An Uchideshi Experience: Chapter Five
Leaving This Box
I remember my last judo competition very clearly. There weren’t that many judo practitioners in my weight class in Alaska, so they lumped us all together in an open category. The first match I had was against a guy roughly my weight, and I threw him quickly with an uchimata (inner-thigh throw). The next match pitted me against this big brown belt, a middle-aged guy with a thick beard, weighing about 225 pounds. When we squared off, he got ahold of me and dragged me around the mat like a rag doll. I was about 165 at the time, so I was giving up some weight, but nevertheless, I should have been craftier in my approach and found a way to throw him. But I didn’t, I ended up losing the match, and as competitors know, there’s nothing like a loss to leave a lasting impression. It really made me think, “Man, there’s got to be a better way.”
After all, if I had been in the street, I would have been dead. This guy was a monster, and my technique was not refined enough to overcome that kind of size, weight, and strength disparity. Thus, the search began for a new art to add to what I already knew, an art that would be able to transcend size and strength through effortless technique. Over time, the research I had done pointed very clearly to the next art for me to study: aikido. But where do you think my initial exposure to aikido came from?
Steven Seagal. Years before I ever thought of training in martial arts, I watched Above the Law with my brother, listening intently as he told me what it was this guy was doing that made him such a bad ass. Mr. Seagal, he patiently explained, practiced aikido, an art developed for close-quarter combat by monks. They lived in very small cubicles, and consequently, their movements were tight and circular. I thought it was incredible that such a mysterious art could have evolved from the cramped solitude of warrior monks, but I bought it since he knew something about which I knew nothing, so by default alone, he obviously knew what he was talking about.
Although my initial exposure to aikido was through Steven Seagal, I realize it’s not fashionable to say so, particularly in aikido circles (“What he does is not aikido” is something I’ve heard from more than one instructor). But let’s be frank, he brought aikido into the spotlight, straight to the masses, and basically showed the world how aiki-techniques would be applied in the street. He’s the real deal, just listen to his Japanese! Watching one of his movies is enough to entice an individual to investigate what appears to be an effective martial art.
So I began to check it out. Solely through book research, I had already “bought” the art in its entirety, hook, line and sinker. I pored over Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere, I read and reread Koichi Tohei’s Ki in Everyday Life, and bought every book I could get my hands on that mentioned aikido. Because I didn’t have any access to instruction in the town of North Bay, my thought was by gathering all the information I could, I’d be ahead of the ball game when I actually began to train under a legitimate instructor. This was true. I thoroughly memorized the biography of Morihei Ueshiba (also known as O’Sensei), his incredible feats of mystical power, and the evolution of Daito-Ryu Aiki-Jujutsu into aikido. Unfortunately, all this reading without a physical reality check cast an aiki spell over me, leaving me unable to retain a sliver of objectivity or skepticism. Ultimately, I believed it all.
A particular passage in Tohei’s book had a very profound effect in shaping my perspective. He recollected an early aikido demonstration in Hawaii, during which he was attacked, somewhat suddenly, by several highly ranked judokas. Of course, he threw them all, quite effortlessly, and noted with amusement how many spectators found it unbelievable that he could throw such large, skilled men with movements that looked like dancing! I was mesmerized by his account. I couldn’t believe I had wasted all that time and effort in judo when an aikido practitioner could put down several players so easily.
Other books only solidified the case that aikido was an invincible art. The story that clinched my devotion was Kenji Tomiki, the noted educator and judo exponent, recalling how even though he had fought almost every good judo and jujutsu man in the world at that time, he was decimated after challenging Morihei Ueshiba. O’Sensei even gave him another chance, and after finding himself mysteriously thrown to the other end of the dojo, Tomiki bowed to Ueshiba and acknowledged that he’d like to become his student.
Testimonials from noted martial artists, the philosophy of nonaggression, the defensive nature of the techniques, the theoretical superiority of the turning movements, and the mystical powers of Morihei Ueshiba, all of these added up to a convincing argument that aikido was the best. The best art for me, the best martial art. I had finally found exactly what I thought a martial art should be, and what I’d been looking for.
Why would I want to study anything else when I’d be able to defeat somebody with his own strength and aggression? The daydream scenarios that stemmed from this idea were intoxicating. Imagine this:
A wild haymaker is thrown by an enraged man, but instead of crudely blocking and counterstriking, I smoothly blend with his attack, throwing him to the ground. His spirit diminished, he continues to lie there, as the realization sinks in that his own aggression has led to his defeat. I stand unscathed, and with a heart heavy for the human condition, walk away into the night (sometimes with a girl in tow, depending on the dream), as the crowd gathered outside of the bar stares in awed silence.
Although it would be impossible to prove, I’d be willing to wager that most aikido students secretly long for an opportunity to see if their stuff “really works.” I’ve seen it written about, I’ve heard it quietly discussed. I’ll freely admit that I was looking forward to the day when I’d turn the corner and have a man run at me, hand raised above his head, cuing me that a shomen strike was on the way. Luckily, the philosophy of aikido keeps most people out of trouble, at least from searching out and picking fights. But even the best philosophy cannot completely quash the ego, destroy the delusional expectations of the practitioners, or monitor the internal itch to elevate practice beyond repetitious physical exercises. That’s when things get dangerous.
Aikido has beautiful, aesthetically pleasing techniques that are a lot of fun to do, practiced in an environment where resistance is discouraged. If a person has no experience in a martial art or athletic activity where resistance is applied, it’s easy to confuse attacks that come at you in the dojo with a real attack in the street. Depending on the crowd you run with, average people may have witnessed one or two real fights in their lives, past the levels of elementary and secondary education. Before the advent of the UFC, how many people had ever seen skilled martial artists or street fighters throw down and really fight?
In my experience, I’ve found that most aikido practitioners are white, middle-aged professionals who don’t witness violence on a regular basis. It’s not in their daily environment, in their neighborhood, or in their jobs. It’s not something they would even consciously address or worry over. Why would it even enter their minds? You’re not going to get mugged in the suburbs, tackled in front of the company water cooler, or jumped watching your kid’s soccer game. Which is good. Nobody wants to live in a risky environment or a bad neighborhood. However, when defenses for attacks aren’t referenced with reality, techniques become more and more removed from combat effectiveness.
Combat effectiveness is one of the major reasons I study martial arts. Some people aren’t, and are interested foremost in Japanese culture, cultivation of mystical powers, light physical exercise, or social interaction in a clean, healthy environment. That’s great, but there should be some sort of caveat warning them that although the roots of aikido are rooted in war, combat training is generally not what they’re going to receive in many present-day aikido dojos. If I weren’t concerned with effective technique, I’d be doing weightlifting and yoga instead, as they certainly increase longevity and one’s standard of living without many of the injuries and training risks associated with martial arts.
I was stuck on the idea of being able to defeat someone without really fighting, without getting your hands dirty, without having to ever resort to brute force. Such an enticing proposition could be realized and achieved, I firmly believed, through hard, consistent training, training that I would have to endure as an uchideshi, that I somehow knew I wasn’t getting through regular classes, despite maintaining a weekly three to five day training schedule.
Just as neuromuscular memory was achieved in judo through uchikomi, where you would drill the initial movement or phase of a throw until it was an instantaneous reaction, I knew I needed to “drill” the blending movements of aikido. Since I hadn’t found that aikido used highly repetitive drills for specific movements or portions of movements, I figured I would ingrain the aiki movements into my body by simply increasing the volume of training.
That had to be the answer, because so far, things weren’t adding up. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling when your expected effectiveness is incongruous with your actual result. How are you to honestly assess and pinpoint exactly where the problem lies? Do you doubt yourself, doubt the techniques, or doubt the training method? It’s a tough one to figure out on your own, especially if the instruction you’re receiving doesn’t honestly address real-life resistance levels.
While still training in Aikido, I used to get together with a buddy to train in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I can’t think of anything I was able to pull off in sparring that I learned in aikido class, only my judo background saved me from total annihilation. So what was going on here? I chose to doubt the training method and myself. The solution, I thought, was to train more often and with more intensity, that was the secret to making aikido “work.”
Additionally, on the nights Ken would teach aikido, we would do an exercise modeled after henka in Seibukan Jujutsu. Basically, someone would make a strong attack of his choosing, and the defender could use any defense he liked, as long as safety and control were maintained. If the techniques the defender was trying to execute were not immediately effective, the attacker could move into something else.
It seemed to me that as soon as people were given the OK to even mildly resist the techniques, the overcommitted nature of their attacks dried up and what seemed to work consistently were hip throws from judo followed by Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu groundwork. The question is, what would I have done if I hadn’t had a background in other martial arts?
Now I can at least be honest with myself and admit that although I was a dedicated student (bordering on zealous), and had excellent instructors, hardly anything I had learned would have worked in the street against an experienced fighter. The movements off the line of attack were pretty good, but if some 250-pound construction worker wanted to teach me a lesson, I would have died if I had to depend solely on the physical skills and knowledge I had gained from aikido. Absolutely. Without a doubt.
This is something I had to come to grips with over a long period of time. I’m a believer by nature. I like to check, investigate, analyze, research, and dissect arts and their techniques, but basically, I’m optimistic during the process and I give them the benefit of the doubt. So I believed, and I trained, and what I learned during that time has served me well, but I can’t bring myself to invest any more time in it now that I know the variety of training one must undergo in order to be a complete, well-rounded martial artist.
Had I heard my own arguments a few years ago, I would have simply dismissed them as a bitter rant from an unenlightened, unskilled practitioner. After all, if I were good enough, it would work, just as it worked for Morihei Ueshiba and his top students, including Mochizuki, Tomiki, Shioda, and Tohei. So why did their stuff work while mine didn’t?
I think it comes down to hard training. Hard training in a “hard” style. I mean, O’Sensei didn’t learn aikido, he learned Daito-Ryu Aiki-Jujutsu, and his early students also learned razor-sharp aiki-jujutsu techniques. What I learned was aikido, the end product of a successful experiment where Morihei Ueshiba filtered an old battlefield art into something else, a unique approach that reflected his philosophy, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I liked the philosophy, but unfortunately, the techniques served as a metaphor for the philosophy, and I didn’t want those techniques. I was looking for aiki-jujutsu; I was looking for the hard training. I wanted to learn what those masters had learned, without it being diluted or removed from its source.
It’s difficult coming from a traditional background, where it’s generally considered impolite to honestly question or probe too deeply without already having a high rank, to then study an art steeped in mysticism, because it can cast a spell over the students and practitioners. This aiki-enchantment can create a quasi, cultlike atmosphere for those who buy into the belief system. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling an aikido class a cult, but it is a belief system, and there is certainly a kind of rift between those that believe in it’s magic and those that do not. I’ve felt this division, because I was one of the most faithful disciples of the art.
When I came to study Seibukan Jujutsu, I didn’t really have any expectations. I knew that Sensei would have what I was looking for, after all, he was a Yondan in aikido at the time. I wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing teaching jujutsu, but I knew that because he really understood the art I had fallen in love with, I believed he knew what was best.
I knew we had similar viewpoints about the strict “time in” system of certain martial arts. The aikido association we were affiliated through required a certain number of training hours to be marked down before you were eligible for your next belt, with testing every six months or so. Over the course of two devoted years, I rose only two ranks, up from sixth kyu to fourth. Believe it or not, this was rapid for my dojo! While the minimum time requirement up to Shodan was five years of consistent training, I simply couldn’t rationalize how the technical skills one would possess after receiving his Shodan could merit a five-year commitment. It ate away at me, but I kept my mouth shut because it wasn’t my place to say anything. After all, I was just a yonkyu. But I saw students who had been training for seven to ten years, and still had not received their Shodan.
Years before I had begun training, Sensei had flown up to Alaska and given an aikido seminar at the dojo. During that weekend, one of the young female students asked Sensei how long it would take him to bring someone up to Shodan. He looked at her calmly and said, “About three months.” Needless to say, everyone was shocked. I’m sure it offended some, and others may have dismissed him, but when I heard that story, I concurred wholeheartedly.
In some arts it does take five to seven years (or more!) of hard consistent training to receive your black belt, but generally those are arts where you test your skills in sparring against uncooperative, equally skilled opponents. Usually, it takes that long to build and combine the attributes and technical proficiency of a “black belt” in a particular system. The ironic thing is, it’s sometimes possible to progress faster in arts like this because you have an opportunity to display your attributes and experience, resulting in rapid promotion if deserved. If you’re a white belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and are tapping out blue belts, the instructor will note that and get the situation adjusted, instead of forcing you to wait for a mandatory six-month period, X’ing off the boxes next to your name, making sure your hours are counted. You really get a chance to display your skills, instead of having to bite your lip as people who couldn’t survive a bar brawl point out how your technique is incorrect.
But there’s no sparring in aikido, no uncooperative opponents, and little chance to display your attributes. So you put your time in, but I’ve come to think that the whole “time-in” system that can be terribly unfair to those that may deserve more rapid promotion, particularly if they’re hungry, motivated, and/or talented individuals. Look at Jerry Bohlander, he spends six months training at the Lion’s Den, enters the UFC, has a successful outing, and proves that time in, as the lone indicator of proficiency, is a load of crap. Frank Shamrock is another example. In a period of five years, he went from never having studied a martial art to becoming the King of Pancrase and an undisputed Ultimate Fighting Champion. Or, in that same period of time, he could’ve gotten his Shodan in aikido.
Something in me rebels against the “set-in-stone” time on the mat policies of many dojos and martial arts organizations. Saying that it takes seven years to earn your black belt, no exceptions, is a really close-minded, oppressive method more akin to martial incarceration than education. Even our school systems allow the exceptional to be appropriately placed. If it takes 7 to 10 years to develop the skills of black belt, as it does in some arts, that’s great, and you shouldn’t be promoted ahead of time. But not acknowledging physical prowess gained through previous martial experience, drawing out the process simply to keep students in enrollment, or to keep an ego buffer between the rank of the students and sensei is simply wrong.
You better believe if I placed a wager on a fight between your standard martial arts instructor with 10 years of experience, and Jerry Bohlander after two years with the Lion’s Den, I’d be buying Jerry a drink with the quickest money I ever doubled. In a sense, as Sensei likes to remind us, time does not exist, it’s what you make of it. Time is not experience, and its the quality of your martial experience that makes the difference.
He certainly allowed me to make the most of my time as an uchideshi. From the beginning, he sensed that I was in a box, trapped in my own aiki-mentality. But instead of giving unsolicited thoughts and opinions, he preferred to have people form their own opinions and make their own choices. Therefore, he sought to expose me to different aspects of the martial arts, expanding my martial consciousness through an increased knowledge base. He took me to an aiki-jujutsu seminar of Yanagi-Ryu soke Don Angier; I accompanied him several times to the Redwood city dojo of his aikido instructor, Frank Doran; he allowed me to study Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Claudio Franca; and he answered all my questions, which were never in short supply.
Sensei had been an uchideshi three different times at aikido’s hombu dojo in Iwama, Japan. As head instructor, Saito Sensei is reputed as being the closest technical representation of Morihei Ueshiba. Through hard years of being both an uchideshi and a teacher, I knew Saito would have to be the one that could make aikido “work,” the way I envisioned it working in a physical confrontation.
So I asked the question I had been dying to know the answer to for years. I had always felt sheepish about asking such things in a really traditional setting, but now that I had a resource who could give me a qualified answer, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. How would Saito Sensei, arguably the most proficient aikidoka alive, fare in the UFC? Would he, through the severity of his training and years of experience, be able to blend in that imperceptible fraction of a second where his opponent would be off balance? Would he be able to execute ikkyo through yonkyo, an iriminage, or a kotegaeshi?
Sensei’s answer was what I had both waited for and feared. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that Saito would be demolished. It didn’t matter that he was the best in the world at his particular style, when it came to fighting the guys in the UFC, he’d be dead. Then I asked about the mystical Morihei Ueshiba, and whether or not he would fare well. Sensei looked at me and said, “Are you kidding? Against somebody like Kimo? If they fought, Kimo would be the new O’Sensei!”
We laughed, but part of me winced when I heard this, and a little bit of my innocence, the part that wants to believe in magic and miracles, died right then. Really, deep down, I knew the answer before I asked. I was just lying to myself. Or maybe not even lying, but just choosing to not look at what experience had already shown me. Growing up hurts, the truth hurts, but ultimately it serves you better as I knew that I was finally discovering answers to questions I needed to know. It’s hard to let an emotional investment go, but I realized it was better to ride out my disillusionment now than later, or after I had invested a year as an uchideshi in an aikido dojo as I had originally planned.
Although I still agreed with the philosophy of aikido, and I loved the aesthetic beauty of the circular movements, I wasn’t taking martial arts classes to simply look pretty or philosophize. I wanted to learn concrete, physical skills that would serve me if they were ever put to the test. After all, I was 21, a young buck, ready to make the most of the energetic reservoir that can dissipate with age. Carpe diem, I had no time to waste, and I knew that the style I chose had to be efficient. Good techniques, well rounded, to provide both a good base of knowledge and a healthy perspective on martial arts. I thought aikido was what I wanted, but slowly realized that Seibukan was closer to my disposition.
I generally take issue with the aikido I’ve learned, seen, and come in contact with being advertised as self-defense. Although there are aspects and techniques of aikido that I believe can be gleaned and added to your martial arsenal (i.e. footwork for getting off the line, blending with an overcommitted attack, etc.), I could never recommend it to somebody who wanted to learn self-defense. Not only is there too much silence about what works and what doesn’t, the non-competitive training method doesn’t put students in pressure situations similar enough to real confrontations, breeding a false sense of security in students through tacit affirmations such as:
1) It may take 20 years, but this stuff will work if you just keep practicing.
2) Don’t worry about strength, since physical conditioning isn’t that important.
3) These exercises we’re doing are how attacks really are.
4) If it’s not working, you’re not using your center.
5) Keep extending that ki to keep him at bay!
It’s not fair to your students to misrepresent what your art is capable of. If your average aikido student rolled with a judo or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu player, or got in the ring with a boxer or kickboxer, he wouldn’t know what to do with that kind of intensity. He’d simply be overwhelmed. I’ve seen this point debated through letters to the editor in Aikido Today Magazine, but there’s only one way to find out. Do it. To paraphrase Bruce Lee, you can’t learn to swim unless you get wet, so how can you learn how to fight without fighting?
I remember an aikidoka, who was very good, tell me that he could probably slip any punch thrown at him. At the time, I believed him, but now with more experience, I disagree. He probably could have slipped any punch thrown at him if it was telegraphed, traveled in a straight line, and was done in a method identical to our practice in class. But there are boxers with hands so quick that you’d be in the middle of processing the thought, “I think it’s coming,” and next thing you know, you’re on the floor. And that’s without fakes, mixing levels, or combinations.
Now there are styles that are quite hard, such as Yonshinkan, and instructors who have kept closer to the roots of aikido, where my arguments aren’t really applicable. Aikido is actually a very general word, I’ve come to find out, and there are tons of styles and instructors that are hard, soft, or somewhere in the middle. As Toshishiro Obata expressed in his book Samurai Aiki-jutsu, he sometimes feels embarrassed watching soft-style aikido demonstrations, and considers it an insult to the legacy of both Sokaku Takeda and Morihei Ueshiba. He is a vocal advocate of aikido and its combat effectiveness, but he practices a hard style derived from hard training as an uchideshi under Gozo Shioda, who in turn studied under O’Sensei during his physical prime. Because of that generational progression, hard training under masters in their prime, the masculine essence of Daito-Ryu Aiki-Jujutsu has been preserved.
Strong, simple, direct, practical. Seagal, Obata, Koga, and plenty of other instructors across the country keep these points in mind, and consequently, their aikido it very applicable to self-defense. But when the emphasis changes from martial to art, then those who are looking for the former and settle for the latter are really shortchanged, and a disservice has been rendered.
In all fairness, modern-day aikido tries to do something different by using the aiki movements as an analogy for conflict resolution and non-violence. It’s a tired argument, but the escalation of interpersonal violence will always end with the guy with a bomb in his backpack. Hand-to-hand combat leads to a stick or knife fight, a stick or knife will lead to guns, guns lead to larger guns, and eventually the guy with the bomb in his backpack who’s going to “get you back,” regardless of the cost, is the ultimate warrior. The terrorist wins if you play that game, but aikido strives for a different path. It’s a martial philosophy that serves both its practitioners and humanity in general, but I feel the message is somehow weakened when the preparation for war that insures the peace is reduced to a shell of what’s actually necessary.
I believe that if the spiritual and mental benefits traditionally derived from training, (increased self-confidence, inner peace, etc…) are over-intellectualized, and the by-products of training become the focal point, you should be taking a self-empowerment seminar instead of a martial art. Focus on the physical, and under the proper instruction, everything will come in time. Over-intellectualization can kill an art.
This is probably disturbing to many readers, particularly if they’re aikido practitioners or instructors. But the truth is, despite all I’ve said, I still love aikido. It’s a beautiful art, it’s lots of fun to train in, I love the people it attracts, and there’s a kind of “aiki-high” that becomes addictive as practitioners take each other’s balance with proper coordination and timing. Besides, some people don’t care if their art is effective or not. It may be fun, it may get them out of the house or provide them with an excuse to meet up with their friends. Whatever the reason, my position is irrelevant to this particular demographic.
So who am I writing this chapter for? I’m writing it for the kid who goes straight to the martial arts section of a bookstore, who shows up early for training and loiters afterward, and is insatiably hungry for knowledge and experience in a way most adults can barely remember. I’m writing it for the kid who’s going to reread this book, in order to bring the documented experiences closer to home. I’m aiming this at the kid I was, because I know he’s out there, and what I’ve written is what I would have liked to have known ahead of time. Stand on my shoulders, as I’ve stood on the shoulders of others, and let my experience save you a couple of steps, putting you a few feet ahead of the learning curve.
For the general reader or martial artist, my aim was to stimulate you into thinking honestly about the art you’re practicing and its limitations. Most instructors, having been in martial arts for years and worked with thousands of bodies, know that some techniques will not work on some people, and you have to be tough to win a fight if your opponent is formidable in the least. Some pass on this information, others keep it quiet. If you were a beginner, what would you want to know?
It wasn’t fun leaving this box, but I’m better for it. Changing from a devout, subjective view to a disillusioned, but more objective perspective on aikido has been one of the most painful experiences I’ve ever had in the martial arts. However, climbing out has made me grow tremendously, and now I’m able to nod, smile, and offer encouragement as the newly initiated proselytize about how karate, ninjitsu, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, or tae kwon do is the best.
And they’re 100 percent right. They are the best. The best art for them at that moment because they’re hot on it, enthusiastic, and hungrily determined to succeed. At that point, everybody wins.
Later, the box you’ve chosen to enter may begin closing in on you. Aikido, Seibukan Jujutsu, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, the parameters of each art form a box technically in its structure and mentally within its practitioners. As martial artists, we must strive to transcend styles, and overcome our weaknesses. As human beings, we must seek to work through the arbitrary categories that separate us, and our self-imposed limitations. It takes work, and none of this can happen without a certain amount of intrepid analysis, scrutinization, and unbiased reflection. What are you choosing to believe, what are you buying into, what are you suppressing because it may be incongruent with your paradigm of the world?
It’s not easy, but as martial artists, it’s almost our obligation to take an honest look at ourselves, step outside our comfort zone, beyond the world we know, and climb out of the box. Who better to do it than a martial artist? After all, isn’t that what all this warrior training is for?