As a techie I've been playing about with google analytic to check trends online. Google trends has shown a massive decline in the popularity of aikido as a search term over the last 10 years. Bjj is now a more popular search term than aikido, and bjj hasn't truly went global yet ( there are entire countries without a single bjj black belt, for instance). Google forecasts predict the continue decline of people looking for aikido. Why has aikido declined in popularity so much? Other traditional martial arts, like karate, continue to remain popular. Any thoughts? As a former aikido student it's sad to see.
Different styles trend up and down over years. No big deal. And I have heard others say that other traditional arts have indeed taken a hit lately. Search terms aren't the be all and end all of determining the popularity of something. Have you done any analysis of number of people practicing? Number of schools over the last 10 years? Orgainizations and members? 5 years ago, there was barely anyone in our Tai Chi Chuan classes. Consensus was Yoga was the in thing more than TCC. Right now our classes are very full copared to then.
I think this is in large due to the fact that aikido doesn't hardly feature in MMA. Many TMA styles are represented in MMA, not always as standalone style but they are seen as valuable components to someone's MMA game. I don't think aikido is viewed in this way often. For many youngsters their opinions on what's a 'good' style to learn will be based around mma (largely due to marketing) so aikido gets little attention from many of the younger generations. There are many aspects to aikido that are still popular, the whole budo culture is still very much alive and so I don't think aikido is ever going to completely die out. It just isn't attracting so many people looking for mma or 'street' martial arts, thinking of how aikido is portrayed in old Stephen Segal films. That's just my thinkings, based on nothing other than my own questionable thought processes. I may be totaly wrong but that made sense in my brain.
I'd have to say it has something to do with MMA. At the same time though, MOST people in BJJ classes don't do MMA, or at least, don't take it seriously enough to train kickboxing half as much as BJJ. I think it's just a trend. If you googled "karate" trend in the 70's/80's, it would have been huge because of the Karate Kid. Same as Rocky and boxing.
Aikido was never massively popular compared to most of the "bread and butter" TMA's - due in part to being a tad more subtle in execution (read "harder") and in the pre-Seagal days it was pretty much seen as "Judo for hippies" It is probably more popular than ever if you look at numbers of practitioners, but has less media exposure so it seems relatively less represented
I agree. Most budoka in pre-WW2 Japan thought that aikido offered them something. The masses nowadays will ask , "what will aikido offer them?", "will they like it?", and "IS THERE SOMETHING ELSE BETTER?". With the VISUAL PREVALENCE of other arts' efficacy, of course they will settle where the grass is greener. Well, those who are primarily interested in BJJ today probably won't gravitate to MMA that much. MMA grappling in recent times has diverged with what the current trends in high ranking BJJ. No thanks to the "make love, not war" and "protect your attacker" club, I gather... :evil:
Aikido isn't massively advertised and never was. So it's probably more surprising that it ever did well in search trends. It might sound odd. But I'm betting a lot of people got involved because of Steven Seagal's movies. Now he's fallen so far off the grid that best/worst endorsement isn't there any more. Personally I think it might be a good thing. Aikido doesn't translate well to the mass market. It's wide open to abuse, suffers massively from dilution and it takes a long time for most to get the basics down.
As has been said , BJJ is the most fashionable martial art at the moment , hence it being high in the search ratings. The other thing to consider is the internet itself , pretty much whenever someone asks about doing Aikido on a forum , the majority of replies are along the lines of do judo instead , couple this to some of the truly awful videos out there people tend to not bother.
The "west" is a big place dude. I've never heard of Esalen. Always good to learn something new. I'll need to look into that.
This isn't a blip though. This is a massive and continued decline over a 10 year period. Aikido has fallen a massive 80% in popularity as a search term over the last 10 years though and is forecast to continue to drop. It is not realistic to get membership numbers on a large scale. There are too many organisations in too many countries. Plus martial arts orgs tend to provide unverifiable figures. Anecdotally, I know of 2 aikido clubs that have folded in my area within the past 3 years. My old club only has around 5-6 regular members now. Whereas web analytics are not the be all and end all, the massive and sustained drop off in aikido (when other TMA remain fairly steady) to me is an alarming trend which is indicative of a more serious decline in Aikido. It does not definitively show aikido is in decline, but I don't believe it can be ignored either.
I don't think you have enough evidence of a real decline to be alarmed. And again, I am not so sure other TMA's are as steady as you say. Google searches are not the be all and end all as evidence IMO.
I would be surprised if there wasn't a decline in the popularity of aikido. When I started in martial arts as a school kid in the eighties and nineties there were very few accurate sources of information about the martial arts. You could get dry overviews of some of the more common arts from encyclopedias, but for detailed knowledge you had to find books on martial arts. These were generally written by someone with a vested interest in a particular art, and often the authors only had a passing acquaintance with reality. Magazines such as "Black Belt Magazine" or "Inside Kung Fu" were also available, but these never really adopted a critical perspective and actually promulgated some of the more bizarre claims. The internet was available, but dial-up connections and a lack of content made it pretty useless as a place to find information on martial arts. Most of what I thought I knew about martial arts by the age of 18 was stuff I had been told by other kids or picked up from movies and books. It wasn't because I was stupid, it was because the quality of information available at that time was poor. The internet has changed all this. Now, if you actively seek information on any martial art it is easily available. For every so-called master claiming secret inheritance of martial knowledge from a buddhist monk up some mountain in some far-off country, there are sceptics challenging their claims. This is a new development. False lineages and bad techniques both get challenged now. The ubiquity of phone cameras now means you can find videos of any art you can imagine, and you can see how well most of them do in an altercation. The myth of 80 year old masters with technique so perfect that they can defeat young athletic men without breaking a sweat has died. Easy access to information has ended a lot of the mystery and hocus-pocus that has traditionally surrounded the martial arts. People now see martial arts as a physical endeavour much like any other, where athleticism necessarily goes hand-in-hand with technique. Because advances in technology have made information sharing so easy, evidence of effectiveness is expected. We are also at the point where absence of evidence is becoming evidence of absence. Looking specifically at aikido; when I was a kid I ranked aikidoka alongside shaolin monks in terms of deadly abilities. I always knew it wasn't the quickest way to learn to fight, but I was under the impression that if I applied myself I would be capable of taking down multiple street thugs without breaking a sweat. Essentially I had a very distorted idea of what fighting abilities I could hope to gain by studying aikido. Some of my distorted ideas came directly from the Aikido instructor I trained under briefly. Now that much more information is available I tend towards the perspective that aikido can offer someone already skilled in an art like BJJ or judo some additional tools for their arsenals. If someone studied aikido (and only aikido) for the next 20 years I am of the opinion that they still wouldn't be able to fight. Sure, they will have good break-fall skills, and they probably would have enjoyed their training, but I would put money on a Thai boxer with two years of training vs a aikidoka with 20 years of training. It's no wonder that arts like aikido are losing popularity. There will always be a market for aikido, but now that people are becoming aware of precisely how effective aikido isn't, that market will shrink. Instead of attracting people seeking to become the next Steven Seagal supercop character, aikido will have to appeal to people who don't want to fight, but are interested in a calm and low impact hobby with cultural trimmings. Some aikido dojo will probably adapt and try to transform into a serious martial art, but my guess is it will be doomed to being the next Tai Chi (you can find effective Tai Chi, but it is really a separate entity to what most people consider as Tai Chi). The internet has had a dramatic impact on the Martial Arts industry, I would argue the effect the internet has had is far larger than the impact from the rise of the UFC. Information is so freely available now, and (by necessity) people are becoming far more competent at separating truth from fiction that any arts that previously marketed themselves as something they aren't are now struggling. On the other hand, competitive arts that were previously overshadowed by arts claiming to provide skills verging on magical, are now on the rise. Wrestling and boxing are now considered martial arts. Judo isn't just a sport for kids who are trying to avoid bullys. We are entering an era where evidence and rationality dominate.
As many people have pointed out in the past - internet presence does not equal real-life presence. If you read the internet, about 70% of karate is kyokushinkaikan. In real life, the chances of your local karate club being kyok are pretty slim.
Erm.... No it doesn't. The term Kyokushin is even less popular than aikido as a search term. Here is the popularity of Kyokushin compared to the popularity of karate as a search term http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=karate%2C%20kyokushin&cmpt=q Now, I have acknowledged that web analytics only tell you so much, they are not the be all and end all. What they are not though, is "some guys opinion online". This is applied mathematics. These are based on numbers, not subjective opinions. It's not my opinion Aikido has dropped off as a popular search term, it's a quantitative fact. Again, I accept you can read too much in to it. I also think totally ignoring it is akin to sticking your head in the sand and pretending everything is ok. If anyone else has any data available I'd be happy to look at it. Data on say, participation rates. I've found that data either unreliable or non-existent so far. I'd rather have a discussion centred on numbers than subjective opinions on "blips" or "trends" or "the internet is all lies" etc... But if that's the direction people want to take it then ok.
Would be interesting to see a MA popularity index based on Web stats, in the same vein as the Tiobe index for programming languages
