Your teacher and O Sensei is literally the reason I began my career..his videos are not only great with detail but therapeutic in his spirit..calm and serious..kind and humorous. I hope I can come train with you all one day. JS..from the Chi🙏🏾
I think the reason many people misunderstand aikido, and they make fun and mock it is mainly because in many (notice I did not say "all") aikido schools, the training methods do not appear to be realistic to them. So they see uke comically running at nage with out stretched arms, trying to grab his wrist. Or they see uke deliver a theatrical, exaggerated "karate chop" type of strike from overhead. They see Steven Seagal doing "randori" against five guys who attack him one by one, and he easily throws all of them, with many of them going flying through the air even without him touching them. And they question it because they wonder, "How the heck can that be real when even a world champion boxer, a really good wrestler, or a really good BJJ practitioner would have great difficulty defeating just two people, let alone five. In addition, since many aikido schools do not pressure test their techniques, that causes added doubt in people's minds. So when people see this, they laugh because it does not look genuine to them. So I think this is why aikido is misunderstood and receives a lot of trash talk. In my experience, it is rare for people to doubt the authenticity of western boxing, muay thai, BJJ, judo, or wrestling. Because all they need to do is test it out for themselves at the gym, and they'll quickly find out how helpless they are against a trained practitioner in any of those disciplines. When I first started BJJ, a tiny 110-lb female blue belt locked in a triangle on me so fast that before I even knew what was happening, she was already squeezing and pulling my head down. She kindly released the choke when she realized that I didn't even know what was going on. It's a very humbling experience to see 90-lb 7th graders are having their way with grown men.
1989 I was working on my psychology degree, I remember taking a philosophy class, the teacher gave us the final. He said, define love. Damn, I couldn’t write anything. I asked the teacher if, i could take the class with him again. Well, the second time, I learned of phenomenology which was from husseral who taught heidgger. I then learned of Kitano Nishida and Zen Buddhism. That was my search for what is the meaning of life. I still am searching. I am still a biginner 😅
My message to every new student of aikido. There is an adage in fighting and it goes like this... "You fight like you train". If you do not practice against real aggression and put real (as opposd to mythical "ki") power into every technique, you will never be able to defend yourself. Train every technique like your life depends on it because one day it will determine whether you live or die if you take on an assailant who is hell bent on doing you physical harm. You have to know what it is like to hit, to get hit and to get hard, even suffering injury - it is that simple and no amount of hero worship of your founder will change that.
I think it’s thought to be useless because it’s not made for competing in a ring or cage. It’s made for police officers, bouncers and prison guards who all use Aikido in the job on a daily basis. There is a reason why prison guards, bouncers and police officers don’t use MMA, boxing or wrestling on the job. Otherwise they’d be using it. They use Aikido. And what these nimrods that watch MMA don’t understand and cannot comprehend is that people that practice Aikido don’t have the slightest interest in competition.
I'm beginning to understand the way of teaching you received from Furuya Sensei. It does sound abusive at first with the yelling and attacks. But I can also look back at the people in my life, uni teachers, bosses and managers etc, and the ones that did yell at me, did help me improve and made me a better person/worker. But at the dojo, in a western country and being non-Japanese, I don't know if we could apply those methods. I certainly don't want to yell and lose my temper.
Aikido is a martial art that works until old age. Imagine if u r an old guy living in a village and a bunch of unarmed dudes comes to rape ur village . Even the old age will pick up weapons to fight. And if that old guy is a master of Shihonage, wouldn’t it be hard to grab his hands to stop him from stabbing his enemies? This is why o sensei say all u really need to master is shihonage. Aikido is used with a weapon.
It can be useful in disarming overly committed attacks from the untrained, or controlling those over whom you have a significant advantage to begin with.
it depends on how you train it. If you learn how to move in balance and time your use of power it wont be useless, because you'll have learned what's most important in marital arts and fighting.
Your teacher and O Sensei is literally the reason I began my career..his videos are not only great with detail but therapeutic in his spirit..calm and serious..kind and humorous. I hope I can come train with you all one day.
JS..from the Chi🙏🏾
I think the reason many people misunderstand aikido, and they make fun and mock it is mainly because in many (notice I did not say "all") aikido schools, the training methods do not appear to be realistic to them. So they see uke comically running at nage with out stretched arms, trying to grab his wrist. Or they see uke deliver a theatrical, exaggerated "karate chop" type of strike from overhead. They see Steven Seagal doing "randori" against five guys who attack him one by one, and he easily throws all of them, with many of them going flying through the air even without him touching them. And they question it because they wonder, "How the heck can that be real when even a world champion boxer, a really good wrestler, or a really good BJJ practitioner would have great difficulty defeating just two people, let alone five. In addition, since many aikido schools do not pressure test their techniques, that causes added doubt in people's minds. So when people see this, they laugh because it does not look genuine to them. So I think this is why aikido is misunderstood and receives a lot of trash talk. In my experience, it is rare for people to doubt the authenticity of western boxing, muay thai, BJJ, judo, or wrestling. Because all they need to do is test it out for themselves at the gym, and they'll quickly find out how helpless they are against a trained practitioner in any of those disciplines. When I first started BJJ, a tiny 110-lb female blue belt locked in a triangle on me so fast that before I even knew what was happening, she was already squeezing and pulling my head down. She kindly released the choke when she realized that I didn't even know what was going on. It's a very humbling experience to see 90-lb 7th graders are having their way with grown men.
1989 I was working on my psychology degree, I remember taking a philosophy class, the teacher gave us the final. He said, define love. Damn, I couldn’t write anything. I asked the teacher if, i could take the class with him again. Well, the second time, I learned of phenomenology which was from husseral who taught heidgger. I then learned of Kitano Nishida and Zen Buddhism. That was my search for what is the meaning of life. I still am searching. I am still a biginner 😅
My message to every new student of aikido. There is an adage in fighting and it goes like this... "You fight like you train". If you do not practice against real aggression and put real (as opposd to mythical "ki") power into every technique, you will never be able to defend yourself. Train every technique like your life depends on it because one day it will determine whether you live or die if you take on an assailant who is hell bent on doing you physical harm. You have to know what it is like to hit, to get hit and to get hard, even suffering injury - it is that simple and no amount of hero worship of your founder will change that.
I think it’s thought to be useless because it’s not made for competing in a ring or cage. It’s made for police officers, bouncers and prison guards who all use Aikido in the job on a daily basis.
There is a reason why prison guards, bouncers and police officers don’t use MMA, boxing or wrestling on the job. Otherwise they’d be using it. They use Aikido.
And what these nimrods that watch MMA don’t understand and cannot comprehend is that people that practice Aikido don’t have the slightest interest in competition.
100% Thanks for watching!
I'm beginning to understand the way of teaching you received from Furuya Sensei. It does sound abusive at first with the yelling and attacks. But I can also look back at the people in my life, uni teachers, bosses and managers etc, and the ones that did yell at me, did help me improve and made me a better person/worker.
But at the dojo, in a western country and being non-Japanese, I don't know if we could apply those methods. I certainly don't want to yell and lose my temper.
Love the podcast, thank you 👍👍
Thanks for listening and watching.
Very good podcast, thank you for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Excellent thank you for your effort.
Thank you for watching!
Excellent!
Many thanks Brigido!
Aikido is a martial art that works until old age. Imagine if u r an old guy living in a village and a bunch of unarmed dudes comes to rape ur village . Even the old age will pick up weapons to fight. And if that old guy is a master of Shihonage, wouldn’t it be hard to grab his hands to stop him from stabbing his enemies? This is why o sensei say all u really need to master is shihonage. Aikido is used with a weapon.
newsflash, it doesn't work on unwilling opponents
In what way is Aikido misunderstood?
I believe Aikido to be useless
It can be useful in disarming overly committed attacks from the untrained, or controlling those over whom you have a significant advantage to begin with.
it depends on how you train it. If you learn how to move in balance and time your use of power it wont be useless, because you'll have learned what's most important in marital arts and fighting.
@rojcewiczj ok and do you think that is valid for iaido? I plan to learn it, not for fighting skills, obviously, but because I love katanas.
@sebozz2046 yes
Policemen, bouncers and prison guards all over the world that use Aikido on the job might not agree with you.