I’ve decided to write this article for a reason. I see the same wrong consensus online—regarding Aikido, and it upsets me because they demotivate novice trainees looking to learn to fight, both for self-defense and street fights. So, is Aikido effective?
Aikido is an effective martial art for self-defense and street fights because it teaches practical techniques to defend oneself while using your opponent’s movements and momentum against him. You’ll mainly use grappling and striking techniques, including takedowns, punches, and kicks.
The same opinion I saw online is that you don’t learn to attack in Aikido. Now, I’ll be vulgar here; it’s a bunch of nonsense! Of course then—you’ll be learning to fight when you learn a martial art designed to teach you to defend yourself.
Everybody knows that the only way to defend yourself is by being on the offense, whether your end goal is to flee or knock the opponent out. Let’s assume your goal is to flee the fight unarmed, you can’t just run away because your opponent might chase you.
Therefore, an option you have is to get on the offensive to ensure your opponent doesn’t even think of attacking you. If you show weakness, he will attack you first, which is an outcome you want to avoid.
Is Aikido Effective for Street Fights?
Now that you know what I think of the effectiveness of Aikido, it’s time we dive deeper into this subject. My end goal with this article is to get you to take action. That means that you’ll know whether you want to learn it or not. If you don’t, you’ll be able to move on to other martial arts.
You can read about the deadliest martial arts you want to learn—by following this link! Furthermore, if you desire to learn a traditional Japanese fighting style, follow the 2nd link to learn about the best Japanese martial arts that you want to learn.
Aikido is an effective martial art for street fights because it teaches you to defend yourself using the opponent’s movements. As a result, you’ll be able to inflict high amounts of damage by either using grappling or striking, which are the two primary components of a solid fighter.
What some may argue is that it’s not as effective as other, more aggressive martial arts. Now I fully accept the fact that Aikido isn’t as aggressive as, let’s say, Muay Thai or MMA. I’m not denying that fact at all.
However, it’s also not true that you won’t be able to defend yourself on the street. Listen, if you see someone running towards you or threatening your safety, you can use everything that you’ll learn to your benefit, which will be a lot.
Is Aikido Effective for Self-Defense?
Now that you know that Aikido is effective for street fights, let’s examine its effectiveness and suitability for self-defense. You might think that’s the same thing, but it’s not. A street fight is usually when two people agree to “fight it off.” However, in self-defense, you don’t really have an option, so you must know to fight fiercely to come out on top.
Aikido is an effective martial art for self-defense because it teaches practical and suitable techniques for causing massive damage to your opponent quickly. For example, you’ll learn to take your opponent down using his momentum, which can be more than suitable for self-defense, as that’s the main scenario you’ll face.
Eventually, you can see that the master in the video showcases effective fighting techniques that can hurt badly if they end up hurting you. As a result, these are definitely techniques you want to know about if you’ll end up in a self-defense scenario.
Self-defense is not that bad to deal with. Typically, you won’t face experienced fighters, usually without a martial arts background. When you come from an Aikido background, you’ll be able to maneuver your opponents in any way you want!
Should you Learn Aikido?
This is the part I was eager to get to because I believe it’s important to answer. Whether you should learn a martial art or not depends on what you want to achieve. For example, if you desire to learn grappling, it’ll be best if you don’t learn Boxing or Kickboxing. Rather, you’ll go for BJJ or Judo.
You should learn Aikido if you want to learn a less aggressive martial art whose teachings relate to harmony, peace, and effective and practical fighting. What you’ll learn is punching and kicking (striking), but mostly grappling, which can be joint locks, submissions, and takedowns.
Is There Aikido in MMA?
The upcoming section of this article will be about Mixed Martial Arts. If you’re familiar with anything about it, you know that fighters from different backgrounds get in the cage in a type of ultimate showdown; to see which fighter from which background is the strongest.
Although not banned, Aikido isn’t used in MMA that frequently, if not at all. The reason for that is that it’s not as effective and aggressive as other, more dominant martial arts, primarily Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, Muay Thai, Kickboxing, Boxing, and Wrestling. Therefore, you’ll see them more often than Aikido.
Now, I want you guys to watch a video that argues this fact. It’s important you see all the sides to understand whether you want to learn it or not. It’s critical we state all the facts, so you can make the wisest choice.
Will Aikido Make You Strong?
The last topic of this article is whether Aikido will make you strong. To get back to the primary intent of this article, we argued whether it’s effective for street fights and self-defense. Now, the answer I came up with is that it’s practical and influential for such purposes.
Now, how strong you are—also correlates to how effective and fierce you’ll be in a real fight. So it’s important we also cover that in this article.
Aikido will make you a stronger fighter. While Aikido will increase your punching power, it won’t fire up the hypertrophy process in the body, which is the muscle-building process that occurs when we tear up our muscles to make them grow. This is what the gym does best, but also other martial arts, not including Aikido.
So it’s up to you to decide what you want to achieve from your training. If you want to become the strongest version of yourself, you want to consider other fighting styles, which focus more on punching and kicking power. The best examples of that are Kickboxing, Boxing, and Muay Thai.
If you want to increase your punching power, I wrote an article just for you; follow the link to read about six ways to increase your punching power and become a stronger fighter!
Final Words
Remember, the whole point of this article is to make you take action. Whether you want to learn Aikido is entirely up to you. However, my advice is to avoid hesitating when it comes to starting something new.
If you don’t like it, you can always stop and change direction. However, you might fall in love with the Art of Harmony, widely known as Aikido.
So take the first step and start training!
Here are other articles you’d enjoy reading:
Should You Learn Aikido? The Truth
Is Aikido a Grappling or Striking-Based Martial Art?