Aikidon't?

Should you do Aikido? That depends on many things. First understand that according Black Belt Magazine Aikido was strongly influenced by Chinese internal martial arts. I couldn't agree more, which means Aikido carries the same burden of other internal martial arts that means it depends on the three core exercises of these arts: standing meditation, push hands drills, and push hands sparring. Stylized forms of all three of these are commonly found in Aikido, but like Tai Chi, they aren't always found under the roof of the same school.

Aikido varies in quality drastically from school to school. In the North West there's one school of such questionable quality that the instructor's qualifications are 1) an unrelated black belt in some lame karate-for-kids style, and 2) supposedly the founder of Aikido many years after his death appeared to him in a dream and taught him Aikido one night. In general you want to avoid Aikido schools that are that overtly spiritual if you want to learn Aikido.

Aikido in general suffers from a lack of sparring. There are important exceptions to this. Before we get into those exceptions (the styles of Aikido I would endorse if you had the rare opportunity to practice them,) understand that this is a problem that could be easily remedied:

The exercise "Randori" (defending against multiple attackers at once, the main type sparring practice in Aikido) can be practiced with varying levels of intensity. Aikido practitioners could strap on face-protecting head gear (for the defender) and use sparring weapons or MMA gloves (for the attackers) when doing Randori for a far more realistic practice that could be considered real sparring (if done continously without stopping for minutes at a time, as Randori normally is done.)

Most legitimate traditional Jujitsu schools (and Aikido has roots in and is considered to be a form of traditional jujitsu) compete against each other in Sport Jujitsu tournaments (not to be confused with Judo or Brazilian Jujitsu,) which allow significant amounts of stand up striking, stand up throwing, and ground submissions - all three things Aikido black belts should be proficient in enough to compete in. Ideology is no excuse for legitimate martial artists practicing Aikido to isolate themselves from the greater traditional jujitsu community, and participating in these competitions is important for building the jujitsu community and guaranteeing quality in your own dojo:


The two types of Aikido known to normally embrace sparring are Tomiki Aikido (also known as Shodokan), and an even far more rare form of Aikido known as Hatenkai.  First let's observe a round of Tomiki Aikido sparring, a stylized variation of push hands sparring:


Tomiki Aikido is also known for their knife-vs-unarmed sparring which while not as impressive as their sparring in the video above, is pretty much the most serious anyone is practicing knife disarms in today's world.

The founder of Aikido was quoted numerous times suggesting that in a fight, strikes would be employed generously along side more common Aikido techniques. Of course the "atemi" of his time wouldn't have been doing sword-hand strikes to the top of someone's skull, it would have been the knock-down karate being promoted by the famous bull killing karate master. Hatenkai Aikido strongly reflects the striking spirit of Aikido's founder:

And with all that said, besides other internal martial arts, a lot of martial arts practice the theories and concepts of Aikido. Enshin, the softest common form of knock down karate, has a lot in common with Aikido and in some ways Enshin sparring has some of the best Aikido around:

Probably the single most important alternative to Aikido for learning the kind of self defense Aikido is supposed to teach is Filipino Martial Arts. Here's an FMA expert (grandmaster of the first martial art I ever studied) from a sparring intensive school showing off some of his more Aikido like techniques:


One final note is that in MMA competitions the style that incorporates the theory behind Aikido (using your opponent's force against them, not using force against force, and so on,) most often is Brazilian Jujitsu. Most Aikido enthusiasts would profit greatly from a good dose of BJJ training.

Should you do Aikido? If you can find one of those rare Tomiki or Hatenkai schools, sure. Otherwise you need to be prepared to make adaptations in order to make Aikido work for you. Fortunately there are many alternatives.

RIP C3, GMP FTW!

Rest In Peace Center for Creative Change (C3,) Graduate Management Program (GMP) For The Win! I am very excited about two major events at Antioch University Seattle, where I graduated with a Master of Science in Management in 2006:

First, after suspending the GMP in favor of focusing on "better attended" programs, they have brought the GMP back. I knew that the C3 (now simply the GMP program, formerly a host of other degree programs besides the GMP,) was not financially sustainable without the GMP because I had been to colleges recruiting for the C3, and I knew that many of the students who joined the C3 only noticed the program because they were looking for MBA alternatives, and the other degree titles such as "whole systems design," "organizational psychology" and "environment and community" did not sound like MBA alternatives. After the GMP attracted students to the C3, the students would often change their degree title to one of the fancier-sounding ones after deciding to attend the C3, deflating the GMP official attendance numbers. There was about 75% course overlap between the various programs, so all of this degree tittle and program attendance drama was mostly semantics!

Second, all of the formerly-known-as-C3 programs have been combined under one degree title, "Management and Leadership." Since all the programs were so similar anyways, it makes sense they all simply share the same degree title. The degree title that was the most marketable, was the most transparent in what was studied in the program, described the practical application those studies, and was the easiest language to understand for perspective students and employers was indeed "Management and Leadership." (As a student I campaigned to have that "and Leadership" added to the end of the degree title because simply "Management" was too abstract, and everything in the C3 had strong "Leadership" implications.)

In general there were two categories of C3 graduates, those who liked their experience at the C3 and those who despised it. Those who liked it described an experience much like my own in the GMP with vast deep, constant, and practical learning. Those who didn't like it described something much more painful and abstract.  It is a fortunate development indeed that "organizational development" graduates will describe their degree programs as "merged into Management & Leadership" rather than what I had to do, which was describe my management degree as "merged into organizational development... here let me explain what 'organizational development' means instead of explaining why you should hire me..." You may not like the taste of this medicine, but it's exactly what you C3 (now GMP) graduates need!

Violence is the Answer to Bullying

I have been very sad lately, because Jon Welton committed suicide. I was a pal bearer, and I thought I was alone outside with the other pal bearers. When the hearse door closed on the coffin I lost my shit on a level I never have since I was a young child, and turning around to see dozens of people I didn't realize were there, that awkwardness, did not slow down my involuntary emotional reaction to realizing I would never see this 14 year old saint ever again.

Now since the funeral it has come out that Jon had stood up against various bullies on behalf of other kids, making him a target for some unknown number of other bullies. I was in that situation in the 80's, and when I told my father I was going to use my paper route money to get a flair gun and arm it with a 12 gauge rock salt cartridge, he immediately got me enrolled in martial arts classes, and martial arts has been a huge part of my life ever since.

Sure there was violence, but no one died. Sure I was suspended, sure bullies had to go see the school nurse, but there was no long faces at youth suicide funerals because of bullying. Sure my friends packed improvised weapons like whips made of TV cable, knives, crossbows, maces made from skull shaped stick shifts, and pepper spray, but we rarely had to use them, and never had to do anything but threaten with the weapons to get bullies to physically back down against us. Certainly no one felt it necessary to bring a gun to school and open fire on the general student body.

Now one of my sons who trains in Brazilian Jujitsu has to see a therapist because of depression, and not surprisingly bullying at school is a factor, and he wisely hesitates to use physical violence to defend himself against the physical and non-physical bullying at school. Arming himself at school is completely outside of his thinking on this, which is is a very good thing. So what I have come up with is an appropriate escalation-of-force model for dealing with bullies:

1. EVERY TIME a bullying incident happens, immediately go to the teacher and demand to see the school counselor saying some thing like "I need to see the school counselor because I AM GOING TO HIT (name of bully here.)"
2. If the bulling continues, then EVERY TIME a bullying incident happens, use extremely strong language yell at the teacher "Get me out of this class now or I WILL KILL (name of bully here.)"
3. If the bullying continues, then EVERY TIME a bullying incident happens, take the bully to the ground and hold them there until an adult shows up to break up the confrontation.
4. If the bullying continues, defend yourself with appropriate physical force as if you were not at school.

If the school is doing their job in the slightest, 1 above will do the trick. Even if the school is very negligent towards student safety and 1 above doesn't work, 2 should scare any professionally trained teacher into taking serious action to intervene in the situation. Should the school be a generally inept and dangerous place for children and 2 not work, then phase 3 should draw their attention to the fact that their bullying situation has become a safety hazard for their students. Should 3 fail, I would rather my child be expelled from school than be dead from extreme physical abuse by other students or suicide. In the USA we are allowed to defend ourselves when someone is physically attacking us, though this fact has been very inconvenient for many a school district in the past:

Rating Certainty

In my management studies it was explained to me on multiple occasions that there are varying levels of certainty. Here we can translate certainty theory into the four-star scale:

1. One star: not knowing what you don't know. For example you live in a forest with a with a man eating tiger, and you don't realize that there is a man eating tiger living in your forest. In this case you would have made no preparations at all to deal with the tiger when it comes for you.
2. Two stars: being mistaken, or knowing something that is wrong. Having an incorrect opinion about a subject is better than not knowing a subject exists. For example, if you know that a man eating tiger is loose in your forest, but you are dead wrong about the location of the tiger, at least you will have made some spears and developed some effective escape roots, even though the tiger can still surprise you.
3. Three starts: knowing what you don't know. Knowing the questions to the answers you don't have is a good position to be in. For example, if you know that the man eating tiger is hunting in your forest, and you know you don't know the location of the tiger, you can be on the ready for the tiger to attack at any time.
4. Four stars: knowing what you know. The best situation is absolute certainty. For example if you know for a fact that the man eating tiger in your forest is sleeping in his cave, then you can have time and space to take care of other important things besides being on the look out for the tiger.

Notice here the loop in all 4 stars scale things. 4 is close to 1: if you become complacent in the knowledge you have and stop asking questions, you will develop categorical gaps in our knowledge. For example if you become complacent in the knowledge that the tiger sleeps in his cave during mid day, and no longer be on the lookout for predators at that time of day, you might not discover the hungry panther who hunts when the tiger sleeps until it is too late.

Don't feel overwhelmed when you start to have many questions in life, it probably means you are seeing that you now need to know things that before you were wrong about, or didn't even know those things existed. You can't get absolute certainty without sometimes being wrong and asking good questions.