Letter to Cyan

Cyan, like me you trained in some form of functional Aikido and were no stranger to brutal self defense situations. You wanted to show the world that some Aikidoka were not above sparring serious fighters. You heard about the "Gracie Challenge" and started calling MMA gyms, and to your credit the outcome was pretty much what you expected. I have two points of this letter:

1. You should be proud of this accomplishment.
2. This is an opportunity.

Be Proud

There is no shame in having your ass handed to you, especially if you were pretty sure that was going to happen already going into it, and you were. You didn't do as well as you thought you would, but you had an idea you might not make it through round 1. You called it.

You knew when to quit. Some jerks like me go in over my head, and then don't know when to stop. You noticed right away that the MMA fighter you were up against had different expectations than you did. When you thought you might be too injured to go on, you put an end to it. This kind of humility is a very admirable trait in a martial artist in today's world.

Twice I have gotten into dangerously stupid martial arts fights, on a par with a Jackass The Movie stunt, where I learned extremely valuable lessons. In the 90's when training in kickboxing, I weighed about 130 pounds, and recruited a 350 pound brawler friend of mine to join the classes. I was one of the better students in class, and after about 3 months I figured he was ready to face me in the ring.

He proceeded to beat me bloody for 3 rounds. His every jab knocked my rear foot back about 6 inches. My shin guarded leg kicks had no physical impact on him, and he barely noticed any strike I threw except an occasional over hand right to his jaw, which still did not slow him down. When I tried to clinch to work my knee strikes into his thigh or drag his head into a knee strike, he dribbled my head on the floor of the ring.

8 Ibuprofen, an ice pack and 4 hours later I still had the worst headache of my life and my 350 lb friend was trying to get me in the car go to the emergency room. But in the months that followed I focused on my footwork, and learned side stepping, the most useful self defense skill I have employed over the years since that time... like this:

The second worst beating of my life was at a in-house Tai Chi push hands tournament with the Wudang Dan Pai, which they have in the spring every year at a Park in Seattle. (I had a silver medal in forms and a bronze metal in push hands from competing in Tai Chi in Canada. I had failed to get a yellow belt in Judo through the world's worst attendance record for about 5 years. I had a few years of Aikido and the clinching from a few years of kickboxing.) If you count the final match this in house event had 4 rounds of elimination. The first fighter I went up against had a similar background to me, which was heavy in kickboxing and Tai Chi. Out of 10 points, I beat him with about a 4 point lead, relying heavily on a parting-the-horse's-mane type of trip.

But in the 2nd round of elimination, I was up against someone with about a 50 lb weight advantage, and who had wrestled in high school. I figured out later he had something against me personally for doing Yang style international competition. The first bad sign was when I sprawled using a kickboxing clinch, they mentioned this was against the rules in their style of push hands. My technical stationary and fixed step Yang style push hands was no match for the no-Gi Chinese Wrestling type of push hands practiced by the Wudang Dan Pai. Not only did I suffer the worst defeat of the event (10 to 0,) but I was picked up and slammed like you were in the above video at least 3 times, leaving me wondering if I was seriously injured.

But I learned an important lesson: I needed to take my grappling a lot more seriously in order to be a good Tai Chi fighter. Since then I have dabbled far more seriously in MMA and BJJ than I ever did before in Judo, and it has made very significant improvements in my over all martial arts skills. In the 2019 Pacific North West Warrior Tipon Tipon I even pulled off a (left handed) Tai Chi single-handed push takedown in a knife fight against someone known to do very well against me, something I would never have been able to do if it hadn't been for the beating I took at the hands of the Wudang Dan Pai:

Fighting an opponent who is tough enough to take you out takes real courage and humility, and has taught me the most important martial arts lessons of my life. You should be proud of your experience Cyan, even if it is only in a Jackass The Movie "lol I can't believe I did something that stupid" sort of way. I am proud of you for it.

Opportunity Knocks

Celebrities are starting to take notice of what happened, you have been posted by Dana White, one of the most influential martial arts people in the world:

Like it or not, this is your opportunity Cyan. I am not the only one in the Martial Arts Journey facebook group who thinks you try to use a crowd funding source of some kind (Patreon maybe) to pull together resources to train under a well known martial arts master. Use your public defeat and now famous story to get funding to take your martial arts to the next level...

If you wanted to go pure Aikido, in my view you have four options: 1 - Lenny Sly - the downside being that his "aikigrappling" is still in development, but in the USA he is at the forefront of the functional Aikido movement. 2 - Tomiki Aikido - You don't have to  go to Japan for this, there appears to be clusters of Tomiki Aikido schools in Ohio and North Carolina. 3 - There is actually something called "Shoot Aikido," but you would probably have to go to Japan for that...

4 - If you are going to go all the way to Japan, the most exotic and least accessible to Americans type of Aikido is Hatenkai:

I think the best Aikido that has been going on globally since the 90's has been happening in the Thai Boxing ring. You speak openly about being trans, and the need for self defense skills in the LGBT community. Muay Thai is probably the fastest martial art to learn, and has effective techniques that work against larger or multiple opponents. Muay Thai has a unique history with the trans community specifically, and the Thai experience regarding trans identity may be something American culture could learn from:

But back to the best Aikido happening in Muay Thai, consider Muay Thai legend Oley Kiatoneway. He would pull stunts like using an opponent's force against them to put them over the top rope of the ring - not in a scripted pro wrestling match but in the middle of an actual fight... consider also his clever use of side stepping, "enter and blending," distance and takedowns:

Thailand is a popular destination for martial arts tourism, and the cost of living there historically has been low. You going to Thailand to train, after taking the public flogging that you did, would be a very compelling story. But like me you have family obligations and may not be available for over seas adventure. No matter, Muay Thai is trained in throughout the USA, and there are even numerous YouTube personalities you might be able to train with.

Muay Thai Saves TMA

I have been part of the Martial Arts Journey Facebook Group, where the arguments leading up to the latest case of an Aikidoka getting slapped around by an MMA fighter largely transpired:

My "lessons learned" from this is that basically all Traditional Martial Arts (TMA) should cross train in Muay Thai. Muay Thai is the combat sport that focuses on staying on their feet (one of the main goals of TMA, especially Aikido,) while also allowing most of the actually-usable TMA techniques.

In that group someone recently asked "what two martial arts go together best?" After giving it a few days, I finally came up with "any TMA plus Muay Thai." TMA has so much to offer in terms of strategy, obscure forms of conditioning, dirty tricks, tradition, and philosophy. Muay Thai is the most applicable combat sport to TMA, and makes sure TMA has their blind spots covered for the range of fighting TMA practitioners think they are good at.

Looking at the TMA of Aikido specifically, one of the core ideas is being able to "enter and blend," to counter strikes by redirecting and throwing the opponent (without going to the ground with the opponent.) This is one of the many areas where Muay Thai excels:

It would be easy to think that was a highlight of the entire sport, and that not all Muay Thai fighters learn that skill. You would be wrong on that, here's the throw highlights from just one fighter:

And that which is in Muay Thai but outside of your TMA is important blind spots to cover. From Tae Kwon Do to Aikido, most TMA for example have a big blind spot for the most likely kick to come at you, the kick to your leg. Muay Thai covers that more so than any other martial art.

Though this is certainly most true for Tai Chi, I here and now state that all TMA should cross train in Muay Thai. I had the fortunate experience of learning kick boxing from the same instructors that also taught me the majority of the TMA (including most of the Tai Chi) I have learned. Even my Aikido instructor was a Muay Thai fan. But if you have not been as fortunate, seek out Muay Thai on your own!

Before and After

A lot of people like to talk trash on combat sports for "not preparing you for the street." My story is simple: in spite of having years of martial arts training, it wasn't until I got into combat sports that I had either actionable self defense skills on the street, or the confidence to handle ugly situations on the street.

My first Martial Art was Tae Sho Arnis, in the late 80's. In class we sparred like "American Kickboxing" or "full contact Karate" of that era. We did light contact sparring with padded arnis sticks, and practiced various common Filipino Martial Arts Drills, some Karate kata, and some basic self defense drills. We would occasionally do 2 on 1 sparring. The most memorable moment of that time was when we were sparring and the instructor turned off the lights and said "keep sparring, you won't always have good lighting on the street."

The problem with Tae Sho Arnis was we trained to compete in Kumite Point Fighting, and we got good at it. We ended devoting most of our training to that end. I remember the day when that ended, when our grand master walked out of a point fighting tournament for getting called on contact for kicks the judges said weren't landing on his opponent. Being in a Navy town, our instructors kept moving and the local school closed down. We dabbled in Tae Kwon Do of that era, which was stylistically similar to what we had been doing, but it didn't seem as practical.

A bunch of us then got one of our friend's father, a 2nd degree black belt, to teach us Aikido. He was really focused on teaching us "self defense" and mentioned numerous times he wasn't following the standard Aikido curriculum, and he had other martial arts experience. It was a rough and tumble class with contact randori, brawling on the mat outside of formal class time, and eventually light contact boken sparring.

Now up until this point, you will notice that I actually had a very "live," self-defense oriented martial arts training, more so than most martial arts of that era, about 2 years all together. But I still lacked confidence and actionable self-defense skill. I once stopped a shoplifter about twice my size by doing a takedown on him from behind, and I thought I was pretty tough. Then a few months later on the way home from the same job, I was jumped by four people trying to get my wallet. They only hit me one time, didn't get my wallet, and I got away, but I had to get about five stitches between my right eye and the bridge of my nose, and was left shaken in my confidence in my ability to defend myself.

That was before, in my late teens.

Then in my early 20's I got with one of my instructors (Vern Miller, Doc Fai Wong's first student to be endorsed to start his own school,) and got into K-1 style kickboxing (as well as Choy Li Fut and Tai Chi.) Back then we had no appreciation for light contact sparring, we were over compensating for being involved in Kumite Point Fighting, and I was coming home with new bruises or bloody noses more days than not, 5 or 6 days a week. My fights cards were disasters, as I had to cancel both fights due to chronic wrist pain from pounding on heavy bags for hours and hours every week.

But I learned how to fight, really fight, like it mattered. I really learned circular footwork. I learned how to really hit someone. I learned how to really take a hit. I learned how to handle my nerves headed into a ring where I knew I was going to get the crap beat out of me, almost naked in front of a critical crowd, and how to keep fighting even though blood was spraying around the ring, peppering the walls and posts near the ring.

Since then I have had no problem at all handling myself on the street:

• I was once chased by five people at night trying to mug me, throwing rocks at me. I kept my distance, but kept taunting them to follow me dodging and ducking them though dark streets and back yards, until I was finally in the back of a police car with them lined up in front of the police car for me to ID them.
• I was once attacked by a homeless person throwing stuff at me at very close range. I thought it was funny, side stepping and blocking with ease, I wasn't even slightly alarmed. He was aggressive, but no threat to me at all.
• I had a guy try to head butt me in front of my supervisor, and I dodged out of the way with ease, and continued to address him as if nothing had happened. (My supervisor was not amused.)
• I once had to talk to a large athletic dude-bro smoking methamphetamine, who became enraged and tried to attack me. I used circular footwork to use a tree to keep us appart as I explained the rules of the neighborhood to him.
• And this happened: 
• 'At one project I was involved in I was responsible for protecting the perimeter of a block in downtown Seattle. I was recklessly talking on my cell phone as I patrolled the area. I ran into a man verbally accosting a woman trying to get into her car, using sexist language that made me very concerned for her safety. I interrupted with "Sir, do you know this woman?" He replied by coming at me swinging. Still on my cellphone I used bobbing and weaving and footwork to avoid the strikes... on camera, much to the amusement of my supervisor at the time. The miscreant eventually tired, wandered down the street, blocked traffic, got arrested and went to jail. This miscreant left behind a back pack. Interested in who he might be, we secured the back pack and examined its contents. We discovered sentimental objects from his childhood, medications, and documentation that led us to believe that he was a homeless veteran who was not recovering well from a back problem, and that he had been mixing medications with alcohol at the time of our skirmish. A few weeks later the miscreant reappeared on the perimeter, looking for trouble. I got his back pack, and walked directly up to him, and asked "Sir, is this yours?" He immediately broke down into tears. He sobbed "no one has ever done anything like this for me before." We never had problems from him again.'

I would also note that I have continued to add to my skill set, training in submission grappling and full contact weapon free sparring. This has further boosted my ability, as per my fights in 2017: 

For example I was once involved in a neighborhood watch type of program near a drug rehabilitation clinic. I knew I had upset some amatuer phramcists distributing illicit benzodiazapines. A man came stumbling towards me on the side walk, obviously under the influence of the said substance. He pulled out a knife, looked down at it, and looked back up at me.

I carefully stayed out of lunging distance, but still very much in his face. I told him "you need to put that back right now, before you get into real trouble." I stood there, all be it on my toes, full well acting like I expected him to just put the knife away and walk away. That is exactly what he did. (Pro tip: don't abuse benzodiazepines if you are nervous about getting ready to threaten someone with a knife.)

I will end with this Aikido black belt's thoughts on the difference combat sports has made for him:

Martial Eras

From a Martial Arts consumer point of view, there have been 3 significant waves of martial arts in the USA. Each era has:

1. one dominant sport striking martial art,
2. one dominant sport grappling martial art, and
3. one dominant self-defense martial art.

These three arts have different needs for uniforms, safety gear, gym equipment, and training methodologies, which creates natural barriers between them. However in each era there are ALWAYS practitioners who commonly do any combination of the three arts of their era.

Globalization is the main evolutionary force that has caused one era to give way to the next.

THE OLD WEST ERA

Inherited from European culture, the Civil War and Old West, the first wave of martial arts for consumers was:

1. Boxing (the dominant sport striking martial art,)
2. Wrestling (the dominant sport grappling martial art,) and
3. Fencing (aka "Western Single Stick," the dominant self defense martial art.)

These arts are so deeply rooted in our history that it is hard to talk about martial arts at all without referencing these arts. These arts are quite literally part of the English language.

THE COLD WAR ERA

As the USA became exposed to its first non-European nation state enemy in World War 2, Japan, our military had to compete with a new way of looking at martial arts which they had not seen before. Beginning a decade or two after of the end of World War 2 and extending all the way up into the early 90's, the martial arts consumers were consuming the most were:

1.Karate (the dominant sport striking martial art. This includes numerous other Asian martial arts of various origins, but which conformed to Karate's competition rules.)

2. Judo (the dominant sport grappling martial art, now competing with submission holds,) and

3. Aikido (the dominant self defense martial art. This includes numerous other Samurai martial arts which involved too-dangerous-to-spar-with techniques, weapon kata or attempts to train to fight multiple attackers.)

These arts however between the early 60's and early 90's were watered down by the relentless materialism of the 80's, as instructors made compromises in order to sell more classes, or were influenced pacifistic agendas. At first Karate was what would now consider to be kickboxing:

But as sparring standards fell apart, so did Karate's reputation, to where it was something nerds would use to try (and fail) to fend off bullies with:

Judo, preserved as an Olympic Sport, fared much better than Karate, maintaining most of its value as a martial art. Aikido, thoroughly infected with pacifist ideology, fared far worse than Karate, to the point where it is now the laughing stock of the martial arts world.

Boxing, Wrestling and Fencing still managed to maintain a loyal following. Boxing seemed immune to the erosive forces destroying Karate and Aikido. In theory Professional Wrestling may have been an example of these forces having their way with Wrestling, but serious fighters still trained to complete in amateur wrestling. But ultimately style vs. style analysis were completely theoretical, with no actual proof as to what techniques were the most effective.

THE INTERNET ERA

Then in the mid 90's two important events transpired which reshuffled the deck for martial arts consumers in the USA again: the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which was the USA's first widely publicized and popularized Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) event, and more importantly the World Wide Web became a part of most people's lives in the USA, giving them global access to knowledge and communication. The 90's brought unlimited access to information, combined with a format to really test the value of different martial arts against each other.

By the mid 2000's, the dominant martial arts for consumers in the USA were:

1. Muay Thai Kickboxing (the dominant sport striking martial art, not in terms of professional pay scales but in terms of actual practitioners.) With Muay Thai's open ended rule set for striking and clinch fighting, it became the format for proving techniques from Karate, Boxing and traditional martial arts.

2. Brazillian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ, the dominant sport grappling martial art.) With BJJ's open ended rule set for take downs and submissions, it became to format for proving techniques from Wrestling, Judo and other grappling martial arts.

3. Kali (aka Arnis or Escrima, the dominant self defense martial art.) Though containing many too-deadly-to-spar-with techniques, training for fighting multiple attackers and weapon kata, the culture around these Filipino Martial Arts was very friendly towards fighting and sparring. FMA "Gatherings" (Tipons) are now the dominant format for testing techniques from Fencing, Aikido and other self defense or weapon oriented martial arts.

As mentioned above, besides being full of highly effective techniques that influence other martial arts, these three martial arts have open ended rule sets that naturally assimilate the techniques of other martial arts. Beyond that, these three arts are very friendly to beginners, the average martial arts consumer can get very good at these three martial arts without becoming an instructor or professional fighter because they have strong practices when it comes to free sparring at different levels of intensity:

MMA, fulfilling its role as the supreme fighting sport, doesn't make compromises for average martial arts consumers: as of 2019 there is still no universally accepted rule set for MMA-lite tournament, as there are for BJJ and Muay Thai. MMA was never some love child of Muay Thai and BJJ, instead MMA proved to consumers that Muay Thai and BJJ were the best styles of martial arts when it came to style vs. style competition. 

You Spar Or You Don't!

All proficient practitioners of the martial arts spar, because learning to go through the motions of a technique is only about 10% of learning the technique, the other 90% is learning to do the technique while sparring:

There are often newbies who are delusional about their abilities who pass on forms (kata) without having mastered any techniques through sparring. They and their students are not proficient practitioners, being generally ignorant of the real martial art from which those forms came.

Let's start with the ultimate example, Tai Chi. People love to talk about Tai Chi like it is a set of line dancing routines that after decades of practice cause people to be deadly. Though some Tai Chi forms are ridiculously time consuming, the forms are only meant to augment other important training methods, namely standing meditation, stationary push hands drills, moving step push hands sparring, kickboxing and in many cases sword sparring:

Another common example brought up is a form of Japanese Tai Chi called Aikido. But the style of Aikido that is closest to the real martial arts roots of Aikido is Tomiki Aikido, which is still based on sparring. In fact, they are the only sport in today's world that actually spars with one person having a knife and another person being unarmed - the real self defense situation so many martial arts are obsessed with:

People like to talk about other forms of pseudo fighting besides forms/kata as an alternative to sparring, such as Karate Kumite-Point Fighting. But the man responsible for making Karate world famous, Mas Oyama, didn't fool around with that nonsense, his sparring strongly resembled what we now think of as K-1 Kickboxing:

Some like to use cultural or fitness excuses as to why so-called martial artists would not spar. Capoeira is the best example of this, yet serious practitioners of that art do indeed spar:

No matter how "traditional" your martial art is, sparring is a moral choice. Either you choose to do martial arts related exercise without sparring under the false pretense that you are learning martial arts - OR - you pay the price that it takes to really learn martial arts, enduring the minor injuries and physical pain associated with sparring: 

You spar or you don't!

Utopians

(This is an ideological post, here are my posts about: Martial Arts.)

Globally, there are three main ideological orientations:

• Conservatives emphasize change often causes more problems than it solves.
• Libertarians emphasize individual freedom is paramount.
• Progressives emphasize that government is what drives modern civilization.

The left/right dichotomy in the USA divides the Libertarian perspective in half, with conservatives embracing individual economic liberty, and Progressives embracing individual lifestyle choice liberty.

What I have noticed is a new political movement afoot, which I call "Utopians." The Utopians look past the current political fray, and ask "what challenges are humans facing as we inevitably face the future?" The best example of an Utopian is Elon Musk. He puts his money were his mouth is, aggressively working on space exploration, solar power and electric cars, literally doing everything he can to prepare the human race for its inevitable future. If it wasn't for the fact he was a billionaire who rubs shoulders with the infamous President Trump, you would think Musk, captain of industry, was a socialist based on his comments in public:

But he is no socialist, and is a capitalist to the core on a level few conservatives can really appreciate, seeking private investments into his futuristic projects.

He is not the only popular personality sharing these kind of views. Consider for example Joe Rogan:

The future, Automation, is going to continue to reduce the need for labor. Eventually, we need some form of Basic Income in order to be able to decide who needs the goods that are going to be produced by that automation. 

Utopians are generally in favor of access to information, be it Elon Musk's open-sourcing of his battery patent, or Joe Rogan's push for free education. In general, they are also in favor of universal health care:

Many seen as libertarians and socialists now have much in common. AOC infamously claims to have socialist ideology, but consider how she actually talks about it:

She may or may not fashion herself to be some fabulous lefty commie, but her background as a scientist is telling. If the Trump supporting Elon Musk could be considered a right wing Utopian, AOC is a left wing Utopian, and standing their views side-by-side there is no daylight between them.

Sure they believe the science and are concerned about the effects of global warming, but they have no problem with private property, free markets, investment, etc. In fact they have little opinion on weather something should or shouldn't be in the future, they are just facing the future head on like adults. Anyone expecting the Utopians to be friendly humanitarians using government to appease their ideology will be in for a rude awakening:

The Walking Dead Got Aikido Right

Aikido and FMA have remarkably similar Kata:

Some say Aikido is mostly technique unrelated to weapons. That is incredibly naive, and rooted to the same pacifism in Aikido culture that eschews sparring. In reality, the self defense prescribed by Aikido's founder involved incredibly violent weapon technique (and probably some form of now lost sparring):

What keeps FMA from turning into a martial arts failure (like what Aikido has degenerated into in 2019) is continuous contact weapon sparring. The issue is you can't really learn a martial art technique until you spar with it until you can land it:

Continuous contact weapon sparring could save Aikido (not that I expect it to):

Update #1 - this post has a sequel: http://bfgalbraith.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-walking-dead-got-aikido-right-2.html

Update #2 - Icy Mike did a video on what I call the "supposedly not Pakua strike in Aikido":

Update #3 Hein actually saved Aikido already under generally these same premises.