This is a reasonable response, but I think it is missing the most important point. Let me see if I can clarify some:
I've never really understood the hate that people level at Aikido. I've been on these forums for years, and there have been countless threads about "BJJ for self-defense" or "street fighting" and the general response has almost always been, "I don't train BJJ for self-defense" and "I avoid fighting on the 'streetz' because I'm not in 8th grade any more", etc, etc. Which makes me wonder why people do BJJ. Me? I do it for fun and to stay in shape. Same reason I do Judo. Is it effective in a street fight? I think so, but then so isn't running really fast... I just don't think that's the reason that sprinters sprint. I've found that close-up magic isn't very effective in a street fight either, but I like to practice anyway, because it's fun.
Things like Capoeira and Tai Chi never seem to get the same amount of hate. The reason is that those arts are much more upfront about what they are about. Capoeira is just as frequently described by its teachers as a dance as a martial art; almost no teachers will describe Aikido as a dance to a prospective student. When people hop in to a slow motion Tai Chi class in the park, they think of it like another form of Yoga, and that thought is encouraged by the instructors. Aikido is almost invariably sold as a practical martial art on some level, even if the practicality is of secondary concern.
The biggest problem with Aikido is that it deliberately treads in a gray area. Ideally, it was probably intended to be removed from real fighting enough to develop people spiritually, but still retain some practical application when necessary. In practice, it does exactly the opposite. It's far enough removed from real fighting to give its practitioners a false sense of ability that fails them dramatically when they need it most.
I know that if you or I were to practice Aikido, we would not fall into that trap. I'll get into why that is, and why we can't assume that most Aikido students are the same as us later on.
Roger Gracie says 80% of BJJ is useless in MMA. How many of you are planning on quitting BJJ now, because it's mostly useless in MMA? Probably not many. Why? Because there's a good chance that you're not practice BJJ simply because of how effective it is in MMA.
That stat is taken out of context here. While I do find it generally true for MMA (if I were going to take an MMA fight, the last thing I'd be training given my background is more BJJ), it's true for everything else too. The vast majority of Judo is useless for MMA. So is Muay Thai. Even Wrestling and Boxing are majority useless. There was something on here about Chael Sonnen saying that most of his Wrestling was useless for MMA. And, to take it a bit further, the majority of competitive MMA is useless for real situations because they are just so different. Getting mount on a guy and pounding his head into the concrete is not always going to be the best strategy unless you like jail time.
The point is that almost nothing you train competitively will have a majority of the techniques transfer over to real situations. Yet, for any of those arts listed above, I would say the practitioner would have a decent chance in a real situation.
How can that be?
Do Aikido. Get out of the house. Socialize. Move around a bit. Maybe learn a thing or two about footwork and body control. Learn ukemi, and tai sabaki. Have fun.
The difference is the training mentality. It is far, far more important than the techniques.
In Judo or BJJ, the student is taught how to handle himself under the extreme pressure of fully resisting opponents in competition. Everyone who has competed knows that adrenaline dump and butterflies feeling. That is an extremely good simulation of the stress of a real encounter.
Regardless of the techniques being used, the most important skill is staying cool under pressure. When you get punched in the face, do you stay calm and use your training, or do you panic and get confused? When the opponent tackles you, how do you react? Those are the truly important questions. These have also been proven in experiments to be of far greater importance in a real situation than technical training. No matter how technically trained someone may be, if he is not trained to react smoothly under pressure, it will all fall apart.
Maybe I'm sheltered, but I've never had an Aikidoka come up and tell me how badly he'd kick my ass. Just hasn't happened despite the fact that I've done Judo demonstrations at the local Aikido club. Everyone has been always been respectful and curious, asking lots of questions, and seemed to have a lot of fun trying out some Judo stuff. Sure, they went right back to what they were doing after we left, but while we were there, they were just having fun. Change the situation - have an Aikdoka go to a BJJ school - and see how respectful people are, and how much fun they're having. Sometimes BJJ practitioners take themselves WAY too seriously.
As I mentioned above, if you or I were to train Aikido, it would probably be a neutral to slightly positive effect for us. We'd at least get something out of it, and if not no harm done. I don't see how I could possibly put up with training something as inefficiently as done in Aikido, but I won't say that I learned absolutely nothing from my handful of experiences.
The difference between us and students who do only Aikido is that we have the proper context to evaluate real training. We know what it is like to perform under pressure, and thus we know what is needed to train for real. We can take parts of Aikido and practice incorporating them against true resistance, which eventually would lead to us being able to use them in a real scenario. It is because of our knowledge from Judo and BJJ that we can make Aikido somewhat useful.
The huge, huge problem with Aikido is that the art is deliberately set up to prevent that discovery by its students. Real resistance is highly discouraged so that those students never learn what we already know. It's exactly the opposite of Judo and BJJ which teach the truth about martial arts via true resistance right off the bat.
Aikido intentionally strings its students along for years (decades?) without letting them discover this. That is just wrong. It deludes people. It would not delude us because we already know, but for the people who don't have the benefit of our background, it is terrible.
As far as taking martial arts seriously, I very much do. I am a martial arts zealot. I want to spread the truth of real martial arts to people. I have seen many students deluded for years. It's not just an Aikido thing; I've seen it in BJJ and other arts too. It makes me mad every time I see it. It is horrible to exploit people that way.
I don't take my own self too seriously, but I take the martial arts (much greater than myself) very seriously. What I see in that video is a whole school of people who just got owned by a grappler who isn't even good -- from his website, he appears to be a fraud. That is serious to me.
Haha, true! If one more person tries to talk to me about Acai, I may scream.
I think it is pretty tasty, but the miracle food stuff is ridiculous.
