Archive through January 23, 2007

Tim's Discussion Board: Martial Arts - Miscellaneous: Aikido when no one is trying to fall down.: Archive through January 23, 2007
   By chris hein on Thursday, January 18, 2007 - 07:56 pm: Edit Post

Here are a couple clips of Randori at my school. One guy has a knife (because I don't think Aikido techniques are designed to be used empty handed) and the other guy is unarmed. It starts once a firm grip on the knife hand is applied (you know like Aikido) and goes till there is a submission, throw, cut/stab or escape. Both people are trying NOT to get thrown or other wise abused. This is noncooperative Aikido.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KAbbKRhnN4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DQqNusSNqI


   By Ventura on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 03:23 pm: Edit Post

Interesting idea Chris!


   By Craig on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 04:48 pm: Edit Post

Really nice work. It would be nice to see more Aikido like this. Maybe some other Aikido schools will get inspired by this kind of training.


   By Richard S. on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 05:53 pm: Edit Post

Nice stuff Chris. I trained in an Aikikai dojo that did noncooperative partner practice sometimes, but only for the people with more than a year of experience. And I have seen some Tomiki schools doing interesting pushhand type sentivity training to work on realistic unbalancing skills. There is a lot of variety in the Aikido world, but far too few teachers take the care to ensure their Aikido "works". Thanks for the good work.


   By Kit Leblanc on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 03:09 am: Edit Post

Aikido+resistance= I see the judo coming out!


Excellent work, Chris. You have my admiration for training honestly and with integrity.

Now just wait for all the Aiki-bunnies to see these vids and tell you everything you are doing wrong!!


   By Jason M. Struck on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 08:05 am: Edit Post

drilling tsuri komi goshi.

24-7

HAHA! I made the first two sentences a post before finishing the video!

Yeah, if you are grabbing wirsts/sleeves all the time, there are going to be lots of oppurtunities for tssuri komi goshi.

Have you and your students ever thrown down with the local Judo club?
It might round out your footwork and grip fighting nicely.


   By alienpig on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 09:07 am: Edit Post

Why does the guy with the knife keep letting the other guy grab his wrist? A half decent knife fighter is not going to let you do that. Once you get those "pincer" nerves cut, you're not going to be grabbing anything. Also, it hardly looks like resistence given that it doesn't look like anybody could get hurt. I'm not suggesting that "seriously hurt" should suffice for resistence, but you would think that at least bruising should be expected for "resistence" training. Of course its only a clip, and perhaps we're just seeing a small part.


   By chris hein on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 05:54 pm: Edit Post

alienpig,
Bruising? Are you using a quaint colloquialism, or do you literally mean bruising? This is only one type of drill we are doing. The objective is to move once someone already has your knife hand grabbed (the time that the kihon techniques of Aikido would be useful). It might not seem like a big deal to escape someone who is holding your wrist, but If there is more then one guy coming for you need to be as efficient as possible at getting free. In short the guy with the knife lets the other guy grab him, so he can work on that part of the practice.
We also drill from no grab, but it's much easier for the knifer to win, and I believe that that is not what the kihon techniques of Aikido were primarily designed for. I believe the system is mostly about what to do if you HAVE a weapon, and other attackers are tying to stop you from using it. However the training does have the side effect of making one guy better at dealing with an armed attacker. We call it a resistive practice because the other guy is tying to keep you from achieving your objective (Throw, Cut/Stab, Submit, Escape), not because he is trying to kill you.

Jason,
We train wrist grabbing/ sleeve grabbing because that's what the syllabus of Aikido is designed to do. We believe that Aikido is a weapons system and all the wrist/sleeve grabbing is done to keep someone from stabbing you. If you check out the videos there is much more then just tsuri komi goshi (Koshi Nage) going on. Just in these videos you see, shihonage (just attempted though) sankyo, yonkyo, ikkyo, kokyu nage, nikyo, koshi nage, seoinage, just to name a few, and thats just on these short clips. I have pulled off almost all of the techniques of Aikido at one point or another doing this type of practice, where as when I was training solely unarmed I only got one or two ever. By changing the focus (to the weapon hand) different techniques become available, and in fact preferable. Aikido's techniques set ups (the way you set up the technique) also become applicable, something that doesn’t happen much in unarmed fighting.

-Chris Hein


   By alienpig on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 11:13 pm: Edit Post

Thanks for clearing that up, sometimes on this sight I get the sense that there is more of technical vocabulary with "resistence" "co-opertaive" "competitive" and this is somewhat different to what I intende by those meanings. i.e I,e, I consider a lot of my own 2 person training as cooperative-resistence, co-operative in the sense that you attack with "gusto" for your opponents benefit, so you can both learn something, hence this is not competitive, but resistence in that when I get bruised or injured in that I attack such that I force my opponent to do something nasty, or when attacked, ienevitably do stuff up, and get injured because of my folly. Note that if you look up Dr. Fungs you tube things, I would regard that as cooperative in the guise of being resistence, ergo useless.


   By Kit Leblanc on Sunday, January 21, 2007 - 01:01 am: Edit Post

Chris makes a good point re: weapons.

Historically, Aikido, like Judo, comes from older jujutsu styles. While I would argue Aikido is no longer primarily a weapons system, and less so judo, when you add weapons to realistic practice, you start seeing all sorts of stuff come out.

The same is true with BJJ. Start on the ground, but give one guy a knife, and you start seeing a lot of what looks like traditional JJ "battlefield grappling" type stuff develop. Give both knives and the fun really begins!!

The same is true in the practice of weapon disarming and weapon retention with firearms - and in arrest and control, which is concerned with controlling a subject's access to weapons during the cuffing process. All have their antecedents in traditional JJ skills. All sorts of locks and throws off of locks start presenting themselves that tend not to happen in unarmed fighting.

I think the reason for this is because people start concentrating on controlling the weapon. That leaves them "open" to things they would not normally be as they have a different focus. Some systems teach "fight the man not the weapon" but then go on to ignore the weapon. Do this with real resistance , in other words the other guy actually trying to stab you, shoot you, or take your gun away from you and you will get stabbed, shot, or disarmed. The key is "fight the man after controlling the weapon, and maintain control of the weapon."

That is what it appears Chris is doing here. The nature of randori, and the skillsets used in randori, and by that I mean adversarial training where one guy is attempting to "beat" the other, change a lot when a weapon is introduced.


   By chris hein on Sunday, January 21, 2007 - 03:46 pm: Edit Post

Kit,
It's clear that if you look at the traditional syllabus of most ryu in traditional Japanese jiu jutsu, you will see that the techniques heavily favored are those involving control of a weapon hand. There are a million koryu jiu jitsu schools so it's hard to make to many generalities, but to me it seems that most all of them favor techniques for braking/locking arms and wrists. What I have seen in my training is that these come up the most and work the best when you are trying to deal with an armed attacker.

Now in systems like judo, or Brazilian jiu jitsu, people have been working on them for years using them as unarmed systems. They have been developed and practiced as unarmed systems. Their technical syllabus has developed around the idea of fighting a man with out a weapon, so now that's what they are particularly good at.

Aikido has not had this. Aikido's techniques come from people obsessed with sword culture. The techniques that comprise Aikido's technical syllabus were chosen (in my opinion) to combat people trying to stop me when I have a weapon, or to have to stop someone with a weapon. Now everyone in the world has decided that Aikido is not a weapons system, so they try and train it like it's not a weapons system, but they have no resistive practice. And since they never practice against resistance, they don't really know what "works" and what doesn't. No one has ever changed the syllabus over to a non weapon oriented skill set.

So I would say that Aikido is in fact not an unarmed system, because no one ever worked with it to make it that.


   By Jason M. Struck on Monday, January 22, 2007 - 08:10 am: Edit Post

chris
I studied Tomiki Ryu for a little while, and am at least somewhat familiar with the major concepts/focuses of aikido generally.

I think that your drill is great.

I have also observed what you are describing: shifting focus definitely changes the nature of what's most efficient or easiest or most readily presents itself.

I train more time in Judo than anything else. However, I rarely EVER throw judoka in a pleasing manner...
When I train in San Da, or MMA type stuff, I throw people left and right! I take a lot more jabs in the face though as well...


   By Richard S. on Monday, January 22, 2007 - 09:42 am: Edit Post

IMHO If someone really tried to rework the Aikido syllabus to be a totally unarmed system it would look amazingly like Judo.


   By Tim on Monday, January 22, 2007 - 12:54 pm: Edit Post

Richard has hit the mark.


   By Richard S. on Monday, January 22, 2007 - 04:44 pm: Edit Post

Tim agrees with me so I must be right :-)

Seriously... In my opinion if you are going to take the time to study Aikido you should either find a sporty dojo (Tomiki) that is Judo-ish. Or find an old-school Aiki-Budo dojo (Iwama-ryu like Chris) that embraces real classical Aikido with plenty of weapons work. Unfortunately there are a lot of schools that fall in the middle who do not emphasize weapons training and consider "judo-ish" an insult. These are the ones that rely on overly-cooperative partner practice to keep the myth alive they can actually apply their art.


   By chris hein on Monday, January 22, 2007 - 05:17 pm: Edit Post

Correct,
If you train Aikido the way it was intended to be trained I think it works great (if you are willing to put in the resistive training hours). And if you want to fight unarmed, what's wrong with Judo? If I wanted useful unarmed training I would go to Judo way before I would go to Tomiki. Judo is way more complete and there is no tomfoolery about what they are training to do.

-Chris


   By alienpig on Monday, January 22, 2007 - 09:53 pm: Edit Post

What is it for a martial art to be "complete" - and can it come in degrees?


   By chris hein on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 01:32 am: Edit Post

I just mean there are only so many kinds of things you can do in a fight. Like Grapple, Throw, strike. And only two common places to do it, on the ground and standing. Judo is a fairly complete martial art because it teaches grappling and throwing, ground and standing techniques. It has a pretty full syllabus, and there are lots of people who are really good useing it with resistance. Were as Tomiki is a different thing all together.

-Chris


   By Ventura on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 02:15 pm: Edit Post

Aikido training usually begins with grips. I think Chris is on the right track with his training method. Later on you can incorporate how to get the grips from an attacking opponent. I'm sure Chris is working this out. I can't wait to see the clips. Good job Chris.


   By Kit Leblanc on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 05:29 pm: Edit Post

I should clarify my position RE: aikido.

Certainly, aikido comes directly from Daito-ryu, which has a weapons base - it is even now debated in the aikijujutsu community whether it is an empty hand art derived from sword principles or whether there is a jujutsu antecdent to it as well (let alone a sumo base...). Ueshiba studied Daito-ryu and there is no debate that aikido

Agreed most traditional jujutsu approach conflict with a weapons focus as well.But by that measure, Judo is a "weapons based art" as well as an art of "grappling in armor." It preserves weapons practice in its kata (most of which derive directly from classical jujutsu, re-organized by Kano, or ARE classical jujutsu, as in the Kito-ryu forms preserved in the Koshiki no kata) and many throws performed in these kata are done in randori.

The nature of the practice is at issue as well. I know a number of classical martial artists, and have trained with some, several of whom are/were aikidoka. Almost universally they consider aikido to be a poor representation of weapons based training from classical perspective, in particular aikido's weapons-specific training, regardless of lineage (yep, including Iwama), and despite Ueshiba's obvious weapons background. Things like that don't necessarily transmit, based on the practice of student, not on what the teacher did.

Whether any of these methods practice with weapons realistically is another issue, including the most super-duper killer-combat samurai battle tradition.

That is where I think what Chris is doing is, better put, bringing back a realistic weapons base to his aikido.