“Winning in the mind of the opponent is the highest strategy” by Charles Warren

“The best aikido is where the other guy changes his mind and leaves before much of anything happens.”

The following comment by Charles Warren was submitted in reply to yesterday’s blog: “Reality-based” Martial Arts Not So Reality-based? by Wayne Muromoto. I felt that it deserved attention as a follow-up blog. -Editor

“No plan survives the first encounter with the enemy.” It is really unusual for either attack or defense to be neat. The test is what comes spontaneously. If you are really doing aikido approximating O Sensei’s, I make an exception. That’s because it isn’t really squared off, confrontational fighting. As such you have to come up with different metrics of success. The best aikido is where the other guy changes his mind and leaves before much of anything happens. The worst, in my opinion, is where you however neatly take the person down to a pin. Are you a cop? Are you going to cuff him? The measure of failure is obvious. You are either beaten into submission or killed. If that doesn’t happen, it reflects some degree of success.

That is not to say that practicing sloppy forms of any art or combination thereof is any useful reflection of reality. Why go across the desert in an all-terrain vehicle if you can take the Interstate? Necessity would have to be pretty pressing. Training and kata will help you “stay on the road” (“Do” or “Michi”). A map isn’t reality, but it can show you the best way to get from one place to another. I may still have a certain route in muscle memory. If I didn’t, I could probably still drive it with reference to the map.

Musashi said that attacks really have only a few essential characteristics. How many attacks do you know come straight down the line, the shortest distance between two points? Hands or feet, attacks at angles, are details and deception. A critical skill is to be able to quickly ascertain the essence of the attack. Even better is to sense the attacker’s setup. Really good aikido disrupts that. If you can disrupt the other guy’s mental setup, you can take your validation from Sun Tzu, “Winning in the mind of the opponent is the highest strategy.”

I suppose that it may be useful at some point in your martial training to do some competition. Wrestling is a bit like what O-Sensei said of suwariwaza: “They may learn something and they aren’t likely to hurt each other.” (That from John Smith, friend of Bill Witt, who earned 1st kyu studying with O-Sensei.) Think about it. It’s really pretty profound. Win or lose in wrestling and you will gain an appreciation of aikido.

The other day I came up with two short propositions I’d like to share.

1 – Aikido is tangential to conflict from the stance up. (It is hard to defeat that which you can’t confront. It’s even harder if it’s slightly out of range in an inconvenient direction.)

2 – Fighting, especially hand to hand, is a fairly minor subset of violent interactions, even hand-to-hand-range violent interactions. (So, however good a fighter you might become… Of course criticizing dojo training of anything also has some validity.)

Contact Charles Warren here.