I really want to know how you get into the fake martial arts game. What is going through your head when a 58 year old man is gently tapping you that causes you to fall limp to the ground? Who do you have to know to get on the mat that day? Were you paid? So many questions...
Aikido is fun gymnastics that has that feel to it!
Honestly, I'd love to learn Aikido and several other martial arts like it - I just know in advance that they won't really help me in a fight.
Just don't get into any fights. Problem solved.
To be fair, that’s good advice to follow when at all possible. 99% of self defense is avoidance, and whatnot.
Ti Chi is fun, I do it to help with neck pain from a spine surgery, but its physical therapy not a martial art.
I am under the impression that the effect is essentially being slowly indoctrinated into a sort of stage hypnotist effect.
And then of course the masters also think "wow i must have really powerful chi!' So then they get more and more looney and their students become progressively more hypnotized into further excessive compliance which creates a feedback loop process I like to shorthand as "getting high on your own farts"
My favorite example of getting high on your own farts is Systema. Right around the time I was getting into martial arts as an adult for self defense a systema spot was one of the ones near me that seemed interesting. Researching the martial art I remember the early videos from circa y2k and they all looked like special forces kind of Larpy but within a relatively reasonable framework similar to like a krav maga RBSD.
Over the years as Mikhail and Vlad got higher on their own farts the stuff they started putting put there got more and more bizarre with more excessively compliant students until they were doing full on chi master shit thst looked nothing like the Systema I remember being shown in the 00's.
I get the vibe most martial arts cults have this sort of effect going on but it wouldnt surprise me if things like aikido and pressure point dim mak etc all had some fart smelling in their roots.
People have a natural tendency to fit on, just like speaking in tongues, and other ridiculous group activities.
In aikido, you are trained to go with the movement of the 'defender', the logic being that resisting too much can get you hurt, which is fair with some of the joint locks and some of the more effective throws. However, this results in people getting trained to just go down when the technique is used, no matter what technique it is or how effectively it is being used.
You're supposed to scale your compliance to the skill level of your partner so that you both learn. Generally as the attacker the only fun part is the big flying break fall/roll so people tend to lean hard into maximum complying. Then it becomes a bit of a joint delusion where the defender believes they are being very effective. Within a limited scope of self defense usage where the objective is to escape an attack rather than striking back decisively Aikido has some good fundamental movements and is a lot of fun. But it's closer to Taichi/Yoga than a true martial art. I practiced it for several years and the instructor varied wildly. My first instructor was pretty big into the whole energy thing and was also a chiropractor (so he was pretty big on the woo woo). My later instructors were much more grounded in what it was and wasn't. With one occasionally diverting into sidebars about how we're practicing like this but if modified for an actual fight then something like an arm bar into a throw becomes an arm break with some tweaks of the hold and motion. But he was also a Vietnam vet that hadn't paid taxes since he came back and lived a cash only life out of a van while traveling the country and studying more martial arts than I have fingers and toes .
Yeah that is a much more in depth answer than I was prepared to give. There are several things taken together that result in the sort of ridiculous displays that get posted here.
Exactly. Aikido can be a lot of bullshido but it has a lot of effective techniques and shares a lot with judo, among other things. But it has to be grounded in fundamental skills.
Same phenomenon behind those mega churches doing spirit slaying and speaking in tongues or whatever. Shared delusions
There is a thing called group hysteria or something like that. So when they see the mcdojo people acting like the way they do, they think it's the way things are supposed to go and then they will instinctively do it.
I see it as cult like behavior. Not all martial arts, just this nonsense