Kokusai Kenshukai Aikido Kobayashi Hirokazu Ha?

[Bluedot]

I am considering taking Aikido classes twice a week in a (the only) school in the city which teaches in the above style. The school is directly connected with Andre Cognard Shihan. I've heard many stories about how Tokyo riot police are trained in Aikido and others, but what I'm asking is, how effective is this particular style of Aikido on the streets? And from all the research I've done so far, I did not see a single kick in Aikido, nor some technique to defend against a kick. And street fights involve kicking and weapons.

And about the philosophy and spirituality part of the style, I'm a non-believer hardcore Atheist. Hence I hope there's nothing religious in this part other than the fact that Aikido itself is the religion. If there is meditation or yoga involved, I don't have a problem because controlling and focusing my mind is essential in my career.

Thirdly, this is just a random thought, that do I have to give up my social life and every other passion to gain "spiritual enlightenment" like Buddha? Because if that is the case, I'm more comfortable being an inferior human being and enjoying the little delicacies life has to offer.

I'm not criticizing anything and I find Aikido beautiful. I'm just being curious. I currently train in Kyokushin Karate and I'm finding that this style adds to my already aggressive nature, and I'm unable to focus in my career and studies.

Need opinions from experts.

[JusticeZero]

I can't speak to that specific school, only in general.

Some Aikidokas are more effective than others. If you already have some training in a more combative style, it will be easier to keep yourself from getting lost in fluffy clouds. The response *mode* of aikido is more generally useful; you encounter "drunk uncle" scenarios more often than "killer ninja" scenarios. (If you encounter a lot of "killer ninja" situations, the fault is almost certainly with your choices leading in.)

Aikido contains no kicking, and only a few strikes, rarely taught and really mostly only there for the purposes of baiting people into a defense that offers a response. Your Kyokushin has no doubt already taught you everything you need to know there. It is based on Japanese sword technique, which never had much use for a lot of kicking. I don't know what they do about kicks. I'm not an Aikidoka.

Martial arts aren't religion. If the people who founded the school were religious, then a few of the trappings get stuck to the habits, but that's not much different from the fact that you might buy people presents and enjoy a nice dinner with your friends on Christmas, or say "Bless you" after someone sneezes. They aren't religious acts so much as they are cultural acts that have some antecedent back in the dim and misty that was religious. A lot of aikido schools have small amounts of meditation involved.

"Spiritual Enlightenment" is both poorly defined and overrated. Enjoy your life, just work on refining it if you want that. Might help to define what it is that you want to see yourself as being more like.

[JusticeZero]

I realized that I needed to define some stuff, but I didn't have time.

In a "killer ninja" situation, you are in an uncontrolled, probably hostile location, when you are attacked by people for some reason undefined. Your goal will be to do damage to possibly multiple attackers while retaining freedom of movement in order to leave. This is sort've the mode most martial artists think in, although a lot of them are less than clear about the idea of disengaging or leaving. The origin of the term is all the times that people come up with these hypothetical self defense situations that have armies of trained fighters jumping out from nowhere to ambush the hypothetical person. These can be ridiculous and sound like bits out of an action movie at times, but are somewhat similar to ambush situations that one might find themselves in if they are being particularly oblivious and throwing around way too much money, skin, foolish ego, or whatever other things that might make one a target in places that they probably should have known not to walk into to begin with.

In a "drunk uncle" situation, you are in a generally controlled, friendly location, and need to control one singular hostile and chaotic individual without causing them undue damage. Everyone around you is friendly to you, and they will be friendly toward the person you are having to fight as soon as they are controlled and have had a chance to get over whatever is causing them to go rogue. As such, it isn't about disengaging, it's about arresting. It comes from scenarios where "you're at a party with a bunch of elderly aunts and uncles who wouldn't hurt a fly, uncle Joe drinks a bunch of the wacky punch and goes rampaging around having a Vietnam flashback or something" and you happen to be the person on hand who has training in putting people lovingly and calmly into an arm bar until someone else can come take care of the problem.

Kyokushin is great at dealing with killer ninjas, and passable at dealing with drunk uncles; Aikido is great at dealing with drunk uncles, and passable at dealing with killer ninjas.

[bushido_man96]

JusticeZero really gave lots of good advice, so I won't add much more. In regards to whether Aikido will be useful for you or not is going to depend more on how well you apply yourself to it and practice it.

Of the Aikidokas I have trained with, their striking skills have been very subpar. But, they don't focus on that; they focus on responses to strikes. What would behoove you as a striking stylist would be to continue to do good striking, especially when practicing Aikido as an uke, so they can see what good striking looks like. They should have some kick defenses, but may not. In that case, just fall back on your other training for kick defense.

The fun part I've found in Aikido is seeing where in the techniques I can insert kicks or strikes in order to "enhance" the techniques.

The school I've been involved in does some meditation early in class, but they have other class offerings more devoted to that kind of thing, for those interested. You can really take the spiritual aspect of the style as far as you want. During meditation, I just kind of sit around and wait for the good stuff to start.

[Nagasu]

I am considering taking Aikido classes twice a week in a (the only) school in the city which teaches in the above style. The school is directly connected with Andre Cognard Shihan. I've heard many stories about how Tokyo riot police are trained in Aikido and others, but what I'm asking is, how effective is this particular style of Aikido on the streets? And from all the research I've done so far, I did not see a single kick in Aikido, nor some technique to defend against a kick. And street fights involve kicking and weapons.

And about the philosophy and spirituality part of the style, I'm a non-believer hardcore Atheist. Hence I hope there's nothing religious in this part other than the fact that Aikido itself is the religion. If there is meditation or yoga involved, I don't have a problem because controlling and focusing my mind is essential in my career.

Thirdly, this is just a random thought, that do I have to give up my social life and every other passion to gain "spiritual enlightenment" like Buddha? Because if that is the case, I'm more comfortable being an inferior human being and enjoying the little delicacies life has to offer.

I'm not criticizing anything and I find Aikido beautiful. I'm just being curious. I currently train in Kyokushin Karate and I'm finding that this style adds to my already aggressive nature, and I'm unable to focus in my career and studies.

Need opinions from experts.

If nothing else, you'll train some good body mechanics that may open up your way of thinking.