Quote:
Originally posted by ChrisJericho
If you study an art like Aikido that only uses co-operating partners to practice techniques, how is that going to help you in a real life situation where the other guy is trying to actually break your arm or choke you out?
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When you are training and
learning the techniques and concepts, you do use cooperative partners. It takes time to go from a level of learning to one of
understanding.
Once you understand a concept, however, it can become engrained into your mind, so that you can use it without thinking. The concepts you learn are based on body mechanics. For example, if an arm is kept bent at a 90 degree angle and rotated outwards, the natural body response is to arch the back. If you keep that force going, the natural response is to fall down, or try to spin out. When you have practiced this technique with a partner often enough, and explored all the ways the partner can try to avoid/counter the force you are applying, you
truly understand how it works.
In reality, the more force an opponents gives you, the more they try to resist, the better off an aikido practitioner will be. You are using their own force against them with the most economy of movement possible. Should you start to control them in one direction, and they yank their arm back to resist, then you simply change and use the force they are yanking away with.
When you understand body mechanics and do not need to think about the 'techniques' you are doing, you will have a tremendous advantage in any situation.
Let me use another analogy.
Let's say you are becoming a pilot. Can you just get into the cockpit and fly right away? No, you must start at the beginning, and gain an understanding of how the plane works. You start with the basics, and once you've learned them, you don't have to think about it anymore. Then you learn something else, and that knowledge becomes yours. Each step, you are solidifying an understanding of how to fly a plane.
Is not the person who has completed a flight training program much much more prepared to fly a plane?
It is the same with martial arts. You need to learn all you can, and gain an UNDERSTANDING of what you are doing, so that when you actually have to DO IT, you do so without needing to think and analyse what you are doing.
All martials arts are a mean to this end. Or at least they should be