Adamantis

I´ve heard he holds several black belts, karate one of them, but who knows... at least it says everywhere that he started training under a karate master. The striking stuff in his movies looks the same as aikido atemi, and I recognize a lot of the throws/locks. Wouldn´t it be awesome if there were more running scenes in his newest movies?

That´s a clever answer. Sadly we´ve practiced way too little atemi in our class, but from what I´ve seen in more advanced aikido videos, it looks the same as what Seagal does. And it would make sense since Seagal´s main style is aikido. I should really look more into atemi, I think it´s very relevant, and the main reason I started doing karate was that we very rarely practice strikes/atemi in our dojo. Thanks.

Strikes - we have atemi to create openings, but they are very basic , straight forward punching. Kicks - very very very rare... He has definitely trained in other arts, so I was wondering from which he picked up his sparring style. I have very little knowledge about karate, so I was wondering if maybe some particular style bears any resemblance, as I know he started off with karate? To be honest, I think it looks pretty cool,

Yes, I think he´s a 7. dan. I´ve heard he started his career with karate, but I´m not sure if there´s anything specific in his movies. I don't know if the sparring in the video is real effective stuff but it looks like he has fast hands and is good at finding openings, I wonder where he picked that up? Given that nothing in the video has anything to do with aikido...

First, let me just state I don´t want to start a Seagal debate here - obviously people have very mixed feelings about the guy. I just wonder about his style you see in the movies and various youtube videos. I know he´s an aikido master, but there´s lots of strikes and kicks in his movies. Some of his strikes just look like slaps, and he keeps doing these distinctive motions where his arms would cross, i have no idea? Since there are practically no strikes/kicks in aikido, I just wonder where he got it from. Are there for instance any karate styles that looks like that? Or did he just make it up himself? As an example (although maybe not a good one), here:

Thanks a lot for your response, Wastelander! I agree with what you said, a lot of aikidokas have unrealistic ideas of attacks. However, the longer we train, the better we will be at performing techniques with more realism and intensity. But it takes time to get there, and not all instructors encourage that kind of training. Sadly some instructors only think of aikido like some sort of dance. I respect that most aikidokas don´t want to fight, but in a self defence situation against an aggressive attacker, you may not have a choice. Until now, we haven´t practiced much strikes or kicks at all, but we´ve learned to defend from a lot of holds (shirt grabbing, restraining, etc) that seem useful. I hope learning karate will make my aikido attacks more convincing and complement what aikido is missing. I´ve noticed karate footwork etc is different, but would you say different in a way that makes them easy to tell them apart, or too similar , making it likely to confuse them? Also, I should say I have terrible flexibility - I can´t even imagine being able to perform those high kicks. Would that be a problem in karate? Since starting aikido (where flexibility is important also) I´ve been working a lot on it, but progressing very very slowly.

Hey everyone! I´ve been thinking about joining a karate dojo in my city (shito-ryu), and was looking for some opinions from you experienced karatekas. I´m 23 years old and I´ve been doing aikido for about a year. I find it very interesting and have no plans to stop. However, it is complicated and difficult, and will probably take a lifetime to master. Also, we have several instructors in a rotation system, and let´s just say that not all types of aikido are for me. I prefer training with realism and intensity, and my aikido dojo doesn´t always give me that. I´ve been thinking about taking up one more martial art to train alongside aikido, something that´s different and involves more striking. Karate looks practical and effective, and I´m very interested in joining a dojo here, that seem to have some very good instructors. So... is it too early for me to "cross-train"? Can aikido and karate be trained at the same time? I may not have time to prioritize karate as much as aikido, so I´ll probably be training it 1-2 times a week. Given how complicated aikido is, will I learn karate faster? Is it possible to learn karate without being 100% focused on karate only? If anyone has experience with combining karate and aikido I would be very interested to hear. To me it seems like they would be perfect together for self defense training, as they are so different - karate strikes would make openings for aikido throws and locks, and vice versa. Also, karate looks like a lot of fun, we don¨t do much sparring in aikido. Looking forward to learning more.