[glangdale]

The best explanation I had for the existence of the (on the surface of it preposterous) martial art of Aikido was that it was a kind of post-graduate martial art for tough guys who already knew a bunch of other stuff.

Frankly most Aikido guys seriously have no clue about how to handle any real situation. Whining that real fights aren't like the UFC is ridiculous, as being ineffective in a civilized gym fight (i.e. 1:1, no weapons, etc) is not some magic predictor of being effective in a real fight unless your training is markedly more like the real situations somehow.

Aikido's defenses against blows are contingent on highly telegraphic, committed lunge punches and the like, and their technique against even unsophisticated grappling is wildly overoptimistic unless the Aikidoka in question has a really serious background in other martial arts. I've met some guys with savage wrist locks and some nasty tricks from Aikido and generally good movement, but these guys were serious cross trainers and knew what a real attack looked like (non-telegraphic and semi-competent).

As for the bogus versions of Aikido:

Generally the process seems like a process of mutual hypnosis. Uke is taught - by pain compliance - to go along with ineffective techniques (rather than go completely off script and win), and gradually becomes more and more hypnotized. Thus those ridiculous videos of super-senior people 'throwing' Aikido people by sketching out the barest minimum of a throw in front of them.

The other thing that gripes me about the bogus type of Aikido - aside from the fact that is has been the single greatest source of overconfident people convinced they could "take care of themselves" - is the number of people I've met with Aikido injuries. "OK, so you separated your shoulder when someone did a shoulder lock on you that wouldn't even work against a resisting opponent". Sigh.

[scbrg]

Having trained Aikido for a while (and stopped, for reasons not relevant to this discussion), I have met zero people who trained it in order to be good in a fight - be it "civilized gym fight" or "real fight". I also never encountered anybody who actually had Aikido related injuries (with the possible exception of scraped feet among beginners, from poor shiko walking technique).

Reading the discussion here, I get the feeling that many seem to think that practitioners of Aikido somehow think that it's for fighting. Given the demographic of Hacker News, I'm honestly beginning to suspect that this is an American mindset.

Do you also rant like this about basketball, tennis, or golf? The most efficient way to win a tennis match would obviously be to shoot the opponent with a handgun and win by walkover. Yet, nobody complains that this never happens during tournaments, but, astonishingly, are happy that the tennis players... well, play tennis. Why, then, complain about Aikido being Aikido?

[dang]

> Given the demographic of Hacker News, I'm honestly beginning to suspect that this is an American mindset.

Please don't take HN threads into national provocations. It makes discussions turn nasty.

Depending on how you measure it, HN's community is about 50% in the U.S.

[mmirate]

> Reading the discussion here, I get the feeling that many seem to think that practitioners of Aikido somehow think that it's for fighting.

Okay, I get it, Aikido is not for fighting.

Given this information, however, why do we still call Aikido a _martial_ art? Perhaps we should not grant Aikido such designation?

[glangdale]

I've met countless people who thought Aikido was (imagine this) a martial art. In a shocking development, this seems to have something to do with being good in a fight. It has certainly been sold to people as a way of making oneself less vulnerable to unsolicited physical aggression (a skill that has a fair bit in common with the ability to fight, even though these skills are not entirely congruent). I've also met a couple people with fairly serious (i.e. permanent life-changing shoulder injuries) as a direct result of Aikido.

No-one has ever claimed basketball, tennis, or golf makes you better at subduing attackers and for a fact, the techniques practiced in said sports don't seem to have anything to do with that. If you want Aikido to be judged against these sports, or, say, dance forms, this seems reasonable. In this case Aikido is a really shitty sport with no rules, no score, and no fun practiced by basically nobody, or a really lame dance that no-one wants to do.