ground by someone who has trained a much shorter time in BJJ, that's probably the art (art with ground focus vs. art with standing focus). Now, if that same person actually manages to get me to the ground (reliably and easily, let's not get caught up in those exceptions that can always happen), that's something wrong with either me as a practitioner or the art I'm trained in or the training methods used to train me.

Notice I threw in a third option to "blame": training methods. Sometimes those are inherent in an art, and sometimes they are not. A really good instructor will produce better students in any given art, at least partly because they use better training methods more often. That difference is inside the art, so not a part of the art. This focus on training methods is really what DB and Steve are focusing on. I have a fundamental difference with them on a couple of points, but actually agree with something behind their comments. I think the real benefit of open competition is how people train for it. They train more intensely and take an approach that I don't see as much in TMA where open competition doesn't exist (or where rulesets are favoring bad habits). That approach is one that appears to be part of the DNA of BJJ, and I hope they never lose it. It's an approach of looking for flaws, rather than perfecting what you have just because it's "the technique". Don't get that bridge-and-roll perfect if there's a fundamental opening it creates for your opponent. Fix the flaw, find a better technique, or something. And open competition fosters this approach, because your opponent will be looking for (and probably making use of) those flaws. I work hard to keep that same mindset within my own training. I have changed techniques within NGA (teaching them differently than I was taught), because I didn't like some of the common flaws I saw students creating. I continue to do so, and always will.

 

[Tez3]

I really don't want to hear anyone else explain to me what I'm seeing.

I don't want or need anyone explaining to me what I'm seeing, I know very what it is, perhaps better than Rogan because he doesn't actually judge, referee, coach or corner fighters nor has he fought in MMA. He's a comedian/commentator, being good at BJJ and TKD doesn't make him a be all and end all MMA commentator, there are many times he's actually wrong about what he says he sees.
As a person he is what is wrong about 'celebrities' who think they are so much more than they are.
He's there as a salesman for the UFC not as a knowledgeable, considered and reasonable commentator, he's there to sell seats and PPVs,so appeals to the fan boys with his OTT commentary and remarks about fighters whether good or bad. He's part of the multi million dollar brand, he gets to know the fighters, talks loud and so does a good job for his employers, they of course are pleased so he won't be fired any time soon. It is what it is but he's not the best MMA commentator if you want good insights into the fights and the fighters for that matter, he goes for the sensational and entertaining which many people want.

 

[drop bear]

If we take away the aiki focus, sure. That puts us in the realm of Judo, with more small joint locks, and more striking. But you may recall that we are an aiki art. Aiki is a primary principle we work with, and something that does (contrary to your assertions) present opportunities in real-world encounters (again, working from reports from LEO's and bouncers who have enough encounters and aiki training to give some reasonable input). So, if we stopped focusing on the aiki, we'd be changing the art. And I don't see a good reason to do that. It's a useful part of our toolset that works for the context it's intended.

So we are now back to focusing on aiki.

Didn't you just have a hissy fit over me making aikido about aiki. Because of all the other tools at your disposal.

I am not saying aiki doesnt work. It is present in all martial arts to some extent. I am saying your delivery system doesn't work if you have to dumb down the attacks of your training partners. Rather than make your system better to deal with a more competent threat.

You can't train honestly with a bag full of excuses.