One of the big problems people seem to have with Aikido is all the wrist grabbing. It seems silly and unnecessary if you come from a sport martial art school. If you’re into RBMA (reality based martial arts) then it seems only mildly useful, and only in self defense situations. Punching and kicking seem reasonable, headlocks, body to body clinching, these things are what martial arts should be about, right…
The biggest problem our martial art faces today, in terms of our ability to develop (as individuals and as a whole), is understanding what we are doing and why. There is so much confusion in our community as to what we are doing. Why do we practice such strange techniques? How does our system even work in a martial context?
Even if you are not interested in martial questions directly, this should be important to you. So you’ve never been in a fight, and don’t ever expect to be. You’re probably right, if you are a reasonable person, it’s unlikely that you will ever get into a fight. However even if you were never put in a position to “use” your martial arts training, this question is important to you. Not because of your ability to “use” Aikido outside of the dojo, but because of your ability to “use” Aikido inside of the dojo!
Your personal growth as a martial artist depends on you understanding what it is that you are doing when you train Aikido. How these things should work and why. Not because you plan to Judo chop, or rather Aikido chop some evildoer, but because you are a martial artist. You spend your valuable time training in the martial arts, you have already made the choice, for whatever reason, to understand it’s martial ideals, even if you never plan to “use” it.
So why would anyone grab your wrist? Maybe they grab your wrist to pull you somewhere, or to put you in something. While some Aikido techniques may come in handy for this, usually it’s not important to the attacker that he be grabbing your wrist in these situations. He could just as likely be grabbing your hair, shirt, leg or whatever he can easily grab in order to drag you off to where he wants you. Aikido does have grabs from other place’s like collar and cuff, but wrist grabbing are heavily emphasized in Aikido forms.
The kind of wrist grabbing that is required in Aikido technique is very specific:
The attacker has a real motivation to hold on to the wrist specifically.
The attacker will follow the wrist specifically where ever you move it.
The attacker will often ignore other, seemingly better options, in order to stay connected to the wrist.
The attacker will often sacrifice his own balance/alignment in order to keep a hold on the wrist.
These are the things uke will do in Aikido forms in order to keep a hold on the wrist. This is very different then the type of scenario outlined above. If an aggressive attacker wanted to grab your wrist to pull you into his car for example. He would not sacrifice his own balance to do it. If did something with your wrist that made him loose position, he would simply let go and switch to a better position. If you pulled your wrist away, or lead his grasp into a difficult position, he would most likely grab the next available thing (clothing, hair, neck etc.) that would allow him to pull you in. And if you offered him a better grabbing option (bear hug, waist lock, head lock etc), he would choose that over a wrist grab.
So from the stand point of RBMA, most Aikido techniques from the wrist grab, don’t make much since. From the stand point of sport martial arts, such as MMA, these techniques seem equally foolish. First off, there is not a whole lot of wrist grabbing in sport martial arts. You will see wrist grabs done, but the grab is only for an ideally quick transition into a better hold (headlock, bear hug, waist lock etc). There is no real desire to hold the wrist specifically as we see done by uke in Aikido forms. Most wrist grabbing in sport martial arts can be dealt with by simply pulling or circling the wrist. Since the attacker has no real desire to hold the wrist specifically, he will likely let go as soon as the hold has the slightest potential of jeopardizing his position.
Looking at this you might start to draw the conclusion that wrist grabbing doesn’t make much since, and least not the kind done in Aikido. So why then are wrist grabs so important in Aikido? Often people like to say that the wrist grab symbolizes a metaphoric attack. That perhaps Ueshiba was so far ahead of his time that he designed a martial art systems around body principles and not actual martial technique. So the grab simply represents a physical movement/position and not an actual attack.
This might seem all well and good, until you look at Aikido’s martial predecessors. Ueshiba didn’t invent the wrist grab. Techniques very similar to those seen in Aikido, techniques done from the same types of wrist grabs, can be seen in most other Koryu (traditional/classical) jujutsu’s. The type of grabbing done in Aikido is very similar to other, older Japanese martial arts. And while it may be said that Ueshiba was an enlightened man, with lofty goals and ideals, many of the samurai who invented earlier systems weren’t interested in non-practical things. They were interested in the most efficient ways to take another mans life, and save their own.
The influence of these earlier Koryu systems on Ueshiba’s Aikido are quite clear. Aikido looks and works more like Koryu jujutsu then any of it’s modern peers. And these Koryu martial arts often demonstrate the same type of grabbing attacks. I don’t believe these early marital artists were interested in designing symbolic attacks, or making systems based on principles as opposed to functional martial skill.
When you first start to study a martial art system the technique (wrist lock, arm bar, choke)seems to be the most important thing to focus on. As new students we look for better techniques, ones that will deceive our opponents and allow us to easily over come our foes. As you progress in the martial arts you began to learn that the technique itself is the easy part. However getting into the right position to apply the technique is the real “art”. In modern martial arts we call this “the set-up”. Knowing which techniques will work from what set-ups is of the utmost importance. Being able to consistently get your idea set-up is equally important, as any Judo or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competitor will tell you.
In Aikido, as with many other Koryu jujutsu, the wrist grab is the set up for many of the forms. The type of wrist grabbing we talked about earlier. Wrist grabbing that is very dedicated to holding fast, and following the hand/wrist, even if it goes in an undesirable position. This is our set-up, a position that seems like it would never happen; at least not from the prospective of our earlier line of thinking, when we looked at RBMA and MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). If the wrist grab is our set-up, and the set-up is so important then how could we possibly have an effective martial art system??
The idea of one-on-one unarmed fighting, for most people in the modern era, is what they considering martial arts to be about. MMA has proven itself effective in this arena (one on one unarmed fighting). And while MMA’s main interest is sport application, we can all see that it’s ability with this type of fighting can easily cross over to non-sport fighting. So we tend to use MMA as a measuring stick.
From this perspective, if Aikido is a “good” martial art then it should be effective in MMA matches, right? When using MMA as a measuring stick, we must understand that it is only good at measuring like things. For example, I can’t use a ruler to weigh something, and likewise I can’t use a scale to find how tall I am. When using MMA to measure another martial art, you are measuring it’s ability in one-on-one unarmed fighting, specifically sport fighting.
This points out the flaw in our modern idea of what a martial art system is. The martial art world as a whole has a kind of tunnel vision at the moment. We can’t see the Forrest for the trees, and this confuses us. We have lost sight of the big picture and have taken to investigating one small piece of the puzzle. While this study has given us many great insights, insights that will indeed help our understanding of the big picture. We have for the moment, put ourselves into a small box.
I often like to use archery as an example. We know from our studies of history that archery is an effective martial art. We know that bow and arrows are good weapons, and that through diligent practice one can achieve a high level of skill with those weapons. So if we use MMA to measure archery, what do we get? It’s comparing apples to oranges, they are different types of martial arts with different concerns. Comparing them is an exercise in futility.
The origins of the techniques found in Aikido do not come from unarmed, one-on-one, sport fights. They were developed by the Samurai, who were always armed, usually facing multiple opponents, in time of war, not for sport application. Ueshiba himself said (click here for interview ) when talking about many of the marital arts he’s studied that they were concerned with one-to-one combat forms which could not satisfy him. The type of fighting that lent itself to the foundation of Aikido is different then that of MMA.
Does this mean Aikido techniques are better then MMA techniques? If they were designed to deal with multiple attackers, armed and in life or death situations, they must be superior, right? NO. Training in MMA style techniques will make you far better at one-on-one unarmed fighting then Aikido ever could. It does this because that’s what it’s designed to do. But like Archery, Aikido has it’s place, you just have to open your eyes to see it.
One-on-one, unarmed fighting is an aspect of fighting for certain. But just one aspect. depending on where you’re sitting it may or may not be an important one. If your sitting in a bar, and some guy is hitting on your girlfriend, it may seem pretty important. If you’re sitting behind the wheel of a tank, it seems pretty inconsequential. To a Samurai, sitting behind a 3 foot razor blade, he had trained his whole life to use, unarmed one-on-one fighting didn’t seem that important either. This is why early Jujutsu systems didn’t focus on this type of fighting. What did they focus on? Dealing with someone who was preventing you from drawing, or using your weapon. What’s a good way to stop someone from drawing and/or using their weapon…grab their weapon-hand (wrist) and don’t let go no matter what.
Wrist grabbing was a concern to an armed samurai. This is because it kept him from using his weapon. further this kind of grabbing slowed him down, which meant that if multiple people were attacking him, they may be able to over whelm him. Even if they were unarmed and untrained. In close up situations, when a samurai was facing his peers, he himself may need to grab a wrist in order to stop his attacker from using a weapon. Or to quickly clear his weapon hand so that he might deal the deciding blow. In armed situations, wrist grabbing happens anytime the fight turns to close quarters. Likely the first one to clear his weapon hand will be the winner.
What good are things like headlocks, bear-hugs, waist-locks and the like if you can’t control the weapon hand? If you don’t grab the wrist, and go do a seemingly “better” hold (as prescribed by unarmed methods) you will simply be stabbed and cut down. Aikido techniques train from wrist grabs and not headlocks because, quite simply if your attacker puts you in a headlock instead of grabbing your wrist, you would simply cut them down.
Wrist grabbing is only one aspect of Aikido, but it’s an important one. The techniques we learn to clear our weapon hand are deadly effective, and timelessly useful. Anytime handheld weapons are brought into play, the techniques found in Aikido’s core syllabus can be used to great effect. If one’s sole interest is one-on-one unarmed fighting, then MMA is the clear choice. However, if I ever find myself in a truly dangerous situation, I will use tools to help me survive. Making sure that I have the freedom to use these tools in something that Aikido is very useful for. So when training, please; GRAB MY WRIST.
