Finding Value in ANY Martial Art Style W/ Sensei Ando!! Fight Talk: Ep 15

Any martial art is better than sitting on the couch. It may not be practical for self defense (Kung-Fu, looking at you) but it's still good for your physical health and can improve your mental health as well. When I was a teen my boxing gym had sessions 3x a week and where 3 hours long a piece.
Those 9 hours a week did so much for my confidence and my physique.

Aikido is only useful when it involves a long weapon such as Bo and Katana. It is an unarmed self-defense that use used against these weapons, but it is not good for self-defense against knives and other unarmed styles of fighting. It is still a good style and I have used some of the techniques and they do work. Taekwondo is way to fancy, lets just say that if you make good contact with a fancy kick then good for you, but it is really pointless in a fight. Taekwondo is however a good martial arts styles for staying healthy and getting in good shape, oh and competition. As for Kung Fu, it depends on the style. Wing Chun is the best style of Kung Fu I studied. You also have to focus on the individual because it depends on the individual. There really no best style, but it is best to learn more then one style.

i started with tae kwon do, i used to love it learned a lot and it isn't bad in a fight but you need to take your training seriously and well you should always love what you practice. i went to boxing and my tae know do helped me out as i was more cordinated and was pretty good at my foot work. currently muay thai and when i spar i put in practice things from my other styles. i don't consider any style as pointless as they all will tech you something.

Great philosophy👍🏻
(Aikido)
Because both in/on the Ring/Mat and in real life if one kicks or punches a guy there could be a nearby rock 🪨...
Suddenly your attacker falls onto that rock so one's, so called, defense is now murder and one will have to answer to Yaweh Elohim on the last day to come.
(We yet have to face God but with one or more differences)

The point about having various tricks when you get older reminds me of playing older folks at racquetball. They aren't as quick anymore, but they can flick that wrist and put the ball one inch above the floor way more consistently than I can.

Hi

Aikido and Judo are just building blocks to the fighting arts. Fighting is just a small subset of martial arts. A lot of "martial artists" miss the point of what martial arts bring and equate everything fighting to martial arts. Martial arts is understanding the body first and foremost; where its weakest, where its strongest, how to move, escape, respond then can you only begin to understand how to fight. Osensei, Sensei Jigoro Kano gave us those answers. Its not in the techniques that lies the secret but the underlying principles behind them. No teacher can teach you this but only you will only discover them over time. Case in point is principle of tautness. This is found in every technique, every submission, every lock, every arrest technique. This principle is not only limited to aikido but to judo, bjj and jujitsu and many others as well. You collect these principles over time. Novice martial artists who like to trash other martial arts focus on techniques. Advanced students focus on general guiding principles that are common among techniques. These principles are EXACTLY the same in aikido judo, bjj but the application is different among the arts in the form of techniques. Aikido is an incomplete art so is BJJ, Judo, jujitsu. Aikido is only one path, so is BJJ, Judo, jujitsu which are different paths but they ultimately lead to the same truths. Martial arts in the end has no form.

I was just having a similar conversation with my cousin. These martial arts that are considered useless are only “useless” because the current application. These fakers with very minimal understanding of the martial art. Aikido for instance all these videos of aikido guys getting knocked while they are trying to grab at a jab……anyways love the video Sensei Seth amazing content as always!

I wanna be apart of this

First off, I found your channel recently and really like your videos. As someone who has trained primarily in Aikido, but loves trying out and learning from other styles, I think you are missing something about Aikido. From the great video you did about 'which art complements which other' I would say that for someone who studies Aikido to be well rounded, they need a sparring/kicking art and a grappling/throwing art. I've studied those, but I've only used Aikido in the real world, because every time I've needed to defend myself it has been against someone I NEEDED to not hurt. For instance, I used to work with mentally handicapped adult men with violent tendencies. I was forbidden by my job and by law from hitting or kicking these bigger stronger men even when they tried to hurt me or others. I needed to stop them from biting, eye gouging, punching, grabbing, choking, etc without doing any harm whatsoever to them. For that it worked, although I still regret the time I held back a moment too long even from gentle Aikido techniques and let a (bigger than me, fitter than me, super muscley) colleague get badly bitten (deep gouge) by a man I was supervising. A split second hesitation, overestimating my colleague's ability to handle himself, was all it took. If I'd been even more confident in being able to stop the aggressor without hurting him, I could've moved without hesitation. I think if I'd had a few more years of practice beforehand I could've managed that.
Here's the thing, I think each martial art has a range it works best in, close like grappling/chokes or far like big long kicks. Aikido works best when you are still out of kicking distance, in the moment of time before the initial close. Preventing the escalation or heading it off in the first place. Nowadays I feel like the biggest benefit of Aikido for me is being able to engage verbally with aggressive colleagues in the office environment without either backing down / surrendering or, far worse for my career, losing my temper and being unprofessional.

A lot of low level experience in "spiritual arts" and being condescending towards what he seems to suggest is "brutal" doesn't make his online McDojo any more appealing, honestly. I think I'll stick with what works over here with Jesse Enkamp, Hard2Hurt, Travis Stevens, and you, Seth, among others obviously.

god i love Kung Fu and this guy speaking up on how it needs to be respected really makes me happy. It's not all tosh, just the fake masters. Most Kung Fu is amazing to practice and look at.

My favorite in the kung fu family is bagua zhang

I really like what Ando said about kung fu. It's my understanding that Mao outlawed the practice of Chinese traditional fighting arts and condensed it to wushu, a more watered-down and performative sort of thing. This is b/c the government wanted to make the public LESS empowered...much like when the Soviet Union outlawed religion; certain ideologies and exercises tend to make it more difficult to control or be controlled.

Ando Sensei is amazing.

I think itf did has use I use it in my fights at school arrest I box too so yeah

I’m very impressed. Words of a wise man that is about integration and able to see the positives of each art. Martial arts, like life, is not either/or but should be approached holistically and complementarily. Integrate the soft and hard styles, theoretical and technical.

If you had an unlimited amount of time than you could do every martial art. The problem is that you have a limited amount of time. Also, the martial arts which have been demonstrated to be effective have more skill than you could learn in a life time. So why waste time studying an ineffective art?

Muay thai, boxing, bjj, wrestling and mma has more skill than you can learn in a life time.

If you branch off and study some non tested art for a year that is a year not doing an art which has been empirically tested in the cage.

I took three years of Aikido, so not a lot 😄 man, that's some dedication

Has anyone ever told you that you look like Channing Tatum?

Did you just compare taekwondo with aikido :)

aikido is useful. It is useful for big strong guys with big hands to do wrist locks. Also a person's momentum needs to be going forward. It wouldn't be my go to fighting style, but I have sparred with a big guy who knows it and it does work for him.

Pausing at 3min to say yeah! I say the same thing. It's a good idea to learn from what's already there or you're reinventing the wheel. Exactly!

Good confirmation! It's important for people to recognize that the traditional martial artists are the history keepers. People of modern times should not ignore history. The development of humanity and each of our arts is an unfoldment much like the brain itself. In order to have the new brain, we build on the old brain. Thar part does not simply fall away!

Taekwondo works if taught correctly but people just don’t do that today for the most part Taekwondo has way to many mcdojos it’s sad

Hmm

These martial arts tend to be scrutinized more than direct combat systems (most of which geared toward combat sport) because they are NOT as effective for most individuals in high pressure, real fighting situations. They certainly aren't that effective in MMA...people will rattle off a few examples of amazing fighters who happened to train a lot of karate in their lives...but, the way they are applying it will look much more like kickboxing in a real fighting situation.

The other thing is, you guys simple don't spar hard. You don't spar to the same intensity that a boxer does, and that's why boxers are often more effective in fighting situations than a guy with a black belt in karate...because most black belts in karate gyms aren't getting whacked full force in the face on a daily basis in sparring and forced to use their skills in high consequence situations. Kata may show you how to use your body, but as Mike Tyson famously said: "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth"...the body movement will go out the window. Look at Karate Combat...it hardly looks like karate anymore.

It looks like fighting. If you look at REAL fighting situations, all of these martial arts will look WAY more similar than different: boxing, kick boxing, muay thai, karate etc...in a real fighting situation of combat sport watch how they all transform into effectively very similar movements. That's exactly what Bruce Lee was trying to convey with Jeet Kune Do.

I've trained in many different styles just to try and learn anything that will help me grow as a martial artist

Surprised that didn't mention multiple and rear attacks in aikido. You literally become super paranoid about anyone moving behind you because of continuous rear and multiple attacks. That spatial awareness I've never seen in any other martial art.

Tkd is worth it if you study other styles to go with it. Kung fu is worth it if you actually learn to fight and learn how to use kung fu and pass that knowledge on. Aikido is worth it if your going to do demonstrations or act in movies.

Hey Sensei Seth could you ask Sensei Ando why people don't use tigerstar Kung Fu in MMA I would like to hear his opinion I think it works honestly the reason I think they don't use it is because I think that would be a little too much for the audience

In my experience continuing to train both, Aikido injuries almost never happen, while Judo is the most dangerous martial art I've ever trained from an injury standpoint (and I have done BJJ and Karate for years as well)

It may depend on the Aikido school as well...

BJJ and Judo are both great sources of "tricks" that are sparring based, but don't require you to be an elite athlete to pull off (and they work in MMA)

I was arguing with another "Martial artists" the other day. There is no wrong in learning new mind sets, defenses and strikes. I don't know why some are purists too one art, it really makes no sense.

Why does he have a hapkido dobok in intro when he is sparring

I started doing wushu at a local academy in germany, as a complete beginner- and while I sometimes see, that many of the "fancy" tricks are maybe not that usefull in all out fights. But we also do light sparring from time to time and recently we did some sanda. I feel like my instructor is doing a very good job of explaining the "tricks" and their possible applications while still having a strong focus on practicality of stuff.

Yes.

About JKD: Bruce Lee went to Gene Lebell and Chuck Norris to learn more about karate and grappling.

Because I did TKD as a child I developed a lot of power from my hips and it carried over all my and when I started doing kickboxing, my Muay Thai roundhouse was awesome.

Everyone should learn boxing first because it’s all in the footwork. That footwork carries over to everything.

Anyone else looking for the "MMA Bros" in the comments?

I do Taekwondo these days, but used to do Judo when I was younger. One thing which stuck with me from my Judo days, is a saying by Jigero Kano: "It is not important to be better than somebody else, but to to be better than yesterday". This framed how I think about martial arts. I'm not doing martial arts because I need to be able to physically fight people, and I don't have a future in sports. I do martial arts because I want to improve myself. I believe this is the most important benefit of martial arts for most people.

In the eighties at the height of my martial arts training I had many friends from many styles and we all share techniques, it was commonplace. The thing I noticed about different styles was that they all looked very different when people were demonstrating their style but everybody looked exactly the same when they were actually sparring. This should tell you what should get thrown away and what you should keep. I was a karate practitioner and have learned some very good techniques from Kung Fu and aikido but I never would have considered trying to get a black belt in those especially aikido. There's just too many crazy techniques there that are completely useless, but like I said there are some extremely effective ones as well.

Very good 👍

Exactly!!! The people that are making fun of kungfu know nothing about it. All they know is supplements and medals

Great talk you guys are great much respect. To both of you Sifu jack Tibetan Lama kung fu jkd kali las vegas nv. Chinese used their arts for centuries for real life situations.

Interesting. Rokas, of Martial Arts Journey, had more of a negative experience with Aikido. But he later has seen some positive aspects.

the most important thing about sticking to your art is that like Buddha said, everything is in constant change. There are trends. You can actually see aikido trending right now. It could even be considered practical in near future. Taekwondo is in low trend right now. It doesn't mean you should abandon it. I tend to think my hobbies like investing in stocks. You don't gain anything by selling when they go down. You stick to them and wait for the high tide. Just live with the change.

Just like when the US temporarily outlawed martial arts in Japan after WW 2 for good reasons. Bad reasons in China.

Still a good listen