Back to basics

Basics are the foundation of advanced material. The lessons from your first class, those that you never outgrow, contain a huge amount of material that keeps giving and giving with more practice. 

Simple broken down structure and body movement work is the foundation of moving with power. When you dissect the most advanced practice you know you will see the basics. The advanced techniques are simply the basics done to perfection. 

As Musashi wrote, "your combat walk should be your everyday walk." Keep on practicing.

Aikido Founder O sensei Morihei Ueshiba in action

The old man in the clip is O-Sensei Morihei Ueshiba, the Founder of Aikido. At the advanced age of 78 years old O-Sensei moved with surprising vigor and agility, that put much younger men, including myself to shame.

O-sensei's Aikido is the aikido style that I have been studying and practicing for more than 15 years. Each time I watch these old black and white video clips of Aikido I see different aspects of O-sensei and his art which I had not noticed before.

It has been my good fortune to study a martial art whose lineage goes back all the way to the Founder. In his youth my late Aikido teacher Seeich Sugano Shihan was one of O-Sensei's many uchi-dechis (direct students). And through learning from Sugano Shihan, all his present day students are linked to O-Sensei through a continuous line of unbroken lineage.

Hapkido on Fight Quest of Astro Discovery channel

Every Tuesday at 10pm there is a martial arts reality show on TV called Fight Quest featured on Astro's Discovery channel. This show is about two Caucasian martial arts practitioner's going around Asia learning and competing in Asian martial arts. The first episode showed the two guys going to the Phillipines learning and competing in the Filipino stick fighting martial arts called Kali/Eskrima. After the first show I missed a couple of other episodes featuring other different Asian martial arts style.

Tonight's episode was quite interesting as it featured the Korean art of Hapkido. I am always intrigued by Hapkido because some people say the Korean art share the same ancestry as the Japanese martial art of Aikido, my own martial art style. The mother of Aikido is Daito Ryu Aikidjutsu and it is said that the founder of Hapkido also studied Aikijutsu under the same teacher as O Sensei, Aikido's founder.

Although I have done some research on Hapkido and even viewed some video clips on Youtube, I have never seen a feature length TV documentary until tonight.

As I see it the main difference between the two arts is that Aikido is a defensive martial arts while Hapkido has both defensive and offensive elements. While competition is forbidden in Aikido , Hapkido actively promotes tournament fighting. While Aikido techniques are mainly confined to grappling and throwing, Hapkido techniques also includes striking, kicking and ground fighting.

Looking at the combatants bashing each other in the tournament , Hapkido looks a lot like the kick boxing styles eg. TKD , Mixed Martial Art and Sanshou with lots of emphasis on kicking, punching, clinching and takedowns.

The closest resemblance to Aikido is in the basic Hapkido kata training. I see the Aikido equivalent of throwing and projection techniques eg kokyu nage, shihonage, tenchinage, kotegaeshi, koshinage etc. In the joint manipulating training I see elements of Aikido locking techniques such as ikkyo, nikkyo, sanky0, yonkyo, etc.

The circular movements and footworks are also quite similar to Aikido's except in Hapkido they are more linear and angular.

In my opinion, the two arts were the same when they were practiced as Aikijutsu and as they evolved over the years, each developed in separate ways. While the modern incarnation of Aikido focuses more on personal , moral and spiritual development using vigorous martial arts training as a vehicle, modern Hapkido developed into a martial arts system focusing on competition and personal survival.