Fighting on the street isn't even comparable to MMA. Not to take away from the hardness of any MMA fighter, but MMA is a sport. There are rules, and it's a safe environment (as safe as can be considering what happens in the octagon). You don't have to worry about the other guy poking your eye out or biting you, you probably won't die, etc.

The best thing for self defense is to be able to identify a dangerous situation, and get away from it using any means necessary, before it escalates. Getting into your car and driving away is the best thing you can do.

The other part of it is not looking like a victim, it's a body language thing.

And in these cases, Aikido is as good as any other martial art.


Having said that I'd still love to see someone use Aikido in an MMA match just for entertainment, because the only videos I've ever seen are ones like this, where the partner is going with the flow to avoid injury.


Actually now that I think about it, are you allowed to dislocate/break joints in MMA? Because the damage is likely to be permanent.

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Most martial arts are simply too specific for MMA (Teakwondo for example), and Aikido is certainly one of them. That's why many MMA fighters train in Jiu-Jitsu, it's a grabbag of techniques.
Aikido is great with throws, joint-locks and evasive moves but that's mostly it. There's no emphasis on kicking, punching or holding techniques. An Aikido-practitioner won't choke you out, he or she will break your shit. Bend your joints in ways they shouldn't or straight up break your arm. You can't unleash that in a ring where people go to earn money. No matter how many punches you can take, how many throws you can recover from, a broken wrist will end your fight. And then you're out of a job and training until it's healed for a couple of weeks.
Aikido is not flexible enough to be effective and too damaging once it can be used for full effect.
And it does work in real life, it's just the conditions for success are far narrower than with other, more versatile martial arts. That's why Krav Maga works so well in real life, it just goes to what causes the most effect. So a lot of ballskicking. And punching. And Kneeing. All the balls, all the time.

I'd like to see something like this done to a person who doesn't know Aikido.
I'm not saying it's not real or anything like that. But wondering if the guy is flying all over the place partly to make it look better because he knows "what's coming". Where as if these moves were to be performed on an untrained person would not look as spectacular.

lol We're in agreement.

Seagal's generally not popular in the aikido community.

I just wish the topic of aikido could come up without someone popping up to proclaim that it wouldn't work in the MMA.

Gliders are stupid, jet fighters are the only real way to fly.

Aikido requires the same body/mind training as any other martial art, with as much physical intensity as you want to put into it. Yes...it's not focused on agression. I don't need to train to react agressively. I need the opposite.

Motorcycles are faster than tractors. That's not going to help me plough a field. If I want to compete in MMA I'll study a martial art that's suited to it. Aikido is suited to my life and my goals.

I would never try to argue that my martial art is superior for your purposes. It's superior for my purposes.

All that aside, the video is a really enjoyable demonstration of mastery by someone who has dedicated more time and effort to her art than most martial artists, regardless of what they study or why.

So cards on the table: I am a 4th Dan student of Aikido.

I had initially written a long response explaining why I disagree with you, but I realised I don't really care and you're unlikely to change your opinion.

Each martial art (traditional, modern, boxing, HEMA, whatever) offers something different to its practitioners. If you enjoy it, keep doing it.

I'd probably get destroyed by a competent MMA fighter, but I don't do Aikido to win MMA matches.

Can I defend myself on the street? Dunno... haven't been in a fight in decades, and don't intend to either.

Do I still enjoy Aikido? Fuck yeah.

It's an interesting social phenomenon that the only people who can speak ACCURATELY about the experience of being a parent are those who have done it, but the only people who are allowed speak HONESTLY about being a parent are those who haven't.

I have only ever met one person who said "look, I love my kids and I'm glad they exist but given the choice again.... I wouldn't have had them." And when they said that, the conversation just died.

Personally, I love kids. I teach a kids Aikido class, I love playing with my friends kids and most of all, I love loading them up on sugar and adrenaline and then handing them back to their parents while I go home for a beer and a nap

Yes, it's SO true, bjj will reform your ego. I have lost track at how many times I have been choked out. I'll go back to bjj after I get my hakama in aikido. No rush, I'm not a warrior, just an individual that appreciates complex human movement. The movements in aikido are more interesting to me + bokken and jo = neat.

1. I hate writing lists like this.
2. but only because I'm afraid I don't have enough cool stuff to put on them
3. I swear.. a lot, but I get away with it... in person, because I'm Irish, and in writing, because I'm an eloquent motherfucker
4. When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a space shuttle pilot. My entire room was covered in space posters, until I was eventually convinced this wouldn't happen in my early teens (kinda hard to be a shuttle pilot when you live in a country with no space program or even an airforce).... at which point....
5. I started listening to heavy metal and for years I wanted to be a touring musician. Played in a few bands, even recorded some stuff, but I was never really that good, but I did teach my brother to start playing
6.... who is now waaaay better than I ever was, has a degree in music and releases some of my favourite music.
7. I am by a long way the most level-headed member of my family.
8. I like to think I'm resourceful (read as "watched one too many episodes of macgyver as a kid") and set myself little challenges all the time (like trying to break into my own house)
9. I've been arrested once and spent a night in a cell
10. I love the mountains (snowboarding, mountain biking) but didn't realise this until my late 20s. It's one of my great regrets that I didn't start these things sooner.
11. I'm a 3rd dan (soon to be 4th!) black belt in Aikido, but....
12. I haven't been in a fight since high school.
13. A small immature part of me really wants someone to attack me so I can find out.
14. The rest of me isn't nearly that stupid.
15. I love to cook (especially BBQ), and will happily spend all day preparing a meal for my wife or my friends.
16. I don't have or want kids, but I get on great with them (I suspect they think I roughly as mature as they are).
17. I teach a kids Aikido class.
18. I'm very good at my job, but it's just a means to an end for me. If I never needed to work again, I wouldn't.
19. No-one will read this far.
20. I think people are basically good, but they're also stupid and easily manipulated... this goes for me too.
21. I really want to travel again, but life keeps getting in the way.
22. I'm a total geek.
23. I like to look at everything from all angles, but there are somethings I have no time for (homepathy, racism, homophobia, climate deniers, etc). I don't believe in debating these people.
24. I sometimes wonder if I should put my money where my mouth is and run for public office, but then I remember that that would seriously cut into my snowboarding/mountainbiking/aikido-ing time.
25. I am very tempted to delete this list.

That's utter bullshit.

Every martial art I ever studied as a kid (aikido, tae kwon do, karate) taught us from Day 1 that you only use it in self-defense--specifically once someone else throws a punch or kick at you. It was drilled into us that we could seriously hurt someone and that fighting was a last resort when we couldn't get away. My nephews are doing karate now and their instruction is exactly the same.

I was in several fights before I started taking martial arts and never got into one again afterwards--never felt the need to. I didn't have to prove myself to anyone because my hard training in the martial arts gave me a sense of self-worth that didn't depend on others' opinions of me. Honestly, all kids should have proper (fuck McDojos) martial arts training . It teaches them discipline, respect, and perseverance.

That's where arts like japanese jiu jitsu, aikido, hapkido and so on come in very handy.

When someone grabs you (AKA offers their hand to you lol), you just bend their hand in a way it's not supposed to bend and they'll be letting go very quickly

The best thing there is that you can apply the right amount of force that is necessary, and gradually increasing if required. If it's someone like this you would apply just enough to begin causing pain and allow them make up their mind. If they don't stop then you keep applying force until either they let go or they end up on the floor with a broken wrist/elbow/shoulder.

The other cool thing about that is, it works on people twice as big as you, because your body weight > the amount of strength anyone's joint has.

Hoping to do a few splitboarding trips into the backcountry and will probably experiment with some Aikido related videos, but I don't know how successful the results will be

Interesting video, but I don't think he's saying anything new here.

It really does take a long time to get good at something (10000 hours seems to be the most common figure). For me I've been working at my job (programmer) for about 15 years now. So 15 years * ~45 weeks a year * ~ 35 hours a week of actual work (not counting meetings, phone calls and other distractions) = 23000 hours. So after 7 years was when I consider I became really good at my job.

Contrast that with my primary leisure activity, Aikido. I've been training for about 10 years and I usually do around 250 hours a year (roughly 5 hours a week give or take) that's still only 2500 hours. So I figure I'll be REALLY good roughly when I hit 60

I'm far from an expert, but I've spent a lot of time practicing with a bokken (wooden training sword) and the technique he shows here (control/pivot with the right hand, cut with the left) is pretty much identical to a Japanese sword cut (at least as practiced in Aikido and Iaido).

Of course, we all know that Katanas are crap the BEST SOWARD EVAAR!