How practical is Aikido?

I'm thinking of giving Aikido a try ... to what extent is it a practical art? (I'll still be practicing kickboxing ... so could combine it with that in a "real" situation if necessary)

 

Quite practical, in the right situation. If you want an aiki-based art for self defense, look into one that incorporates striking techniques, in my opinion. While the ideal is to not need to strike, as a beginner it will be almost nessecary for "real" situations.

Until you are fairly proficient with the aiki, it would be more effective in one or two on one situations, since you can more easily stop the person(s) without hurting them, whereas sticking with debilitating strikes would be best for several attacker scenarioes.

Do note, though, that the "gentle" arts tend to do more damage than the "hard" ones if the person recieving them decides to violently resist.

 

Too add on to what Zankuro said... yes Aikido can be very pratical. As much so as any other style of martial arts.

If Aikido has any fault though in comparison to other styles its how long it takes, how much training is involved, in order to be able to make Aikido pratical. Its a very very slow learning process compared to most styles and alot of people get disuaded by that.

 

If your good at any style you'll be a great fighter. Personally I didnt like Aikido, based on some of the faults listed above. I mean, yeah, grandmaster aikido-man could kill me, but you have to understand, aikido was created in a time of peace. There was no war. Think on that, take a few lessons, try it out, see for yourself.

 

Aikido is fine as long as you learn to punch and kick properly as well. Also, when training, you need to try against realistic attacks instead of the usual telegraphed attacks.

Aliveness gets everywhere, doesn't it...

 

I've heard it be said that you're either very very good at AKido or very very crap. It takes a long time to learn and this alone puts most people off it. I took AKido for a short while and my late master, who had been training for 30 years, was very much able to defend himself. It works and works well, but takes an age to learn.

 

Care to explain? Maybe I'm thinking of Judo or something, but Im pretty sure there was no fuedal fighting going on when aikido was developed

 

I believe, but i'm not too sure about the dates, Aikido was in the developement stages before, during and after WWII.

 

A more important question would be "Is the teacher any good at teaching?" If you go along to try it out. Don't just look at the teacher. In the case of Aikido I think it's especially important to look at the performance of everybody on the mat. That'll tell if the teachers getting the message across.

 

I love the idea of aikido and the whole philosophy and really would like to take it up but what i've seen just doesn't convince me that it works in real life.
On discovery chanell they showed a 1 hour documentary about aikido and even showed footage of Ueshiba defending himself againts multiple attackers
but it seemed staged and not real life.Someone prove me wrong because Aikido is a beautiful art but i'm not sure it works.

 

I don't know why people think it takes so long I've been doing it for a year and I can defend myself very well. But I also Train 5 times a week 4 hours a day without missing a class.

 

One thing is for sure. It doesn't mix well with kick boxing.

(I've done both)

 

The method of instructing Aikido factors in greatly with the "street" effectiveness of this art. While most will say "Aikido is a gentle, peaceful art", many others will say differently. While I was studying Karate, we rented space/time to an Aikido instructor. When my instructor laughingly referred to Aikido as "The Art of Wrist Breaking", I laughed it off and tried a class.

My wrist still hurts.

May you achieve
Satori

 

I'm yet to see Aikido that works.

 

The way I see it, there's nothing majorly wrong with knowing a few wrist locks and difficult, hard-to-pull off throws. The way some aikidoka go on though, you'd think that you can survive in real confrontations with a few dodgy wrist locks and trying to grab people's arms while they're hitting you without throwing a single punch ever- you can't.

 

Not sure about other styles of Aikido but in my school (Yoshinkan) we do include strikes. We are not so niave to not see the point of strikes... but the strikes we do make use of tend to be distractions and lead ins to other techniques and strikes for the pure sake of striking.

 

Yeah, I'm aware that some aikido people do include strikes. For me, personally, aikido is too limited to grabbing, joint-locking, throwing etc. I might consider doing some for the pure hell of learning how to do some of the more impressive stuff at some point

 

AnderwS,

The only way you ever will would be to attend a class... I made the mistake once of questioning Aikido having come from a Karate and Juijitsu background, was suggested I come at my instructor, it hurt and not him. The funny thing was is he was being gentle.

I suppose you could do the same.