On Aikido: Its Origins and its efficacy

[drop bear]

My experience with these types of defenses suggests there are a few issues at play:

1) most of us would be nearly helpless against a top-tier fighter (certainly with my knees, etc., I'd be no match for a well-trained fighter in his prime who is both conditioned to take a beating and likely has genetically lower response to pain), regardless of our art or background, so I'll leave that be to start with.

2) Every defense - especially those that use "aiki" (sometimes simply described as acting where the low-effort response is available) - require a certain amount of awareness of and "feel" for the exact situation. They can't be made to work, you have to learn to recognize the opportunity when it exists. Someone who understands the physical principles can shut those down. This is why my students learn both the "aiki" and "non-aiki" methods to use our techniques, since sometimes you just don't have time to wait for a great "aiki" opportunity.

3) There are other responses to attacks that don't require that "feel", and most folks will focus on those. If I were training for fighting, I'd eliminate a large portion of what I've studied, and focus on a smaller group. Since aiki principles require more patience, I'd ditch those in favor of things I could "make" work with enough force and skill. (Since I'm not training for fighting, but for defense, I have the leisure of taking the time to keep adding tools once I'm competent for defense.)

Not really. We are having two different conversations here. Back control is a dominant position and the way you approach that kind of determines what you are getting out of your martial arts.

So you can either approach it like you are in a bad position that the other guy may realistically win from.

Or you can create a circumstance where you will win regardless.

My point about top tier fighters is that not being able to escape back control is not automatically a product of not having the awesome defence. You are in a crap position. And if you are escaping back control all the time you have a quality control issue with your partner.

Bear hugs are a great test to determine if your training is contrived or not.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Bear hugs are a great test to determine if your training is contrived or not.

Bit unrelated, but going to comment on this point. I disagree in a way. If you're stating that your bear hug defence will work against anyone then yeah. Where I train, however, I dislike our bear hug approaches, so I've learned others. So have my instructors. We've come to the conclusion that against someone much bigger if you let the person lift you in a bear hug you don't have much you can do, so we try to train for the moment they start it, which we also feel is not the best solution.

Even that, with defenses from multiple styles, and very concentrated practice, if you were to use our rear bear hug defense as a way to see if our training is unrealistic, you would almost definitely believe it is.

 

[drop bear]

Bit unrelated, but going to comment on this point. I disagree in a way. If you're stating that your bear hug defence will work against anyone then yeah. Where I train, however, I dislike our bear hug approaches, so I've learned others. So have my instructors. We've come to the conclusion that against someone much bigger if you let the person lift you in a bear hug you don't have much you can do, so we try to train for the moment they start it, which we also feel is not the best solution.

Even that, with defenses from multiple styles, and very concentrated practice, if you were to use our rear bear hug defense as a way to see if our training is unrealistic, you would almost definitely believe it is.

Look. When I say realistic. What I am getting at is quite simply can you get out if the guy is committed to hanging on. Now from my experience if they have a dominant position you won't succeed very often.

I am a big advocate of doing resisted drills to a level where you can fail.

A 100% success rate is not a good indicator of a successful scenario.

And this goes back to the idea of contrived. Instead of trying and failing people feel they need to change the game so they succeed.

Gradings are always the worst examples. Because you are never going to be the monster who makes a guy fail his belt because he couldn't get you off him. But I believe it breeds an unhelpful culture should you actually want to stop a guy with martial arts.

 

[Hanzou]

Interesting that someone believes that a street attacker is going to come at them with a staff or throwing repeated front kicks with their hands down.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Not really. We are having two different conversations here. Back control is a dominant position and the way you approach that kind of determines what you are getting out of your martial arts.

So you can either approach it like you are in a bad position that the other guy may realistically win from.

Or you can create a circumstance where you will win regardless.

My point about top tier fighters is that not being able to escape back control is not automatically a product of not having the awesome defence. You are in a crap position. And if you are escaping back control all the time you have a quality control issue with your partner.

Bear hugs are a great test to determine if your training is contrived or not.

Ah, great point - much clearer to me in this post! Yes, my belief is that tests of defensive ability should not come even close to 100% success, unless you are testing against people who are far less skilled. If your attacker is well-trained, then you should expect to fail against them sometimes. You can put some limitations on attacks to keep them realistic (if you've ever trained in a self-defense school, you'll know some students give over-the-top attacks in an attempt to be original), but they shouldn't be set up for the defender to succeed.

In training, you can set scenarios that limit the attack for learning purposes (if I want a new student to learn to block punches, I should neither come at them with my best, fastest punches, nor tackle them - I should deliver the punches I'm training them to block). In both defensive testing and free-style practice (sparring and the like), putting too much limit on the attacks creates that situation you're talking about.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Look. When I say realistic. What I am getting at is quite simply can you get out if the guy is committed to hanging on. Now from my experience if they have a dominant position you won't succeed very often.

I am a big advocate of doing resisted drills to a level where you can fail.

A 100% success rate is not a good indicator of a successful scenario.

And this goes back to the idea of contrived. Instead of trying and failing people feel they need to change the game so they succeed.

Gradings are always the worst examples. Because you are never going to be the monster who makes a guy fail his belt because he couldn't get you off him. But I believe it breeds an unhelpful culture should you actually want to stop a guy with martial arts.

That is one of those videos that bothers me. If that was a test, it didn't test much. An acquaintance of mine posted a bit of video from his BB test in NGA. In the part he posted, it's a 2-man attack, with instructions (on an index card - defender doesn't know what's coming) of something like, "Take man down using whatever means you wish." The two attackers tackled him - one high, one low. He maintains balance for a moment, then ends up on the ground doing his ground defense. He deals with one in short order by finding an opening as they are falling. The second does end up giving him a break after they struggle for a bit. To me, this is a decent test. The second attacker gave in, but only after enough time for the instructor to be able to give him some feedback during the review. I'd actually prefer a culture where the attacker stays on the attack until one or the other wins, but that's pretty unrealistic for the number of attacks in that test. Nobody would be able to complete that. The only other resolution I can see that would work for an extended test format like that would be the instructor calling "stop" after a few seconds and counting it "incomplete". As you said, 100% success isn't a good measure of defensive ability.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Interesting that someone believes that a street attacker is going to come at them with a staff or throwing repeated front kicks with their hands down.

The stick, itself, isn't unrealistic for attacks - the manner it was used, however...

 

[ShawnP]

Look. When I say realistic. What I am getting at is quite simply can you get out if the guy is committed to hanging on. Now from my experience if they have a dominant position you won't succeed very often.

I am a big advocate of doing resisted drills to a level where you can fail.

A 100% success rate is not a good indicator of a successful scenario.

And this goes back to the idea of contrived. Instead of trying and failing people feel they need to change the game so they succeed.

Gradings are always the worst examples. Because you are never going to be the monster who makes a guy fail his belt because he couldn't get you off him. But I believe it breeds an unhelpful culture should you actually want to stop a guy with martial arts.

i have a question about this video, after watching how they attacked, it seemed to me they all had designated responses of the defense, almost as if they were expected to fall away, roll away, or just drop off their attack after the defender began his defensive technique, now wouldnt this type of practice build bad habits for both the attacker and the defender? in a real life situation would the defender would expect his attacker to respond in a predetermined action such as a roll, flip, or drop? and the same if he became the attacker?

 

[Aiki Lee]

Interesting that someone believes that a street attacker is going to come at them with a staff or throwing repeated front kicks with their hands down.

The claim that this video is showing self-defense is a mistake. The video clearly shows a controlled randori in which the aikidoka is attempting to utilize principles of the art. The training of these principles are useful in self-defense, but the attacks in the video are in no way meant to resemble a modern, western style self-defense scenario.

 

[drop bear]

i have a question about this video, after watching how they attacked, it seemed to me they all had designated responses of the defense, almost as if they were expected to fall away, roll away, or just drop off their attack after the defender began his defensive technique, now wouldnt this type of practice build bad habits for both the attacker and the defender? in a real life situation would the defender would expect his attacker to respond in a predetermined action such as a roll, flip, or drop? and the same if he became the attacker?

Yes. The defender dosent get the full benifit of the experience. The attacker trains to be a collapso tap out monkey.

I have been through both styles of training. And I find that now I can fight out of submissions I would have tapped to before.

 

[drop bear]

That is one of those videos that bothers me. If that was a test, it didn't test much. An acquaintance of mine posted a bit of video from his BB test in NGA. In the part he posted, it's a 2-man attack, with instructions (on an index card - defender doesn't know what's coming) of something like, "Take man down using whatever means you wish." The two attackers tackled him - one high, one low. He maintains balance for a moment, then ends up on the ground doing his ground defense. He deals with one in short order by finding an opening as they are falling. The second does end up giving him a break after they struggle for a bit. To me, this is a decent test. The second attacker gave in, but only after enough time for the instructor to be able to give him some feedback during the review. I'd actually prefer a culture where the attacker stays on the attack until one or the other wins, but that's pretty unrealistic for the number of attacks in that test. Nobody would be able to complete that. The only other resolution I can see that would work for an extended test format like that would be the instructor calling "stop" after a few seconds and counting it "incomplete". As you said, 100% success isn't a good measure of defensive ability.

Yeah. You will notice, for us anyway, we set two goals for any resisted drill. So like the one I just posted in another thread. One goal is to take a guy down. The other is to defend. Both have equal merits in the training.

I think the idea for me is the attack has equal worth to the defence.

You can attack in quick succession you just need an end point. We do similar when we do a gauntlet drill.

 

[Aiki Lee]

Ah, great point - much clearer to me in this post! Yes, my belief is that tests of defensive ability should not come even close to 100% success, unless you are testing against people who are far less skilled. If your attacker is well-trained, then you should expect to fail against them sometimes. You can put some limitations on attacks to keep them realistic (if you've ever trained in a self-defense school, you'll know some students give over-the-top attacks in an attempt to be original), but they shouldn't be set up for the defender to succeed.

That is exactly how you learn a skill, by setting up the scenario for the defender to succeed. I agree that if someone is always having 100% success then they may be experiencing some "dojo-itis" but learning a viable combat skill means that it would have a high chance of success for the situation it was designed for. If you fail the defense, you either did it wrong or the skill being taught is not appropriate for what people think it should be used for.

In training, you can set scenarios that limit the attack for learning purposes (if I want a new student to learn to block punches, I should neither come at them with my best, fastest punches, nor tackle them - I should deliver the punches I'm training them to block). In both defensive testing and free-style practice (sparring and the like), putting too much limit on the attacks creates that situation you're talking about.

I agree here, but a well trained person should be able to set up his/her techniques through appropriate usages of angles, distance, timing, and other tactics or strategies.

 

[drop bear]

Interesting that someone believes that a street attacker is going to come at them with a staff or throwing repeated front kicks with their hands down.

Almost every grading I have ever seen you go easy on the guy.

Kudo is a bit different they go flat knacker. But the tester takes that into account.

 

[ShawnP]

Yes. The defender dosent get the full benifit of the experience. The attacker trains to be a collapso tap out monkey.

I have been through both styles of training. And I find that now I can fight out of submissions I would have tapped to before.

This doesn't seem practical training unless you are learning the very basics of defense. I tried aikido for a few months and never had this kind of slow movements. Is it possible they taught a different kind of aikido than what you are showing here?

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Look. When I say realistic. What I am getting at is quite simply can you get out if the guy is committed to hanging on. Now from my experience if they have a dominant position you won't succeed very often.

I am a big advocate of doing resisted drills to a level where you can fail.

A 100% success rate is not a good indicator of a successful scenario.

And this goes back to the idea of contrived. Instead of trying and failing people feel they need to change the game so they succeed.

I'm not arguing with this. I would be a fool to say a technique will always work, and in fact there are a lot fo times when various techniques don't for me. If you purposefully put yourself in a bad position against another fighter there's no reason to assume you will always get out-otherwise that would be a good position. This is true for most SD holds. However, Rear bear hug specifically is one that I have never found a technique that as a small person I can use semi-successfully to get out. Looking for that and using it as a measuring stick of the art seems pointless to me.

Gradings are always the worst examples. Because you are never going to be the monster who makes a guy fail his belt because he couldn't get you off him. But I believe it breeds an unhelpful culture should you actually want to stop a guy with martial arts.

Two responses to this.

First, I wouldn't suggest a grading is a bad example. The point of a grading (IMO) is to show that they can do the technique. To see that, you need them to be compliant. Otherwise you will almost definitely see a bad technique. A grading is not about testing the technique, it's about testing the person, so I don't see it contributing to the culture.

Second, to the video, I have no clue what is going on there. I pray that is not an average class, if it is I feel bad for those students.

 

[drop bear]

I'm not arguing with this. I would be a fool to say a technique will always work, and in fact there are a lot fo times when various techniques don't for me. If you purposefully put yourself in a bad position against another fighter there's no reason to assume you will always get out-otherwise that would be a good position. This is true for most SD holds. However, Rear bear hug specifically is one that I have never found a technique that as a small person I can use semi-successfully to get out. Looking for that and using it as a measuring stick of the art seems pointless to me.

That is actually true for most people. So we have this position that a lot of people just wont win from.

How the martial arts handles that determines how they train.

 

[drop bear]

First, I wouldn't suggest a grading is a bad example. The point of a grading (IMO) is to show that they can do the technique. To see that, you need them to be compliant. Otherwise you will almost definitely see a bad technique. A grading is not about testing the technique, it's about testing the person, so I don't see it contributing to the culture.

You are more likely to see the persons true character when he is loosing

 

[Tony Dismukes]

The claim that this video is showing self-defense is a mistake. The video clearly shows a controlled randori in which the aikidoka is attempting to utilize principles of the art. The training of these principles are useful in self-defense, but the attacks in the video are in no way meant to resemble a modern, western style self-defense scenario.

Unfortunately, I don't think this particular video clip is a good example of demonstrating even the principles of the art. I don't know if you can apply aiki in a meaningful way with an uke who feeds a slow motion, unfocused "attack" with no actual intention and then throws himself the moment you give him the signal. It's hard to blend with an attackers energy when he doesn't have any real energy. It's not just that the "attacks" aren't representative of a modern, western self-defense scenario - they aren't representative of attacks in any geographic location or time period.

(None of this is intended as a knock against Aikido in general - just an observation regarding this particular school's approach to randori at that particular grading test on that day.)

 

[drop bear]

Unfortunately, I don't think this particular video clip is a good example of demonstrating even the principles of the art. I don't know if you can apply aiki in a meaningful way with an uke who feeds a slow motion, unfocused "attack" with no actual intention and then throws himself the moment you give him the signal. It's hard to blend with an attackers energy when he doesn't have any real energy. It's not just that the "attacks" aren't representative of a modern, western self-defense scenario - they aren't representative of attacks in any geographic location or time period.

(None of this is intended as a knock against Aikido in general - just an observation regarding this particular school's approach to randori at that particular grading test on that day.)

OK competitive randori.

OK. Unarmed vs knife is an exercise in loss. But at least you know where you stand.

Here we go akido actually being effective.

 

[hoshin1600]

After watching the clip I will say this is not aikido self defense at all. This is a training exersize. There is a list of specific responses that the person is expected to do. The hard part is to get the mind to pull a response from that list for each and every attack with out freezing up for a second and thus missing the timing of the attack.