I meant “scoring” in the generic sense of “winning once”. I do not do tournaments or competitions, so I wasn’t even thinking it would be interpreted that way. Shodan claimed four out of five ass-kickings for a man against a woman, and I was just using the word “score” to keep count. My apologies for using a word so open to misinterpretation.
The “is aikido effective realistically” is a debate that has raged on for years. This page has a go at answering it, and the answer comes up, as always, uncertain. It really depends on the situation, the people involved, the level of training, and any number of other factors.
I’m a big, strong, hairy guy who has been studying aikido for a few months now. (Yellow belt. Nowhere near black. But it is rather fetching.) It’s going to take me years of study before I feel as if I have become good at doing aikido. But I wanted a martial art that would make me less dangerous in a fight, not more so. In a day when litigation is the greatest weapon available, I wanted a way to be able to walk out of a fight with both myself and my opponent left unscathed, if at all possible. I wanted options. And I wanted something challenging, and unassuming. Aikido fit the bill with all of those, so for me, it’s the best martial art.
The best advice I was given when starting out was, find a martial art that interests you. Then go to a dojo, and watch a couple of classes. See if the people there are your kind of people; whether you’re looking forward to getting out there on the mat and working with them, or dreading it. The dojo that makes you feel at home is the one for you.
I’m still amazed; I have a national reputation for avoiding physical activity, but I’ve got class tonight… and I’m looking forward to it.
I hate to semi high jack but…
Yondan… I chose Lao Tsu because after several other tries, no one else had chosen it. If pressed to pick a religion I would say Taoist. I have my doubts whether it’s appropriate, but I like it.
Tsunami… (I love the names in this thread). In the U.S., it is my experience that black belts are often given out like candy at Halloween. Some people who say they have black belts are full of crap, some very proficient and dedicated. For the record, I never said I was a black belt. Just studied for a couple of years.
To further the high jack, what my teacher told me was aikido were basic holds and strikes againsts joints,where to break bones, etc. I’ve found it useful IRL occasionally. Was this wrong? It seems my definition of aikido comes closer to what royjwood was talking about. The current discussion makes aikido sound like something completely different.
Lao Tsu (man, it’s a gas addressing somebody that), I wouldn’t say you are wrong, but there are at least two distinct schools of Aikido that I know of, and who knows how many branches of Aikijutsu, which is much older. With that in mind, Aikido may be discussed in many ways.
In general, modern Aikido is practiced very softly, with no resistance or what most people would call realistic force, but I have several police officer/friends/students who use it in their work quite effectively. Of course, they have never (to my knowledge) had to deal with somone who had anything like their training (Judo and Aikido).
No disrespect intended, Lao Tsu. (Love your name, too.) It’s just that I keep reading threads in which all sorts of guys are claiming to be black belts or otherwise proficient as hell, yet I almost never meet such persons outside of my social circle.
Second, why the hell did you steal my idea for a new thread?! Yes black belts are handed out too fast in the U.S. It’s criminal. This topic will make for a great discussion.
Micco, a guy who knows martial arts AND computers? Impressive!
I am starting a thread in IMHO on the subject of Black belts, their legitimacy, frequency, and related issues.
King of Spain, could you clarify your OP, in what you meant by “defeat a man”? Are we talking street, in the dojo, or what?
Thanks, but I think it’s pretty common. Not to hijack further, but many of the coders I know also do some sort of martial art and take it pretty seriously. I think the mindset required by one lends itself to the other. To be just vaguely on-topic, most of the women I know who do martial arts well are also coders - rare indeed.
Sorry, I really should’ve clarified that. I primarily meant in the dojo, although in the street’s an interesting question too.
[hijack]Add me to your stats here — Another woman who enjoys martial arts. I’m an engineer by trade, but I do most of the in-house programming for my firm as well. [/hijack]
Cooking and cleaning but the most important is good in bed whaaaat oh martial arts
Uh… I don’t think you were doing Judo. Judoka just can’t swim on the ground like a jujitsu person can.
I agree with everything Gaspode said. As an addendum, if I may, there are currently a number of styles en vogue that are all about fucking up your opponent as quickly as possible. Jeet Kune Do is the only one I have much experience with, but there are others like Krav Maga. Anything with “combat” in the title usually indicates an attempt to teach the dirty things without the spirituality.
As for a girl beating a guy, it all comes down to her killer instinct. This is what she has to train.
I have to question this. I’ve got some considerable experience with Aikido, and Aikido is notorious for having a huge learning cycle. Someone can become proficient in kickboxing with little training, but it takes many years of Aikido to become street effective. I should add, however, that Aikido is a very useful art and that Steven Seagal is probably one of the more dangerous men on the planet.
Um… try taking an average woman against an average man. That’s like saying, “Okay, in one corner is this amazon who ate a brick this morning and in the other corner is Kevin, the assistant librarian who doesn’t leave his house much.”
In hard arts, gender is vitally important. In soft arts, gender is neutralized nicely by aggression.
I respectfully beg to differ, and request that you support your assertion.
Could you explain this too? I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean.
King of Spain, Is it okay to ask AS the above questions? Has your OP been addressed to your satisfaction? or would you prefer that AS respond elsewhere? (I’m thinking they may be too much of a hijack.)
Fine by me - it seems related enough to the OP, and I’m very interested in what AS has to say about this too.
Well, submissions in Judo are limited to armbars, one v-arm lock (which I don’t understand because it’s a shoulder attack) and chokes. Jujitsu allows wrists, shoulders, knees, ankles, neck cranks, ass cranks, etc.
I’m in Judo right now and I’m enjoying a great deal, but after my years in jujitsu I’m constantly in danger of being disqualified (I still have to really concentrate to limit my attacks as the rules demand). All my matches go something like this: they throw me to the ground, where I submit them. Some of them are good enough on the ground that I can’t submit and they win by points, but if we were on the street they’d have numerous broken bones from submissions they have no experience with. To me, the difference between Judo and Jujitsu is similar to the difference between boxing and kickboxing.
When Jigorno Kano first demonstrated Judo, he generated appeal by beating all the jujitsu guys he fought. I think he was just really well-versed in jujitsu and could afford to limit his attacks for the sake of economy.
To the best of my recollection, I’ve only seen two matches where a judoka beat a jujitsu student by submission. The head instructor at Rickson Gracie’s school was a North American Judo Champion and I recently read an article by him, maybe at http://www.sherdog.com, wherein he describes the inadequacies he experienced upon first learning Jujitsu. (He learned jujitsu well after he had been an international judo champion.)
You’ve mentioned a few times that you teach Judo, so I want to emphasize that I’m not trying to knock your art. I’m currently a Judoka and I’m enjoying it a great deal, but I do think that it is clearly a sport.
In hard arts, like boxing and kickboxing, the size of an average woman is decisively smaller than the size of an average man. If an average man lands a hook on the body of an average woman, she is definitely going to feel it more than if she lands it on the body of an average man. Now, if you take a like-sized woman and a like-sized man, then I think the damage they inflict on each other would be comparable, but the distinction has to be made that one of them is not representative of the average merits of their gender.
In soft arts, such as Judo, Aikido, Jujitsu, many forms of Kung-Fu, etc. my experience suggests that women are on an equal footing. The differences in body strength and durability are not an issue because nobody is being hammered in the ribs. Grace, agility, balance, and timing replace the need for strength and bone size, and I know a lot of women who are naturally more graceful, agile, and balanced than men. And if the woman is naturally aggressive, they just increases her chances of being able to do the right thing at the right time because she will probably end up controlling the fight.
Experience, of course, is the deciding factor in both hard and soft arts, but I think turning a blind eye to gender is endangering women who are new to the martial arts.
<<In hard arts, like boxing and kickboxing, the size of an average woman is decisively smaller than the size of an average man. If an average man lands a hook on the body of an average woman, she is definitely going to feel it more than if she lands it on the body of an average man. >>
Yeah, but just as almost no woman is average in size, weight, or strength, neither is every man. Sure, the average woman is 5’5". The average man, 5’9". But…any woman out there 5’9" or over? She’s taller than the average man and taller than at least half of all men.
I think the most important question is…since most women seem to want training for self-defense…can the average woman kick the butt of the average man who’s likely to attack her? And what kind of training will help her along in that?
I don’t think that all men are potential attackers, but in dividing that half of the species into the ones likely to kill me and the ones that aren’t, I’m only interested in kicking the butt of category 1. Are those men taller? Stronger? Faster? Or just meaner, and that’s the only difference?
Corr
I don’t think you can possibly correlate the motives of a street attack with phsyical characteristics. Maybe he’s trying to rape the woman, maybe he’s trying to mug her. Maybe he’s just really dominant and is only flirting, while she feels completely scared for her life. Maybe he’s drunk and she has said something about him. Maybe he’s drunk and there are rumours that she has said something about him.
I think the key is for the woman to be prepared for the absolute worst, and that means knowing moves that work on anyone and can be done by anyone. Eyes, gentials, throat, hair, ears, etc.
Thank you for your answers, and for the statement of respect. I too do not wish to demean anyone’s discipline.
I agree with much of what you say, though I would qualify the statement to say that the widest application and practice of judo is in sport, but that there are other levels of practice which may be developed, including self defense. As I am sure you know, it’s no joke to be slammed into the ground, and, while not as delightfully nasty as some ju jitsu techniques, the arm locks and chokes in judo are all quite effective.
It is also important to acknowledge the distinction between the words “do” and “jitsu,” and what they signify. Ju jitsu is much older, with forms and schools going back centuries, developed expressly for the purpose of destroying adversaries in combat. For this reason, many of the submission techniques you mention are not appropriate for competition, where it is preferable that everyone walk away with same number of joints they started with. 
However, they are a lot of fun, and I always enjoy working with wrist locks and such.
Kano developed judo specifically to address what he understood to be serious flaws in the widely disjointed array of ju jitsu schools, and the highly dangerous practices many perpetuated, resulting in terrible training injuries which benefitted no one. What he wanted to do was find the best, most efficient practices, and develop a systemic methodology for studying them according to “one, all-pervading prinicple governing the whole field, and that principle should be the highest or most efficient use of mental and physical energy.” To this end, he established the Kodokan, a “school for studying the Way,” (Do being the Japanese variant of the Chinese Tao, for any who might not know that).
I suppose the question raised in regards to your initial statement hinges on the context one might use to establish a comparison between judo and ju jitsu. Judo rules clearly favor judoka, but I shudder to think what would happen if the rules were entirely relaxed. (throwing without making sure that landings were safe, unrestrained joint locks or chokes, ugh) It would have to come to something like the obscene spectacles recently perpetuated by the “toughman” competitions, like the Ultimate Fighting Championships. I was actually quite gratified to see that ju jitsu did so well, even though I was disgusted by the occasion, because everthing Gracie did (aside from punching people in the ribs) was no different from anything commonly practiced in judo. The only difference was the degree to which armlocks, etc. were applied; he didn’t hesitate to break an arm in at least one match, but the technique was ude hishigi juji gatame.
A judo/ju jitsu contest couldn’t be a game, really. And it would result in broken bones at least, as you say. This would be a bad thing, I think. As to who would come out the victor, I really wouldn’t venture to say. There are too many possibilities. Both have terrifically damaging techniques at their disposal. That’s like asking which of two tigers will win? A: the one that gets to the throat first. But the odds are the victor is going to pay a very heavy toll.
Further, I would say that ju jitsu should not be modified for competition: this would be a serious detriment to its real utility.
Actually, the way I understand the relationship between the two disciplines (judo and ju jitsu) is that of overlapping bodies of knowledge. There really is nothing I am aware of in ju jitsu that is not readily (and happily) learned by judoka, and very usefully too, to enrich an individual’s repertois of techniques available in street situations, while judo provides a wide array of levels in which to practice and learn a “Way.”
But that’s a whole 'nother conversation. For now, I wonder if you might share why you have decided to take up judo, and what you find most interesting/useful/satisfying about it.