On the early days of the Inosanto Academy Jeff Imada is an American martial artist, Hollywood stunt and fight coordinator, 2nd unit director, and stunt performer. He is considered one of the most respected in the...
Archive - 2016
My Early Days in Aikido by Stanley Pranin
First impressions on watching an aikido demonstration It all started when I was 16 years old and a high school senior in San Pedro, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. The year was 1962, and apart from a few...
Interview with Morihei Ueshiba and Kisshomaru Ueshiba
This interview, conducted by two unnamed newspapermen, appeared in the Japanese-language book “Aikido” by Kisshomaru Ueshiba, Tokyo, Kowado, 1957, pages 198-219. It was translated from the Japanese by Stanley Pranin and...
Knife Party
Seeking martial artists familiar with a variety of weapons, mocap systems, and performance movement, we enlisted Jeff Imada and Lauren Kim to assist with Project Orion – the next step on our path to building...
Knife defenses: Death by Disarm
One of our ongoing R&D initiatives is to explore the design space around aikido-based techniques and training methods to respond to a knife attack (tanto-dori). Tanto-dori has been an integral, but not heavily...
Building an Effective Instructor Team
Every dojo has a Chief Instructor, but to scale a martial arts academy, it is necessary to build a team of instructors. We wanted to take the opportunity to share our approach to developing a team of instructors...
“Aikido and the Reality of Self-Defense” by Jim Sullivan, Ph.D.
“In reality our primary need for self-defense today is truly defense against ourselves!” This article highlights a topic of great importance for all aikidoka and martial artists. I have written a number of...
Kazuo Chiba — Ruthless Awareness by Tom Collings
“The emotional intensity, and range of emotions in that class was amazing — terror, fearlessness, vulnerability, and invincibility.” The following text recalling special training with Kazuo Chiba Sensei at...
Using Koichi Tohei’s Model as a Baseline by Mike Sigman
“Tohei has shown substantive use of physically-verifiable aspects of ki in his techniques since well before he left Hombu Dojo as the Chief Instructor.” One of the big problems with many of the Aikido...
Grab releases by Josh Gold
Aikido practitioners typically embrace the grab of an attacker and use it to their advantage. However, there are times when escape is the best course of action. This is when grab releases become valuable. Purpose At...