Can I Make Aikido Work?

I tried Combat Aikido and this is how it went for me! Big thanks to JD Olsen from @keishidojo64 @martialartsunlimited01 for helping me out with this video!

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[martialartsunlimited]

Just want to say a big thank you to Sensei Seth for picking me to help him with this project.

[Jamoni]

I think you hit on the key to making Aikido work: it's already being able to fight. If you can fight, good Aikido might give you the option of winning with a little less damage to your opponent. It's not a stand alone martial art, it's a module you can plug in to an already functioning skillset.

[Pupcan]

I'm impressed at how often you demonstrated that a fighter can be respectful while still having doubts about whether the technique being taught would actually work.

[HoustonJones]

I came here to make a witty joke about Aikido but ended up learning instead. Great video Seth! I still believe Akito is one of the more unpractical martial arts especially since most of techniques would be very hard if not impossible to successfully perform against an experienced grappler. I commend your ability to keep an open mind and giving it an honest shot though.

[jeffmiller]

It’s interesting, I did aikido for about 10 years—including as an uchideshi—and one of the things I almost never see discussed is what I learned as the difference between practice techniques (basically partnered forms, which is most of what you see in the videos) and applied techniques: how to use this stuff in a fight. Basically stated, you do all of the circular movements and such as a way of learning your body, building a repertoire of basic techniques, etc. in much the same way as kata are used. But you learn them with a partner to begin building the foundations of randori / sparring. Then you work on how to apply those techniques in more realistic situations; with a lot less dancing around (tenkan) and a lot more moving forward and taking someone’s center / centerline (irimi), and with a fair amount of close quarters strikes that we’re hidden in the moments of the basic forms—just like kata. You then begin practicing randori.

This sounds like a long process, but I was practicing the basics of randori as soon as I graduated from the beginners class to the intermediate (about two months).

All the while, working on the kinds of mobility and body-structure business that one finds in arts like Systema, Wing Chun, etc.

I’m not arguing the aikido rules or anything, and I see a lot of non-combat applicable aikido out there. I just think that it’s worth mentioning that there is a logic to the aikido training system. I’ve trained in a number of martial arts over the last forty years, and carry rank in most of them, yet the few times I’ve had to deal with confrontations in the real world since my aikido training I’ve found that the basics of what I learned in aikido form the foundations of how I successfully responded to those confrontations.

A final caveat: In the aikido system I trained in (which comes down the lineage from Fumio Toyoda), many of the senior Japanese instructors had a solid background in other arts before they started aikido and tended to explain aikido as “martial arts graduate school.” I think this is a fair signal of the pedagogical issues at play in a lot of how aikido is taught. And I have to recognize that a lot of my own success with aikido may in some part be due to having a solid background in striking and grappling before first stepping into an aikido dojo. Of late, I’ve bumped into a number of aikido instructors who have solid striking and grappling training and who are including more striking and grappling fundamentals in their aikido instruction to fill in those gaps, as JD in this video seems to be doing. I feel that including these fundamentals for students as they’re learning the basic partnered forms, and improving them as they move into applied technics—and really explicating these applications well—will improve aikido’s reputation in the coming years.

[mesjm]

Wrist locks really are great for ground fighting. They're not used much in bjj competition because most rule sets only allow them at high grade so they aren't practiced as early

[willsnyder]

I am a stage combat practitioner and choreographer and Aikido is used heavily in a lot of choreography mainly due to its cooperativeness and flashiness rather than in spite of

[TheElbowMerchant]

Like anything else, pressure test the techniques against active resistance. Keep what works in your repertoire, disregard the rest, and move onto the next martial arts discipline to absorb. Stay super jacked, Sensei Seth!

[Szabla]

After watching this I really think you would enjoy a HEMA class covering Fiore. His whole system covers everything from grappling and striking to dagger, longsword, and pollaxe. Plus, each part of his system leads into the next. So his unarmed = his dagger =his longsword = his pollaxe. Plus, he loves armbars and groin kicks, so he's basically the Medieval Master Ken.

[shadowfighter]

I personally like aikido, every martial art has something good to learn.
Thank you for sharing ☺️.

[thedutchest]

So I started with Aikido when I was 8 years old, all the way up till I was 13. It might not be the best for combat, but it has ignited my love for fighting sports leading to boxing, kickboxing and lessons in some other disciplines aswell. Aikido also set me up with a good base for body balance, patience and discipline. My teacher was amazing, which really helped. It will always have a special place in my heart.

[TehDMCmaniac]

As an Aikido practitioner, this video was super fun to watch! Thanks for the effort!

[lionmartialartsacademy]

I’m glad he made the distinction with it being against swords. It’s what I’ve always said. The part about when dude said “Wing Chun?” Aikido “close enough” hurt my heart 😭💔

[kuzushi_kev]

JD seems like a humble guy and it’s good to see aikido looked at with an open mind

[charlescollier]

I'm really glad you did this, Seth. This makes perfect sense to me, because my Aikido experience was not at all traditional. I came from a Shotokan Karate background, and trained in Aikido with a small, informal group made up of people who were all accomplished in various traditional martial arts. We were all seasoned fighters, didn't accept anything as valid in its stylized form, and therefore tested the practical application of EVERYTHING. We worked each technique over and over for weeks at a time, in various ways, and under different conditions. We'd start off really light and cooperative, to learn the basic movements, but would progressively increase the resistance until we got to multi-attacker randori. The result was that our Aikido did not look like the seamless, swirling motions of demonstrations and traditional dojos, but it worked in the real world. I now know that's exactly what happens when you train any traditional art with live resistance - it has to change to become more functional. As a general rule, then, I don't argue when people trash Aikido. I get it. I've seen the lack of actual fighting ability that most Aikidokas display. But I also know that I've used Aikido effectively in the real world, that irimi and tenkan are legit footwork, and that the wrist locks absolutely work in a range of situations. Add to that, there's a lot of shared DNA between Aikido, Jujitsu, and Judo, and lots of opportunities for adopting and blending elements of them.

[reeveprometheus]

Aikido is an extremely effective form of self-defense. One that could save your life. The fact is, that we live in a world full of undesirable people, with uncertain intentions. Aikido teaches you not only how to be a happier and healthier person, but also to protect yourself in real life-threatening situations

Aikido training is not only good for health, but also develops self-confidence naturally for daily life. In Aikido you learn techniques to defend against a variety of attacks such as kicks, punches, single-hand or two-hand grabs from the front or rear, chokes, multiple person attacks, and attacks with weapons

The goal in Aikido is to defend yourself while trying to avoid hurting the attacker.

[supes]

Thank you for that bit at the end explaining why Aikido practitioners are always flying around. Flip over or broken wrist, I always chose flipping over. I think a lot of people miss the point. First, try to avoid a fight. Second, if someone is trying to hit you because you couldn't avoid the fight, try not to get hit (that's what all the big circular motions are for). Third, you're probably going to get hit, so fall down a lot at the dojo and condition your body to take a little abuse so that you can exploit your opponents momentum when they do hit you.

All that being said, it's not meant to take into the octagon, and don't go picking fights with pros (or anybody, really. It's the way of harmony, be cool, bro). I've used the wrist locks and arm control stuff to escort a few rowdy drunks out of bars. They get REAL compliant when they think their hand is about to be removed, but it does no permanent harm.

[thatoneleftist]

Seth, big props as always for your good-faith approach and curious mind! And while you may be a beginner with Aikido, 5:39 was some international grandmaster dad joke energy and absolutely sent me

[gw]

I'm not as anti-aikido as some people. When I was a young 20-something guy with (at the time) a mostly Muay Thai background, I had an older colleague (late 40s, early 50s) who was very good at a military combatives adaptation of Aikido/Aikijitsu/Jiujitsu and he worked me over real good. (It felt like I was like fighting a guy with three arms.) It can definitely work when the guy knows how to use it.

I find the wrist locks in Aikido to be very valid for certain self-defense scenario (crowded bar, bus, subway, etc.) where you can anticipate the confrontation enough to use the technique as a surprise and squealch the fight before blows start flying. The mechanics and concepts are also a really good segue into things like weapon retention and disarms. I've also seen guys have success adding Aikido when they're working from a foundation of another Japanese art. (Like JD in the video has a foundation in karate, though I don't know what he studied first.)

All that said...Aikido is not really something I would spend my training time on and I would not recommend it is a foundation for anyone. For most Aikido applications, even though they're valid, there always seems to me to be five or six other more reliable options from the other arts.

[piotrd.]

I like how all-anti-aikido people prove that it actually works as designed - as complementary style. Aikido has one crippling weakness built in - it uses small joint locks and levers, which when executed are painful and very difficult to heal and techniques start from position of being already attacked; therefore it is impossible to have near-full contact random sparring without risking SERIOUS injury to even trained sparring partner. Used alone it notoriously all-or-nothing - either technique will connect and there's either damage or bust. 11:40 - that's the whole idea; you do this 'flying' to AVOID injury. On untrained on unwilling person this will cause severe pain and damage.