[peatmoss]

All martial arts are fantasy.

Is BJJ not fantasy? Give me my aikido-whackin’-sticks and I’ll reckon I could bludgeon most any BJJ practitioner within an inch of his / her life.

Is judo not fantasy? What good is your throw when someone punches you in the face or pops on a wrist lock?

Is krav maga not fantasy? When do you really get to practice your eye gouging for real?

Is MMA not fantasy? I find it aesthetically distasteful, but what little I’ve seen, there were clear opportunities to kill the other person, which would have expediently ended the match.

All martial arts are fantasy, and if you think one is “better” than another, that’s your problem, as you haven’t even figured out the rules of the game.

I train aikido 6-10 hours a week. It’s my third martial art. Why do I train aikido? It’s not because I intend to use it for self-defense. I train it because it’s wickedly good aerobic exercise that allows me to push my own body and mind harder than anything else I’ve done. I never in my life thought I'd be able to respond to as wide a range of physical attacks—not necessarily martially, but certainly athletically and safely!

I jokingly refer to my own aikido practice as “fight cult” and “samurai LARPing.” All martial arts is LARPing, and people who say otherwise just haven’t figured out what they’re doing yet.

[mr_overalls]

I think the hate for aikido is mostly due to the delusions of many aikidoka that their martial art does effectively address self-defense.

I trained in aikido long enough to get a shodan, and what made me leave the art was seeing my instructor trying to teach some utterly ridiculous knife defenses to a prison guard. The guard didn't stay in the class long (thank God), and my gentle questioning of the instructor (had he actually practiced these techniques against a resisting opponent?) fell on deaf ears.

Indoctrinating students with the belief that they are learning effective self-defense when they are not is morally indefensible. It gets people hurt and possibly killed.

No martial art can perfectly recreate the real-world conditions under which it be used - not without compromising student safety - but some disciplines do a better job than others. To claim that aikido has flaws that are equivalent to many other more realistically-taught ones (krav maga, some schools of systema, judo, bjj, etc.) is to indulge in false equivalence. There is simply no substitute for a resisting opponent, even if the resistance takes place under sport-like rules.

In science, no models are perfect, but that doesn't mean that the historical geocentric model of the earth is equivalent to the modern heliocentric one.

[peatmoss]

Absolutely. I think that any martial art claiming to offer reliable protection from weapons is comical. The only good way to survive a knife fight is to not get in a knife fight.

Want my wallet? With my complements! Cell phone? I'll unlock it for you! Would you also like me to loosen my bowels as a show of respect? You got it!

I am glad to be training in a dojo that is realistic about what martial arts do and do not teach. I feel like there's so much value to aikido (and other martial arts!) training for people who understand this.

We've had people walk through our dojo door who are clearly wrapped around the axle of self-defense. I recommend those people take a self-defense course. In other words, find the style of martial art that shares your threat model.

My threat model is that I'll get old and flabby and die of social isolation and heart disease. Being in my late 30s now, I can't imagine another art being as good at helping me address that threat model.