Thinking about Aikido

What I'm doing is trying one free class in each style that interests me. That's what I did with the muay thai class. Next is an aikido class next Monday. After that I may try a boxing class.

I agree with sucking it up a bit chadderz. Even by doing martial arts I am committed to doing just that. I'll be honest, since I started dealing with physical issues I had become over protective of my body out of fear of doing something that would hurt my music career. I'm trying to get past that fear in my life.

On another note, one of the big considerations with the style I choose to study is being able to practice by myself when I'm on the road touring. I always want to be getting better. So I'm sure that will effect my decision.

 

Excellent tactic. And one I'd advise doing in a year or so again. By that time you might have a different perspective and see something of value where you didn't before.

And I only recommended FMA because a drummer will pick it up fast. You will get hit in the hands though (often by accident). Everyone that does FMA has heard the familiar sound of the click-clack of sticks punctuated by a dull thud as something hits flesh instead.

 

With BJJ that's limited. Without another body you'll be limited to conditioning work (always something worthwhile to invest in) and/or solo flow or movement drills.
With Thai that will also be fairly limited but you can always do road work, skip, shadow box or find a local gym with a heavy bag and do some rounds.
With Aikido I'm not sure what you'd do solo. Run through the forms perhaps or do some breakfalls.
FMA are quite good for solo work as they often contain forms to run through and you can freeform shadow fight much like in boxing. Like this...

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WoMgotN90I"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WoMgotN90I[/ame]

 

On the military base where I live a aikido player got his knee blown out a month or so ago by a tkd player in a match. Not sure about his level of skill...

 

Well to be fair, bjj has a lot of solo drills, although you would require a mat. Also, you have BJJ Globetrotters website, and generally speaking a lot of places won't charge a mat fee for a one off session. Looks better if you phone in advance and make them aware of your situation though.

 

Not me!!
What happened is the TKD guy wouldn't attack and the Aikido player wouldn't either so they sort of moved around each other until the Aikido guy attacked. The other fighter did a side kick into the knee of the Aikido player and blew out two of his ligaments...It will probably end his miltary career...

 

Well the aikido guy is kind of a jerk. He was one of those 'no one can beat my art' and he didn't want to use pads of any kind so it was kind of a not really any rules kind of match. Yeah it sucked for the guy with the knee injury, they had to ship him off base for surgery. The TKD player was a contractor like me so there's not much they can do to him other than not renew his contract when it's up...

 

You may also want to check out the Japanese jujitsu near you.
I don't have experience with really traditional JJJ, but I train a tweaked JJJ style (my gym calls it AJJ, American Jiu Jitsu, but its not part of the official 'AJJ' school).

Boxing strikes, elbow strikes, various other strikes (boxing & elbow strikes are used the most), no kicks above the waist (rarely kicking at all), we throw knees more often than we kick.
We also learn some stick fighting & knife fighting.

Also lots of throws & limb breaks (armbars, knee bars, Kimura, Americana, etc). Some ground work (not as much as bjj).

I am overweight by a good bit and have low back issues and knee issues; I have not found the break falls to exacerbate this much. (My back does stiffen up for about 24-48 hours after training, but doesn't feel damaged to me and I do train multiple days in a row. It can be uncomfortable walking the next day until my back loosens a bit, but overall it feels ok to me.)

I type for a living (programmer) so am pretty careful with the stick fighting. I usually ask my opponent to be really careful with any techniques that might bring their stick close to my hand.

 

So I took an Aikido class yesterday and I really enjoyed it! Really was not that hard on my wrists. More my back, but even that wasn't that bad.

My only concern with Aikido is how I keep reading that it's not effective in a real fight. I honestly don't know if this is true or not. But it really seems to be a running theme when I read about it online and talk to other martial artists. Is this true or false? Also how would Aikido deal with combination punches from a boxer? I just would not want to put years into Aikido just to find that it's not effective in a real fight and I wasted my time.

Speaking of boxing, I have a boxing lesson set up for Thursday evening. After trying that I will decide between Boxing and Aikido.

 

Depends on how you train. If you do *realistic* scenarios to test your skills in a fight, you'll be good at it. Same applies to boxing. If you train it specifically as a sport, you'll be good at that-not self defense. Good question.

 

If you train boxing, you will be training it as a sport because that's what boxing is. You will gain excellent footwork, management of distance, timing, conditioning, and the ability to punch with the god of thunder behind both fists. These are all useful in a self defense situation.

The same cannot be said about the methods by which many aikido dojos train.

Sport based training ensures competency in their particular arena and standardization of quality.

 

Although to be fair randori is supposed to be more alive training. It's not sparring per se but it is unscripted and your uke(s) really should be trying to take your head off.

 

Yeah, I'm not trying to say that aikido is garbage or make sweeping claims of that kind, just that sport training excels at imparting competency in its particular domain and to say that it needs scenario based training to grant efficacy in a fight is a bit misleading.

Sport based training will be effective as much or as little as its training overlaps with the individual self defense scenario - dropping a boxer into a gun fight is unlikely to end well for that boxer, but have some idiot try to square up with him and things look a lot better.

In other words, you won't simply be good at that sport, you will have gained skills based on that sport that can be utilized or not.

 

Seagal movies got me into Aikido! I love his old movies! Above the law, out for justice! Marked for death! Great stuff! I have him to thank for my initial interest in Aikido.

I have his video "The path beyond thought". That shows his training. I've always thought he was a killer!

This is the school that I took the class at. http://www.familyaikido.org

Don't know if you can tell what kind of school it is just from the website. But maybe you can get a good idea.

 

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsLHO8gneKo"]Aikido in Fredericksburg demo video - YouTube[/ame]

I would not train here. I would be extremely reluctant to trust the competency displayed in this video to defend myself from any sort of attack.

 

If you're not allowed to test your skills in an open environment then you won't find out if the aikido is good or not.

 

No, it doesn't, which is why such techniques are almost completely absent from open rule-set competition.

You standing in a boxing ring and successfully imagining a move does not constitute evidence of effectiveness.