He seems like a good instructor. A realist. [ame="www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB01hhonf8Q"]Aikido Basic Techniques : Munetsuki Kotegaeshi - YouTube[/ame] [ame="www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMEFlZzDU9Y&feature=relmfu"]Aikido Basic Techniques : Katate Tori Hantai Nikyo - YouTube[/ame]
I often watch his clips, I like his no nonesense approach to aikido. In my opinion he is a very good sensei.
I don't like his footwork and there are several details on his technique for both kotegaeshi and nikkajo I would consider beginner mistakes.
Look at Uke in the Nikyo video. At not one point is he extended and off balance. He is completely grounded and comfortable and could easily resist the technique if he wanted to. The instructor applying the technique is using nothing but his arms to apply the nikyo. No connection to the rest of his body or to Uke's body. All arms, completely disconnected. It's concerning that he doesn't talk about taking Uke's balance in either of the videos you posted
Well my way of using Aikido for the street would be to start with a backfist, if he blocks that then you have ikkyo and variations if he doesn't, and he is still standing, then just grab a wrist and do your business.being defensive does not mean not attacking
I think if you go through some of his other clips he adds more detail the more advanced the techniques get. I don't for one minute claim that he is techincaly perfect but I do like his techniques and as far as online 'how to's' go I think his instruction is good.
Well you see to me Aikido generally doesn't work because people practice it against silly attacks, have obliging partners and are not prepared to look outside the box. When people decide to try to make aikido effective in a fighting sense, they usually end up doing something that doesn't look like aikido. The problem is to do something that resembles Aikido and yet is effective.
there's a lot of truth to what you say jorvik. but i also think that most teachers don't teach a martial style of aikido. morihei ueshiba himself said that aikido is mostly atemi. but i've only ever seen a handful of instructors even mention it, only two outright show when/where to strike. maybe it's the practice of aikido as envisioned by kisshomaru? or the fact that aikido changed post-war? i would have loved to train in iwama aikido, which seems like a much more martial version of the art that's out there now.
Keep in mind that a lot of the techniques, though they can be used effectively depending on the situation, are more for training than for application in many cases. Look at the more advanced aikido of someone like Shioda. You don't see a lot of hijiate kokyunage, or kotegaeshi, or ikkajo nage. What you see is, because he had the distance and timing down from having trained with progressively more resistance, a lot of irimitsuki and just simply power projection into the uke's structure.
Well really you have to look at how Aikido developed. A lot of the aiki bunnies are from the Aikikai. Yoshinkan and certainly Iwama turn out a different breed altogether. I rate sport Aikido as well, again a lot more effective than Aikikai...but that is just my opinion. Certainly with Yoshinkan ( and I have seen them do kotaegaesh) it is a lot easy to imagine that used in a barfight.
from what ive read of yoshinkan guys from the hombu(?) in a barfight (angry white pyjamas) none used aikido to kick the crap out of people. iwama aikido - wasnt that koyo style?
Koyo did Iwama style I believe , because he talked of training with Saito Sensei there is a tale of Gozo Shioda getting in a fight in Angry Whilte pyjamas and breaking a guy's arm.worth noting that Yoshinkan is the style taught to the Tokyo Riot police
yeah koyo said he had an iwama teaching scroll for sword techniques. i remember reading in angry white pyjamas that after shioda's death, many of the foreigner instructors got into a bar fight and when asked if they used aikido they all said "not really". i think it was more the footwork, conditioning (yoshinkan seems hard on that) and some atemi that played the main part in them kicking ass
but then again shioda did say: so i guess he wasnt bothered about what is and isnt considered "aikido" only what is considered effective.
Yep. All he was concerned with was distance, timing, angle, using those three well so you blend and power from structure.
He certainly was an interesting charachter. He used to have two dogs that he used to get to attack him so that he could practice Tai sabaki.........
One thing that turned me off to Boaz was watching one of his videos in which he redesigns shomenuchi to be a strike to the collarbone, saying that shomenuchi is an unrealistic attack. I thought this was kind of silly, because (a) shomenuchi isn't supposed to be a realistic attack--it's supposed to mimic a sword cut--and (b) an overhand chop isn't a realistic attack any way you slice it. Boaz, in my mind, is too much in the business of "fixing" aikido, and I never thought it was broken. I mean, the guy clearly has skills, but I don't really like his approach.
Showmen uchi is a training tool for straight line attacks at the head and neck. For example if I use fak sau or biu sau you can (if you're skilled enough) do shomen uchi techniques from those attacks because the angle of attack isn't actually that different. Keep in mind shomen uchi is not a circular attack. When you follow the line of the wrist on a properly done shomen uchi it is actually a straight line. That and he makes some very basic errors. If he didn't he wouldn't have to "fix" his aikido.
