Giving aikido a shot

[Rigby]

Today I signed up to have a shot at aikido at a dojo. It is a 30 day trial. I hope I have enough talent and determination to go past the 30 day trial. Anybody have any tips other than to respect the instructor, dojo, and other students?

[Denamic]

Don't fear pain. Not flinching when taking hits impresses instructors. You'll get used to it eventually.

[TheException]

Aikido is amazing. Belive you won't regret it. I've done some for 2 years and it taught me soooooooo much. The moves you do are great and powerful, but the nice thing about them is that you can only (or almost only) use them when you are getting attacked. And learning all the weaknesses of the human body makes you feel powerful and also forces to manage your anger because you know it could end up in breaking someone one, lol.

Anyway Good Choice

[Rigby]

Would anyone reccomend cross training with Karate while taking aikido classes?

[warota]

Aikido is amazing. Belive you won't regret it. I've done some for 2 years and it taught me soooooooo much. The moves you do are great and powerful, but the nice thing about them is that you can only (or almost only) use them when you are getting attacked. And learning all the weaknesses of the human body makes you feel powerful and also forces to manage your anger because you know it could end up in breaking someone one, lol.

Anyway Good Choice

LOL. Reminds me of an old conversation between two of my friends. One is a girl who's doing aikido and the other is a guy who's clueless about martial arts.

Clueless dude: Wow, I hope you won't become a troublemaker because of that.
Aikido gal: Nah, I can only use it if I got attacked.
Clueless dude: But what will happen if the enemy won't attack?
Aikido gal: Then there's no fight, you dolt!

If everyone takes Aikido, the world will become a much more peaceful place.

[Rezard Vareth]

Isn't aikido about repositioning yourself to prevent attacks? Like stepping to a place where a sword/club can't swing, and other such things?

I always thought aikido required some form of cross-training to be effective...

[Desmonthes]

Isn't aikido about repositioning yourself to prevent attacks? Like stepping to a place where a sword/club can't swing, and other such things?

I always thought aikido required some form of cross-training to be effective...Nope,it also has move and passive attack to defend yourself you can't never dogde forevere and it doesn't require cross training either.
Try to relax your body when practice and remember the cirle :p
actually some of my friends practice kendo and akido :D

[TheException]

Yeah, the I guess you could also do karate, but to me, it would sound like pulling into 2 different directions.
The point of aikido is to have an extnesive knowledge about how to defend yourself and only to defend yourself (nothing like the the best defence is offence). You aren't actually supposed to attack your opponent first, you can only negate his attack or use his strenght and your motion to neutralize him.
Besides, if you just want to learn how to kick and punch, you'll have to learn them in aikido anyway because, well you have to practice defense on an actual attack; some of which are straight from karate.

[BrokenArrow]

i learned one thing while in aikido its better to be flexable before joining. also are you in just the basic course or adv?

[kohoko]

In the dark depths of my early childhood I did Karate, but the teacher always got bored of it, so I ended up learning Karate, Judo, Aikido, and SUMO!! Unfortunatly, I learnt very little of each... but the aikido was the best bit by far, now I am looking for a good aikido class in my area, I've heard of one which isn't too far away so hopefully I'm going to try it out with a better teacher.

[Rigby]

This is the first martial art I have ever attempted to learn, so I'm in basic. Just learned some basic stepping moves, rolls, and warm up exercises. I think that it is so far so good. I am flexible enough by the way, I stretch every morning I get up.

[Rigby]

I have decided to keep doing aikido past the trial. Absolutely fun and involving once you get into it. Just have to get a gi I guess.

[Bubblemonkey]

LOL. Cool that you're having fun with it. My cousin's friend was pushed to take it by his dad, but he was constantly complaining because it wasn't one of those flashy martial arts where you're flying and kicking all over the place and whatnot (the guy's a shallow idiot by the way). Wish I was able to continue with studying martial arts when I was a kid (moved around too much to follow through on anything) and haven't gotten around to starting up now that I've finally settled in one place. Maybe I'll get off of my lazy butt some time, but it's usually tougher on adults to learn these things than it is for the younger folks (aging sucks :p).

[Zeddy]

Sounds like fun! XD

Depending on your interests, cross training may be a great idea. If you are into it as a hobby for fun, that's that then.

However if you want to develop and spread your skills in all ranges, cross training is a must. This is particularly important given that most aikido does not train with actual resistant application.


Besides, if you just want to learn how to kick and punch, you'll have to learn them in aikido anyway because, well you have to practice defense on an actual attack; some of which are straight from karate.

For the most part, I wouldn't say aikido striking is that profound. For effective karate striking, I'd be looking at kyokushin or its offshoots/related siblings.

[Deucalion]

personally I perfer kendo, The legendary art of whoopin someone with a stick

[Draco888]

I tried a kendo lesson once, It was verry interesting and fun...just not my thing.

Also...kendo and aikido come from the same Martial art, only over time they grew more and more into two seperate sports.
Its often recommended to combine the two for completeness though...
The dojo a woman friend of mine practices also teaches a little kendo.
Kendo is more centered around offense while aikido is more dcentered around defence, but they are two sides of the same coin.

[Bubblemonkey]

I tried a kendo lesson once, It was verry interesting and fun...just not my thing.

Also...kendo and aikido come from the same Martial art, only over time they grew more and more into two seperate sports.
Its often recommended to combine the two for completeness though...
The dojo a woman friend of mine practices also teaches a little kendo.
Kendo is more centered around offense while aikido is more dcentered around defence, but they are two sides of the same coin.
Wasn't it something like Kendo was the primary form and if the combatant lost his or her sword then Aikido was used to protect themselves from their opponenet? They had something on some channel (think it was National Geographic) ages ago. They had this one Aikido master doing a demonstration and he was throwing his students around with one hand like it was nothing. They guy barely moved from his spot and none of his students could get a hand (or a fake knife) on the guy. Pretty funny stuff.


personally I perfer kendo, The legendary art of whoopin someone with a stick
You should look at Arnis Balite (a Filipino hand-foot-stick fighting style). Kendo has taken a more stylistic form over the years. Arnis is just pure ass-whooping.

[recca]

Clueless dude: Wow, I hope you won't become a troublemaker because of that.
Aikido gal: Nah, I can only use it if I got attacked.
Clueless dude: But what will happen if the enemy won't attack?
Aikido gal: Then there's no fight, you dolt!

If everyone takes Aikido, the world will become a much more peaceful place.

Funny story :p one of my friend is doing Aikido along with Kendo he loved that very much. I tried once kendo classes because I taugh it was cool but I was clearly not very good at it even if it was fun. But I heard a lot about Aikido unfortunatly I don't have time to go to classes... :(. I'm sure I would probably enjoy it

[Rigby]

Hehe I am now at 6th kyu rank. :)

[pyrodoxis]

Congratulations Rigby :)
I've been thinking of trying Aikido and/or Kendo too..
I used to do Karate & Kobudo but I just recently dropped it, now I think I want to try something else.. Maybe I'll try Aikido too :)

[Yanorofu]

I've practiced Aikido for 4 years, but didn't practice anything for the last 2 years, until I started again this year.
It is true that some of the practice with bokken in aikido comes from kendo, but the founder trained many martial arts and used tecniques with spear and bayonet among other weapons. The main influence however was Daito ryu aiki jujutsu, which he learned from Sokaku Takeda.
Although we don't actually practice attacking in aikido (like in karate, to strike fast and hard), we do use attacks, since otherwise there would be nothing to use the aikido tecniques on, since in aikido we use the attackares attacking force against him. I think that some of the attacks is borrowed from karate. But another common attack is gripping your partners arm(s), which may seem odd, but it dates from the feodal times in Japan, when daito ryu and other styles of jujutsu was used on the battlefield.
On the battlefield it happened that katanas broke, so the samurai had to know weaponless battle tecniques as well.
Imagine an unarmed samurai fightning an armed oponent; he would naturally want to stop his opponent from cutting him, then it makes sence to grab his arm. That is the reason why most aikido tecniques while practiced in their basic form (at least in the style I practice) is practiced by your partner grabbing your wrist (I even find some tecniques to make more sence if you are actually holding a sword in your hands while performing it).

Before I started Aikido I used to fence. I miss it a little, since there are no competitions in Aikido, but I found I couldn't really contine both, since the japanese sword is handled very differently from the raipier, and part of martial arts practice is to make the moves second nature.

[feetfetish79]

Traditional Aikido movements are derived from the sword techniques of Iaido, the art of drawing the steel sword. Obviously most will never train long enough to get to wield an actual steel sword but the principles are basically the same. Put a bokken in my hands and I'm trouble ;)

I personally would recommend taking a hard style of martial arts before doing Aikido. Old school Aikido use to require that you have an extensive background in another hard art, which involved free sparring, before doing aikido. The thing about Aikido is that if you learn the technique but have zero experience sparring, you're not gonna remember how to use it in a real situation. I had kickboxing and shoot wrestling experience before I took Aikido and it made a HUGE difference. I didn't panic in a fight situation and could execute the wrist locks easily while my peers couldn't use it in free sparring environment, even though they did the technique perfectly during training. If you're not use to a sparring environment, Aikido won't do you much good in a real world application. That's my 2 cents.

[Kalimutan]

w00t. Another dead thread has been brought back to life.

I would like to give aikido a try. But at the moment I am currently learning arnis (art of stickfighting). I however tend to forget many of important techniques, after a short while of slacking around.

[Wh1t3y3t1]

Chinese kick boxing or Hung gar is hard but I havent been in aboyt 2 or 3 months so I better start going again but all I remember from going last time was alot of pain and one of my sparing partners leveling me with an upper cut to the chin.........

Damn I suck at sparing ¬¬ but at least lasting the full 3 minutes with someone whos been going alot longer than I have makes you feel better yourself even if you do get your arse handed back to ya