Heinkido: Aikido's Salvation

I have pleaded in the past for Aikidoka to save Aikido through sparring. I have speculated that this may require some Aikido black belt (which I am not) to:

1. Train in MMA to fill out the gaps in Aikido training.
2. Fight in a Tipon/Gathering (weapon fighting event) to find the REAL combative value of Aikido's kata.
3. Cross train in Chinese martial arts to get a sense of the sparring that has been largely lost in Aikido.

Though he didn't wait for me to make these suggestions, Aikido Fresno's Sensei Christopher Hein has done just that:

It's worth noting that Hein is a direct student of the legendary Tim Cartmell, the USA's most respected internal martial artist from an MMA perspective. Tim Cartmell studied the Chinese internal arts until he was winning Sanda tournaments in China before returning to the USA and mastering BJJ as well. He's one of the ultimate masters of that Sumo-like Push Hands sparring missing in Aikido:

And going beyond also studying combat sports, Hein actually fought in a Dog Brothers Gathering using his Aikido weapons technique! So having met all my criteria for saving Aikido (actually a good while before I made any of those suggestions,) what is the quality of Hein's Aikido?

Yes, he REALLY gets Aikido. He gets the exact niche Aikido should fill, covering blind spots missed in combat sports. He really gets live training, and he really understands and appreciates the practical application of Aikido technique:

And you can see the influence of Push Hands in that practice, which is reminiscent of Sumo. And then it becomes obvious - the real application of Aikido is with weapons standing wrist locks are almost useless against an unarmed attacker, but have a higher chance of working against an armed attacker if your goal is to get the weapon rather than to take down the attacker: 

And that's when it becomes obvious that Hein sees Aikido from the most practical view of all, as art that uses weapons:

But Hein's understanding of the unarmed application of Aikido is the most advanced I know of:

Now I don't agree with Hein on a lot of things (what appears to be some very short sparring rounds, certain aspects of knife fighting technique, etc.) but I am not primarily an Aikido practitioner anyhow. I think he's starting to make some serious contributions to the martial arts beyond Aikido. In this video we see actual, factual, legit knife grappling (something we've aspired to at Tres Espadas for years):