I am 21 and my wife is 16. I do think Ueshiba was on to something wonderful when he thought about the direction the art should take, but he failed when creating the art itself.

Thank you for sharing your amazing experience.

Kotegaeshi works for takedowns, sankyo thwarts chokes when you're … Although Ueshiba and his talented student, Koichi Tohei, taught this in the mid-20th century, it was only in the 1990s or so that scientific research proved that calmness enables access to the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, where our most resourceful and advanced mental processes work. True, the "hand-waving" thing has somewhat become a symbolic gesture to indicate a strike. Why did I lose that fight against five guys?

What are the rules of MMA fighting? True, the "hand-waving" thing has somewhat become a symbolic gesture to indicate a strike. Hi Piers, how wonderful to hear from you!

Aikido does not have practical striking techniques or any REAL matwork at all. I ached for 3 months, then I felt tired for another 3 months, and finally, after 9 months or so, I started to feel comfortable with the practice. Instead chose to say that you will make your art effective. I could figure out why they do these at some dojo and but not all the time. It's Anderson Silva VS. GSP The Fight In Mixed Martial Arts History Guys???

If you have a good instructor and you are a good student you will be able to defend yourself if needed. Jim R and Shihan J have good answers. The fourth guy thought he could knock me out with a right hook. Alexander, may I ask how you reconcile your viewpoint that "atemi is a waste of time" with Ueshiba's oft quoted remark about atemi being a central tenant of aikido? I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that there are rules, rules for everything, how to punch, where to punch, when to punch…rules, strategy, hummm, what’s the difference!? The atemi is central in "owning" space that the attacker needs, which results in the unbalancing of an attacker. They just went out and taught techniques. These are all advanced level skills. I had been taking Aikido for almost a year and one night, I was in a parking lot and five guys were messing with people. Complaint drills in no way resembling a fight for so long they don't realize how much they are missing. Even O`Sensei found his first students at the university, not on high-schools. ou can not attack in aikido you just receiving and waiting what the attackers will do", " many aikido techniques depend on grabbing which is rarely happen in real fights", " aikido focuses on hands to applying its techniques and ignores the rest of the body, no kicks no punches no jumping", " aikido is only good for seminars and demonstrations", " aikido is too traditional, no body use sword in our world today", " aikido is a philosophy more than a combat way". Try not to look at skills as styles, if you can get what I mean here. Where are you based? Because of my training, I felt like I had won the match…. I can touch my toes. I personally love Aikido and it’s philosophy, so I choose to continue learning and building on it. edit: @ Jas Key nobody is going to hate you for posting incorrect information. If we can grasp this, aikido can once again become a relevant, revolutionary, socially-useful art that its founder envisioned it to be.

What Ueshiba taught was a revolutionary form of martial art that could be practised by anyone. He thought akido and jeet kun do was "better" than any other martial art despite practically ZERO evidence of that. They feel weak and vulnerable. Nicely said.

Aikido is different than many other arts. One of the guys decided to punch me in the face. It all fits within a system. Everyone that watched the Floyd Mayweather fight against Conor McGregor knows that MMA fighting is useless against a boxer.I wonder what would have happened if the fight had taken place in the Octagon?