I sometimes get asked whether Aikido works.
My usual reply is, “What do you expect it to do?”
The frequent response: “Work in a fight.”
The next questions are “OK, who are you fighting? Multiple attackers, or somebody with a gun or other weapon, or somebody who really knows what he’s doing?”
“How hard are you going to practice? Are you going to show up once a week and take it easy, or are you going to commit?”
It isn’t so much a question of whether Aikido works, but whether your Aikido works.
If you believe you’re going to be attacked sometime soon, don’t start Aikido. It takes too long to learn. Notify the police, try some kind of brutal and direct combat training, carry pepper spray or some other legal weapon and stay out of dark alleys.
But if you train consistently, you will gain survival skills.
- Awareness
- A calm attitude
- Strength, reflexes and resilience
- Understanding of timing, distance, unbalancing and footwork
- Ukemi
- Experience with multiple partner and weapon attacks and
- Effective, fundamental technique
These all may help to get you out of a jam, if worst comes to worst.
If the only focus of your training is fighting, you’re missing the whole point of Aikido. Aikido is a Budo – a life discipline, with the goal of making you a stronger, healthier and more grounded person — not just able to toss people around on the street.
I think of Aikido as a katana — something deadly — but to be prized, maintained and trained with for your own growth.
But if it’s not sharp and strong, it’s not a katana.