Our discussion goes into depth about the widely held belief that aikido is purely defensive in nature. Is it fact or myth - or somewhere in between?

Edit: My apologies. The intro from the previous episode is at the beginning, but the interview is the one with Ellis Amdur, not Remy Helgesen.

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Misunderstandings and myths about what violence is, how it goes, and how to handle it are common among martial artists of all kinds. We discuss real violence and how understanding it better positively affects our martial arts training.

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We discuss Dunken's video series, going into the topics he covers in greater detail.

Aikido of Silverdale's playlist of the video series:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA520V4pOPWKrvo27LauSOC8qiPQKH7hK

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It is often said of aikido that it doesn't require strength. Is this strictly true? Not necessarily.

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All arts evolve, sometimes for good and sometimes not. Steven Scott and I discuss how martial arts training are evolving, both for good and bad.

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There are many times in history when martial arts changed significantly. From how arts evolved in terms of function, as well as how they are perceived by the public, these changes in the times led to revolutions in how the martial arts were practiced and how they became popular - or lost their popularity.

Are we currently at such a point in history?

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All arts have great things to offer, but also have their drawbacks.

We go through a number of martial arts and provide an overview breakdowns of their advantages and weaknesses. These can give you ideas for good arts to cross train in or which art(s) which may suit your own particular interests.

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It is often taught that Aikido's heritage was the ancient Japanese battlefield, where it's techniques were born. Is this true?

This episode is a conversation which is a follow up to the previous episode (ep. 167) with Ellis Amdur where he goes into the history of aikido back as far as Sokaku Takeda.

In this episode, we go back much farther into Japanese history and cover the development of the samurai, their weapons, and armor.

A link to Ellis' book, which we discuss on the show - Old School: Essays on Japanese Martial Traditions (Expanded Edition)

https://edgeworkbooks.com/old-school/

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Facing someone who is faster than you are seems impossible to survive, but speed can be countered. We can train to be fast ourselves, but there will always be someone faster.

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Reg shares his background with live weapons training and how it helped him improve his aikido and both self-defense and self-protection skills.

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