This next video deals with the concept of Leading. Aikido is often described as a throwing art. But you must be able to lead the person, and there are a lot of ideas about what leading is and how to do it. In our experience, most of them will get you killed by a determined knife attacker. We use padded practice knives and really try to get each other. None of this half-assed attacks with wooden tanto. No matter how realistic you think your training is, if you are attacking each other with wooden tanto you simply cannot really try to kill each other since that is what you would likely do.
The leading in this video works off of perfectly natural human responses, as will be explained by John. First, some points about doing this in practice:
- This video does not present realistic attacks. John just wanted to show a few ways that Morihei Ueshiba used to lead. When the attacks speed up leading becomes much easier.
- These are only the ways we have seen Morihei leading, and to pick up on them you need to watch the old films and slow them down to at least half speed. Makes the Japanese music sound better, too.
- This method isn't foolproof. Nothing is. If someone tells you they have the ultimate foolproof magic martial art you should turn and run in the other direction. Certainly don't give them your money!
