What's up Y'all? My name is Prince, and I want to talk to y'all about
the Problem with Aikido Students. This is all based on what I observed when I
visited an Aikido school back in Nashville about 5 years ago. I talked about that
visit in my video, The Problem with Aikido, but I didn't say everything I wanted to say in the
video which is why I'm making a follow-up video. So before I dive in to everything, I want to share
something that Rokas said recently in his video, "Was I wrong about Aikido?" This line about if Aikido is being trained in
the right way is exactly what I was driving at as The Problem with Aikido in my last video,
but before I start to unpack everything, let me backtrack, just in case you
didn't actually see the last video. Okay, so I study an internal martial art called Zhong Xin Dao Il Liq Chuan.
Just to keep things simple, I'll say that it is very similar to Taijiquan
because it's based on the Taiji Principles. I got my start in Chinese martial arts
with Wushu while I was in the Navy because I was planning to become a
stuntman after I finished my contract. So I was looking to check out a local Aikido
school in Nashville because I knew there was a lot of choreographed routines; I would get
to practice learning how to fall and roll; and I was also hoping to be able to practice with
a lot of people who were doing something internal. Now if you don't know what I mean when I say that
I wanted to be able to practice with people doing something Internal, well... I'll
just say that if you study Aikido, then you just might also be a victim to what
I consider to be the Problem with Aikido. Well, if you know how things went on my
visit, I would say that I'm not the only one. At the end of the class, the other instructor
spoke with me about my martial arts experience, and he started asking me about my other teachers. He told me something was missing from the
Aikido curriculum because some teachers had "it," and all the techniques that students
learn to reach black belt kind of go out the window. All these teachers who have "it" can do
whatever they want as soon as they touch you. He said it seems to be some big
secret within the Aikido community. And this right here is the Problem with Aikido.
There's something missing in the curriculum. So to go back to what Rokas said, there's a question
about Aikido being trained the right way. So when I talk about the Problem with Aikido, the
first thing I saw was what the Aikido instructor said to me after class, that there's some
instructors who have it, and many who don't. When he said the missing "it,"
he was talking about Aiki. According to Wikipedia, Aiki is a Japanese
budō term, at its most basic is a principle that allows a conditioned practitioner to
negate or redirect an opponent's power. Now in Chinese Internal martial arts, we
refer to this ability to redirect an attack as Peng Jin. Sometimes my teacher calls
it Taiji Energy because it's the first skill you need to make Taiji work as a martial
art. If you don't have Peng, you're basically waving your arms around in the air, which is why
you see these Taiji people getting beat up by Xu Xiadong-- they don't have Peng
on top of not knowing how to fight. On the last video, a few Aikido practioners
disagreed with me about Aikido missing the training to develop Aiki, or Peng Jin,
but I didn't make up what I said. The Aikido instructor at the school I
visited told me what was missing, and around that same time, I actually had someone
write me who said almost the exact same thing. So about 4 years ago, I received a note
from a subscriber who has been studying Japanese martial arts for about 20 years. He's
currently living in Japan studying Aikido. He said that during his time studying
Aikido, he's had teachers who taught like they were trying to teach from a book
to at least two teachers who did things that he could not explain. When they touched you,
it felt like you had nothing and were being pulled into a hole even though it looked
like they weren't doing anything to you. If you're listening to this person's description
and it doesn't sound real, he's repeating my experience from the first time I trained with my
teacher, Sam Chin. I had that kind of experience. So getting back to this message-- he goes
on to say that many Aikido schools are trying to get back to their roots, and
many people believe that this is rooted in Chinese Internal martial arts. The talk
online about the teachers who are doing it refers to not just Internal martial arts, but also
having "it," meaning they have Peng Jin, or Aiki. Again, Peng Jin is not some magic Chi
fighting-- it just refers to what we say in English as Ward Off. Ward Off is not just
a posture, it's a quality that the body has, or a skill that you're able to do as a result
of the proper training to develop Taiji skill. So that brings us to the question as
to how O'Sensei developed this skill. In the first video, I said that O'Sensei may
have been exposed to the Chinese Internal Arts, Baguazhang and Xing Yi Quan,
during his brief stints in China. This was actually hypothesized by Bruce Frantzis
who studied with O'Sensei between 1967 and 1969. It's true that O'Sensei was at the Manchurian
front during the Russo-Japanese War in the early 1900s. O'Sensei also returned to China in 1924
where he tried to aid the leader of the Black Dragon Society in establishing a religious
kingdom on Mongolia. O'Sensei was captured by Chinese soldiers and later
released to the Japanese consul. O'Sensei would also return to China on
at least 3 occassions from 1939-1942 as a visiting martial arts instructor to an area
occupied by Japanese forces during World War II. Although there are numerous articles written by
Aikido practitioners attempting to debunk what Bruce Frantzis hypothesized in his book "The
Power of Internal Martial Arts and Chi," the question still remains as to where O'Sensei
would have learned the internal development evident in his Aikido and why it is not part of
the formal Aikido curriculum taught to students. I mean, Bruce Frantzis wrote this book about his
experiences with various Internal Martial Arts, but at the end of the day, Bruce is looking
to get people interested in the Bagua and Taoist practices that he teaches, so it
makes sense that he would say "Oh yes, after reflecting on my experiences training with
O'Sensei and looking at lots of video footage, I think he studied Bagua's footwork and applications
and a little bit of Xing Yi's power development." Here's something to consider, though -- One
of the articles I read debunking Kumar's claim about O'Sensei acknowledges the extensive training
Ueshiba had under his Aikijutsu instructor along with the years of meditation practices he was
exposed to as part of the Omoto religious sect. So it turns out that Scott Meredith, who ran the
Internal Martial Arts blogsite as Tabby Cat for years while living in Japan, has also written a
book specifically on the topic of training Aiki, and he posits that O'Sensei did get
exposed to the internal training in Chinese Internal Martial Arts --
but he was exposed to it in the other martial arts and meditative practices that
he did which culminated in the art of Aikido. So the problem I see with a lot of Aikido students
is that they want to play the game without doing the work. What I mean is that they see
what O'Sensei did, and they want to do that, too. O'Sensei has a student run at him,
O'Sensei waves his arm and the students fall. Now whether there is something really going
on there with O'Sensei displaying some kind of internal skills, or leading the students
mind is a topic for a different discussion. What matters here is that a lot of Aikido students
see the technique, they repeat the technique, and then this becomes the gospel truth regarding
what proper Aikido is -- but they don't have the training and the experiences that O'Sensei
had which might actually make it work. An example is when you see Chen Taiji
Master Chen Xiaowang doing fajin, or explosive movements, in when he does his
Taiji form, but then you see some beginner student stomping on the ground and doing
all of this stuff to imitate Chen Xiaowang, but they don't actually have any
real power behind that movement. To hammer home this point, here's a story
I didn't tell in the last Aikido video about my visit to an Aikido dojo in Nashville. After class, this one lady who was kind of the
self appointed leader of that particular group of students was talking about how she wanted to
invite her roommate out to class. She said the problem is that he wouldn't be a good uke because
he basically wouldn't comply with the techniques. I kept looking at her funny
like,"why does this make him bad?" Like I understand when people are doing a drill,
there's an understanding between the two of them -- this is what we're looking to train,
these are the rules for the game being played. The problem is that it really feels like
ALL of the Aikido curriculum is like that. I mean, I've had people tell me in the comments
of my last video all about what would happen if I visited "a real Aikido school." The truth
is that if I decided to not play the game and comply with the techniques being demonstrated, I
would have just pushed them out of the position, or you know...thrown a real jab where someone
wouldn't grab my wrist and start going all Steven Seagal on me...or in the true Taiji sense,
I could have just yielded, and then thrown them. But I was practicing Wu De, by not
disrespecting their school, or their practice. The fact that I was allowing myself to be
thrown because I wanted to genuinely see what Aikido was about should be a reminder to
that particular group of Aikido students that the stuff they were doing worked because someone
allowed it to be done to them. I could have easily resisted at any point... because of the little bit
of internal training I had done at that time. If they really wanted to be able to neutralize, or
overpower me, they probably would have needed to do the same -- but it seems to be missing
from the curriculum at a lot of Aikido schools. So I've been harping on about how the real
Internal Development to train the Aiki is missing from the overall Aikido Curriculum, and
I know a lot of Aikido students have watched the last video, and this one, thinking, "Well, you
don't even practice Aikido, so how do you know?" Well, I first started to become aware of
this because I was seeing all of these demonstration videos of my Sifu at Aikido
dojos impressing them with his skills. So I had someone comment on the last video
that my Sifu was actually impressed by the students at their school. My big
bro, Ashe Higgs confirmed that -- so there's definitely a few schools out there
teaching it. I never claimed there wasn't. The whole issue with the curriculum first came to my attention by a guy who is actually an
Aikido instructor by the name of Dan Harden. I was first introduced to Dan
Harden by Scott Meredith, who I mentioned earlier. He said that Dan was one of
the best internal arts people he'd ever touched. Most of the people I've read about
who trained with Dan rave about him, but he's still a bit of a controversial character
in the Aikido community. I mean the worst thing I'd heard about him was that if you go to
one of his seminars, you might get beaten up. I mean, the guy is talking about
internal training for Aikido, and he's wearing MMA gloves. I guess this
is a big no-no in the Aikido community, but he talks about doing yoga, meditation, qigong
exercises, lifting weights, and combat sports. I mean, if Rokas had not completely shut the
door on Aikido, it would have been cool to see him link up with Dan Harden because he seems
like a guy who knows how to make Aikido work, in combat sports, and in the real world without
years of experience as a bodyguard/doorman like a lot of the other big guys I see who have probably
mostly turned their Aikido into some form of Judo. Look, there's nothing wrong with Judo -- just to
be clear, but I'm just saying -- size matters. If a big guy can throw people smaller
than them around and call it Aikido, does that mean that same technique is going
to work when a smaller person tries it? So that's why I highly recommend, if you
even question any of what I'm saying -- go find Dan Harden. I've never met him
in person. I know people who have. I know he's got something, and if you really
want to get a taste of how deep the rabbit hole of Aikido really goes beyond just learning a
bunch of techniques until you get your black belt, I would go see what that
guy has, but that's just me. If you didn't already see part 1 to this
video, The Problem with Aikido, you should check it out. It will help this video make a bit
more sense. I don't have much more to say on the topic of Aikido right now, but I am reading up
on training the Aiki, so if you Aikido folks want to hear more on that, stay tuned -- but I
kinda want to get back to talk about Bruce Lee and the problems I see in Internal Martial
Arts, you know-- the stuff I actually study, so be on the lookout for more videos on those
topics -- like Why Bruce Lee hated Tai Chi. So that's something to look forward to. Anyway, thanks for watching.
Y'all keep on breathing, and I'll see you on the next video.
