Effective Aikido?

After I hurt my back really bad I actually got back into Hapkido through a very "orthodox" organiztion that practices the same curriculum as the founder of the art. I got back into it because of the lack of sparring because my injury was so bad that I couldn't do any shrimping, bridging, etc. All I could really do was standing wrist locks and crap for a long time. I WANTED to spend that time on BJJ, but just couldn't. But I wanted to still do martial arts so I contacted an instructor that I thought was the closest to being legit. I've had a good time with it though.

Oddly enough their striking curriculum includes open hand strikes, elbows, knees, and low kicks such as instep stomp type kicks. All stuff that works from within clinch range. So they actually could do some decent sparring with a focus on very close striking and still stay within their curriculum. I'm not saying it would make them "cage ready" but definitely some pressure testing to make them ready for an actual self defense fight. If you get my point.

I may have been to hard on Hapkido. My thing is, i have a hapkido place near me, that spars. Watched the sparring and it looks like KKW/WTF sparring but a bit different. The scant little bit i have watched didnt have grappling but featured way more punching then i saw in WTF sparring.

My issue with Hapkido is the way they teach some of the standing locks. I saw lots of stuff done off of a punch. Saw things like they would do a 2 on 1 catch of a punch, usually at the lower forearm, then do a lock/throw of some kind. But it looked alot like akido punch catching... Which was a red flag for me.

Does any of their punching/kicking defense actually work?

If it helps the school i watched, the teacher trains under Grand Master West.
 
I may have been to hard on Hapkido. My thing is, i have a hapkido place near me, that spars. Watched the sparring and it looks like KKW/WTF sparring but a bit different. The scant little bit i have watched didnt have grappling but featured way more punching then i saw in WTF sparring.

My issue with Hapkido is the way they teach some of the standing locks. I saw lots of stuff done off of a punch. Saw things like they would do a 2 on 1 catch of a punch, usually at the lower forearm, then do a lock/throw of some kind. But it looked alot like akido punch catching... Which was a red flag for me.

Does any of their punching/kicking defense actually work?

If it helps the school i watched, the teacher trains under Grand Master West.

From personal experience, the Hapkido type schools that have sparring a couple times a week end up like American kick boxing. They bounce on their toes, jump in and out, and throw lots of high snap kicks and mostly ineffective leg kicks. The BETTER Hapkido schools also have Korean Judo taught in the same building, so if you spar MMA with those guys, you're basically dealing with a Judoka that can head kick.

It's not my favorite. I think there is better. That said, it's a self defense art and good Hapkido people can beat the shit out of untrained people. They will just always feel guilty that couldn't do their standing wrist lock for real and had to resort to an Osoto Gari or punch in the face.
 
From personal experience, the Hapkido type schools that have sparring a couple times a week end up like American kick boxing. They bounce on their toes, jump in and out, and throw lots of high snap kicks and mostly ineffective leg kicks. The BETTER Hapkido schools also have Korean Judo taught in the same building, so if you spar MMA with those guys, you're basically dealing with a Judoka that can head kick.

It's not my favorite. I think there is better. That said, it's a self defense art and good Hapkido people can beat the shit out of untrained people. They will just always feel guilty that couldn't do their standing wrist lock for real and had to resort to an Osoto Gari or punch in the face.

Well the sparring i saw did look kick boxing'ish, just light on the contact and few low kicks. Though lots of mid kicks.
You mention wrist l ocks, is that all they do?
 
I may have been to hard on Hapkido. My thing is, i have a hapkido place near me, that spars. Watched the sparring and it looks like KKW/WTF sparring but a bit different. The scant little bit i have watched didnt have grappling but featured way more punching then i saw in WTF sparring.

My issue with Hapkido is the way they teach some of the standing locks. I saw lots of stuff done off of a punch. Saw things like they would do a 2 on 1 catch of a punch, usually at the lower forearm, then do a lock/throw of some kind. But it looked alot like akido punch catching... Which was a red flag for me.

Does any of their punching/kicking defense actually work?

If it helps the school i watched, the teacher trains under Grand Master West.

The problem with the art as a whole is there is a huge issue with people doing a bunch of terrible bullshido and calling it HKD. A lot of the founders early students left him before learning all his material, gave themselves rank, and then had to fill in the gaps by taking stuff from other arts (also done poorly).

If I recall there are maybe five of those crappy tma punch defenses in our curriculum, and I remember them being dumb. I'll look when I get home to see if the have any merit.

But the org I'm under doesn't even have any straight punches in the striking curriculum. And no kicks above the waist. The whole white belt to black belt curriculum is maybe 120 techniques. Only five color ranks before black belt instead of 10 like TKD. So that equates out to maybe 25 techniques per rank. Dan ranks are up to 4th dan are curriculum based as well instead of time based.
 
The problem with the art as a whole is there is a huge issue with people doing a bunch of terrible bullshido and calling it HKD. A lot of the founders early students left him before learning all his material, gave themselves rank, and then had to fill in the gaps by taking stuff from other arts (also done poorly).

If I recall there are maybe five of those crappy tma punch defenses in the curriculum, and I remember them being dumb. I'll look when I get home to see if the have any merit.

But the org I'm under doesn't even have any straight punches in the striking curriculum. And no kicks above the waist. The whole white belt to black belt curriculum is maybe 120 techniques. Only five color ranks before black belt instead of 10 like TKD. So that equates out to maybe 25 techniques per rank. Dan ranks are up to 4th dan are curriculum based as well instead of time based.

The place i am looking at trains under the USKMAF. I am curious to know if you have heard of them.
 
The place i am looking at trains under the USKMAF. I am curious to know if you have heard of them.
Never heard of it unfortunately. I'd say 90% of hkd schools like like shitty tkd with shitty wrist locks.
 
The problem with the art as a whole is there is a huge issue with people doing a bunch of terrible bullshido and calling it HKD. A lot of the founders early students left him before learning all his material, gave themselves rank, and then had to fill in the gaps by taking stuff from other arts (also done poorly).

If I recall there are maybe five of those crappy tma punch defenses in our curriculum, and I remember them being dumb. I'll look when I get home to see if the have any merit.

But the org I'm under doesn't even have any straight punches in the striking curriculum. And no kicks above the waist. The whole white belt to black belt curriculum is maybe 120 techniques. Only five color ranks before black belt instead of 10 like TKD. So that equates out to maybe 25 techniques per rank. Dan ranks are up to 4th dan are curriculum based as well instead of time based.

striking arts with 120 techniques... jeez...
 
Well the sparring i saw did look kick boxing'ish, just light on the contact and few low kicks. Though lots of mid kicks.
You mention wrist l ocks, is that all they do?

They have hundreds of compliant partner techniques. So a class will have warmup, air punches and kicks, forms, compliant partner techniques, pad hitting and sparring. Probably half of the stuff you are doing might as well be jumping jacks. They have every kind of sweep and standing joint lock you can think of. The fact that their sparring is just kick boxing lets you know what actually works out of it ;)

But it's fine for self defense as long as it has tough sparring (sparring contact is largely a matter of WHO is sparring. Take a non-competitive Hapkido guy who only light spars and put him in MMA, and he'll still want to light spar. It's a matter of intensity for the individual.)

It's even better if the school also has Korean Judo. Then all that Hapkido standing joint locks and wrist grabs gets turned into a little bit of meanness in their grip fighting.
 
Just because it isn't a rough, violent MMA fight, between two cookies american doing nothing but grounding and pounding each other?

I'm a third dan in Aikido. I know and like Tissier Sensei. This is not sparring in any sense of the word.

The reason MMA is "ugly" is because fighting is ugly. The kind of technical perfection that Aikido practitioners are aiming for simply does not exist in practical reality. All of the Aikido masters I know fully acknowledge that what they're doing isn't "fighting" and is instead a physical expression of a philosophical ideal (a flawed one, in my opinion).
 
many police forces use aspects of aikido. many aikido techniques work well for police because they're not usually trying to detain someone that is fully fighting back, most of the time they're just trying to get away. That's why it can be usful for cops, but useless in any kind of actual fight.

I've wrestled a few cops at my catch wrestling gym. A lot of what they did made it difficult to get a hold of them, but once I did they were toast. So, they're training was good as a defensive art of escape but not at controlling a guy committed to taking them down.
 
Fuck me, I hate this video. I am a third dan in Aikido. I've known the guy in this clip for years. He's very nice but not good, even by Aikido standards. I don't know what was expected from filming this "training", but it didn't happen.

Having done 15 years of Aikido prior to my BJJ brown belt, I can safely say there are useful things to learn that get unfortunately dismissed due to the high general level of batshittery in the art. This kind of stuff does not help.


Well he's wearing a black belt. Until I read your post I assumed that he was top of the line at Aikido and went into a major depressive episode after this event, realizing he wasted years of his life.
 


I'd say that this is what's wrong with some of Hapkido
 
Another karate vs aikido sparring, this time from Italy.
 
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