Was I Wrong About Aikido?!?
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- Опубликовано: 28 ноя 2023
- It is crazy how a well-trained martial artist can take a system like Aikido and make it practical by changing just a few key things within its methodology. Rokkas from Martial Arts Journey takes Steven Segals's Aikido and makes something real out of it!
Original Video: • Can I Make Steven Seag...
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I think a big part of aikido that people don’t think about is the context to which it should be use. No, I’m no expert, I’m a blue belt in jujitsu and I’ve never done a keto but I feel like a lot of these techniques. Make more sense when weapons are involved. People might try to grab onto your wrists and down to it for dear life if you have a knife, or a gun, or a sword, and some throws that open up your back might make more sense if you’re trying to keep someone from weapon switching hands
Bingo. Understanding the meaning of Aikido requires studying the context that surrounds the founding of Aikido. This means studying many decades of Japanese history and culture that contributed to the life of the founder of Aikido. This means learning about Samurai, Samurai weapons, Samurai philosophy, as well as the Sumo warrior. All of this context explains why it is so important to grab and control the wrist.
You're really close. Look at Ueshiba's history, he developed Aikido to solve the problem he faced in China during it's war with Japan. He already knew the combat arts of the soldier, but while traveling with a backpack, bedroll, and other gear he was faced with multiple attackers trying to rob him, not kill him, just poor non combatants that he didn't want to kill either.
OK, so let's test this theory, put on a 50lbs backpack and try to use any martial art you want. You will recreate Aikido or get robbed and have to travel naked back to town.
The second thing he did was to use "sword power". Test it, punch a heavy bag, now take a wooden sword and try to thrust it through the bag, notice the difference in the body mechanics that maximize the power? Or karate chop the bag, then use the wooden sword, notice the difference in the body mechanics?
This is why in Aikido you "point" to where you want the person to land. You stick to them the way you keep your sword stuck to your opponent's sword and you generate power as would with a sword, and you'll notice it feels like "relaxed" power. Then do it with the backpack on.
The vocabulary of Aikido are the techniques, but the power of the language is learned from the way you generate force from the weapons.
Hey I suggest you watch as well Leo tamaki on why aikido became soft and how to properly use it
I am japonese jujitsu and judo black belt and I remember trying aikido for fun I left after one course
Ill take a look!
I train in different martial arts, but do so in an aikido dojo. I have many aikidoka friends. Whenever I ask, “How has aikido helped you?” They never answer about how it helped in a fight, because the dojo teaches de-escalation, but they always tell me about how it helped them in other ways. One of my friends was hit by a car. Because he knew how to roll and fall, he had a dislocated shoulder, but it could’ve been much worse
Aikido was never meant to be used in the ring, but I don’t believe it should be called “useless” just because it wasn’t meant for a “combat sports” situation. Part of mastering a martial art means knowing when and how to apply what you’ve learned. For example, I do kendo and 2 koryu forms of iaido. These are not great for self-defense because I can’t bring a sword with me everywhere I go (especially not in a ring, so not good for combat sports, either). This doesn’t make them useless, because I get exactly what I need from them. I’m more active, more focused, more confident, more decisive, and more dexterous. My hand-eye coordination is better than it’s ever been. I do a lot of volunteer work, and I’m a big part of the community. And I’m more aware of my surroundings, which means I can successfully avoid troublesome situations like fights
Your reasonings outside of pure combat are very fair and if it helped him being hit by a car that’s more usefulness gained from a martial art than most get from real life. This video is very much aimed specifically for combat purposes. I also did a follow up video to this which shows how it can work well in security and policing work which is a very different environment than mma or combat sports
Imo when I see videos of “hard aikido” it’s really just aikidokas reverting back to their Daito-Ryu Aiki-Jujutsu roots. Almost as off Uesheba’s Aikido is like the Kata for Aiki-Jujutsu
I’ll be honest. I have no knowledge of these styles
Are they like an older aikido bjj
Its like an older Judo so the throws aren't necessarily the most efficient but they're legit, they also have a lot of finger, wrist locks they practice than Judo and they practice Ukemi as well@@StrykeTeamOfficial
@@EthanNoble ahhh ok. I can see that.
@@StrykeTeamOfficialDaito Ryu Aiki jujutsu is the original real rough art which contains grappling, locks, punches and kicks. ish, it even contains body slams.
Actually, I generally think Aikido is a grappling art that should be taught to people who already have a background in grappling and actual fighting. The founder of Aikido was competent in many different forms of martial arts. Sumo wrestling has a lot of connections to many Japanese martial arts as it's old.They often use the forward pressure of their opposite to get a ring out by manipulating their momentum.
Someone actually explained this to me earlier and its something I will need to remember for any future aikido videos. My main issue is I don't think this peace of information is understood at large about the art. It would make a huge difference in how I see it.
@@StrykeTeamOfficial You see a lot of the philosophical ideas of Aikido executed in sumo wrestling. In Japan, there are no weight classes in sumo. Yet you still need to be able to ring a person out if you are small.
@@stevenoconnor3256 I’ll take a look at that! Thank you.
@@StrykeTeamOfficialhi there Steven Seagal style is not the best style of aikido but it is more effective other styles of aikido his aikido style is called tenshin aikido but it's not the most effective style of aikido combat aikido and tomiki aikido are better than tenshin aikido but the only style of aikido that does competition is tomiki aikido and it's mixed in with judo but tenshin style of aikido is like the 3 best style of aikido but combat aikido is a little bit more effective than tenshin style but tomiki style of aikido is most effective style of aikido because it has judo the founder of tomiki aikido is kenji tomiki he also trained with the founder of judo and also original founder of Aikido which was the first Aikido style to exist he also took Judo and Aikido and he combined it to both together and he wanted to make Aikido more of a stronger Style he also has an eighth degree black belt in Judo and also in 8th degree black belt under the original founder of the Aikido Style and also if you didn't know too that a lot of people that trained with the original founder a lot of his students also made other Arts too like yoshinkan Aikido people claim that Steven Seagal also trained under that guy too so a lot of the Aikido styles that were made and stuff were his students and stuff but they also developed their own styles of Aikido and they also make Styles and also tried to claim that their styles are better then everybody else's
its not a grappling art really; its actually JuJitsu, changed to become harmonious and a way of developing yourself when you are bored with training for self defense.
If Steven Seagal does have a name that he associates his approach and expression to Aikido, it is called Tenshin Aikido. A trademark of the curriculum is hand deflections.
I’ve trained at the Dojo in Osaka with his former wife- the Tenshin Dojo. In Japan, I currently train in Judo, Kendo, and Nishio Sensei’s expression of Aikido, and Iaido.
I think that once you begin to express aikido with resistance and conflict, you are doing Judo or Jiu Jitsu at that point and not the spirit of Aikido.
Aikido is excellent at understanding conflict and ideally works with distance and initial timing.
Background:
4th Degree Black Belt BJJ
4th Degree Black Belt Taiho Jutsu
1st Degree Judo
Black Belt Luta Livre
My question to you then is where do aikido practitioners get the realism of actual timing used in a real conflict. You cross train a crazy amount in arts that do have resistance so I can see how you could develop it. But what about someone who never has. I am making a statement from the position that you are training aikido for that reason. I am not talking about those who train simply for a cultural experience or something other than self-defense/ combat
The long and short answer: This is an excellent question for those who have only studied Aikido. Tomiki Aikido/Shodokan Aikido has competitions similar to Judo, making it a suitable practice for answering whether Aikido works or where the pressure testing/resistance is.
Moreover, your question raises a significant issue of how one can achieve realism in older Koryu styles from Japan. In such styles, most of the training is done with kata.
It is important not solely to rely on Aikido for self-defense but also to learn a comprehensive fighting system. However, as people's motives shift from self-defense and fighting to sports, Aikido's principles of understanding conflict within oneself and society remain relevant. Aikido is a great martial art that contributes to a larger perspective. @@StrykeTeamOfficial
@@StrykeTeamOfficial One confusion you have about Aikido is about the question of resistance. People who understand the meaning of Aikido (at a higher level that's deeper than the fundamental Aikido techniques) understand how to use the attacker's own resistance. If the goal is to achieve Aikido, an Aikido defender must never use their own strength to overcome the attacker's strength. This is a fighting concept of strength versus strength and Aikido defenders must never fight with strength if their goal is to perform Aikido. All the Aikido demonstrations that you can see are supposed to have the attacker attacking with great resistance and great strength and all this doesn't matter as the Aikido defender doesn't fight against that strength. What happens instead is that the Aikido defender accepts the energy which means no amount of big human strength is going harm the Aikido defender. The instant the Aikido defender starts fighting the energy is the instant that the Aikido techniques will fail to happen. What this means is that the aggressor can resist all he can with all his strength, the Aikido defender must never resist that energy but learn how to blend with the resistance in order to use it.
Martial Arts Journey with Rokas Leonavicius is a black belt in Aikido who grossly misunderstands Aikido. He fails Aikido because he doesn't understand how he's contradicting Aikido when he fights against the attacker's resistance. His understanding of Aikido is limited to the level of performing the fundamental techniques, he doesn't comprehend how to blend and accept the aggressor's attacks in the proper Aikido way.
@@FreeSalesTips my only issue with this is if I use this definition of aikido there are almost no examples of it ever working in real life that I can find.
@@StrykeTeamOfficial I assume you don't spend much time talking within the Aikido community. The most prominent example of Aikido being used against hostile opponents would be the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. Other occupations that succeed in applying "the peace of Aikido" include hospital staff, first responders, mental health staff, doormen, security services.
I can tell you that many people who train in Aikido also fail Aikido when they start fighting and resisting the opponent's strength. There are a number of reasons why they would contradict Aikido and the biggest reason is that they have a shallow understanding of Aikido regardless of the many years they've been training. Having contextual understanding of the history of Aikido will contribute to a person's orientation of why Aikido works the way it does and therefore they won't be performing Aikido based upon a non-Aikido orientation.
Dan the Wolfman
Cheers thanks
I think a big gap with Aikido isn't just lack of sparring but also not having any game plan after the technique works or doesn't. The dojo would act like all these techniques are fight enders when most wouldn't be.
I've used one Aikido technique in real life because I saw the opportunity. But generally speaking I leave anything I learned from Aikido far back in my memory and would use something else.
If you try to remold Aikido from its intended philosophy and context, you shouldn't complain when Aikido doesn't perform outside its intended context. So what is the proper philosophy and context of Aikido? Aikido is a martial art that descended from the Samurai warrrior and the Sumo warrior. Aikido is a martial art that defends against weapon attacks and does so without the need to harm the attacker. So if you're trying to use Aikido to fight a bare handed attacker, you should not be surprised to find that your Aikido skills are too slow and complex to defend that kind of scenario where you are willing to harm the attacker. All of this stems from the confusion that Aikido is a martial art that's intended for fighting. The truth is that Aikido is a non-fighting self-defense martial art to support suppression without harm.
@@FreeSalesTips If your martial art doesn't even work against an unarmed attacker, it has no chance whatsoever of working against an armed one.
AS A PROFESSIONAL ONE SHOULD ADAPT TO THE SITUATION. THE STREET IS REAL.
ruclips.net/video/y782DgHOv20/видео.html
Nice video bro, i train aikido but i complement it with judo, kickboxing and strenght training
Very nice. Have you been adapting aikido into your sparring?
@@StrykeTeamOfficial ofc, i have sparred with gear in mma gyms and without hear, the techniques are very
circumstantial. If u train only aikido and u have no background in other martials arts it wont work on combats.
Judo, muay thai and aikido with some boxing would be pretty dang amazing
7:12
Which is why you better know how to come from the shoulders.
In situations like that your hands will be what gives you the best chance of survival. Along with footwork.
shibukawa vs the whale
irimi is a way of moving not just a technique !!! Its irimi principle !!!
Well done takes agreat man to admit his mistake subcribed to your channel
Do you have any videos of you in a fight? Not a street fight but a hard contact competitive fight with potential knockouts like old school Karate.
I’m thinking of taking Uechi Ryu at a dojo near me, but my focus is the ability to defend myself if needed.
The exercise and tradition are a bonus. Ive been some rough areas for work, places with meth heads and Fentanyl addicts and had a couple close calls. I can’t carry my fire arm in some of these places because laws are different. And no, pepper spray isn’t always reliable against a tweaker.
Otherwise I’ll just learn Kickboxing.
I plan on mixing in Judo as well but because of needles I really don’t want to get close to some of these people.
I do, I have videos of old fights on the channel and more recent clips in my shorts. But I also train Muay Thai and kickboxing. I’ve been in very few street fights because I would never stay long enough to let it develop. My only street fights are stoping a guy from robbing my parents business and some school stuff. When it comes to uechi and self defense it will depend on the school. 95% of the techniques I consider good, but the average training method is bad. It’s not good for understanding real timing and pressure. I learned that from Muay Thai and mixed them together so now I can use my uechi at full speed. However, the number of dojos trying to fix this problem is growing so depending on where you are this could be an issue they are fixing. Where is the dojo?
Also, judo is a great option 10/10 would recommend. Hard ground makes that style very dangerous.
An ART dependends of artist, the way you use It, change everything. Use It to defend and Krav Maga to attack Works for me. Respect your opponents and keep training to reach perfection.
nice. Glad some people here understand.
I think that it’s undeniable Aikido was useful in combat. But it’s became an “art” in which people are not trying to hurt each other. The UFC is essentially the same albeit several levels higher. But you still cannot grab someone’s balls or gouge out their eyes. NONE OF THIS APPLIES IN COMBAT. I honestly think that if you put a UFC fighter in a ring with a competent swordsman? They are gonna die 99 out of 100 times. They would find Aikido useful, Aikido tries to control the hands a lot or deflect a lot. That’s because ONE punch holding COLD STEEL equals DEATH. Aikido in some ways reminds me of Krav Maga. It’s not designed for a ring. It’s designed to stay alive while being attacked by a WEAPON.👍
Very true.. Aikido is something you practice WITH people, not AGAINST them. No competitiom, no winner.
It amazes mewhow many people judge it by its effectiveness in self defense; the best self defense is a gun. Anything else is pretty secondary, and thua 'useles's by varying degrees. If thats how you want to rate it.
UFC has so many rules, to protect the fighters (huge paychecks and insurance costs).
Nothing trains combat better than combat, and training combat hurts and leaves injuries - no money in that sport!!
Aikido will work against a child or your grandmother. Against a strong, uncooperative individual, forget it.
Correct. its not supposed to be against anyone. its an ART; you do it WITH people, not AGAINST them. No competitions.
Aikido doesnt work in real fights. Anything ever cited that works is found in other grappling arts containing much better tools.
as aikido comes directly from Daitoryu, most of the other 'effective' arts actually came later. Aikido changed direction (from Daitoryu Aikijujitsu) and aimed at peace and harmony. Obviously not much good for fighting.
If you've never really trained aikido I think it's hilarious to be making claims about whether it works.
I’ve sparred aikido guys and asked them to demonstrate on me… not training it myself is not the same as having no experience with it at all.
@@StrykeTeamOfficial ehhhh I can see where you’re coming from in your conclusion but I think it’s a bit misguided because the majority of aikido practitioners have never fought before in their lives
So the expect them to know how to apply techniques against resistance would be sort of ridiculous. It’s like expecting a cardio kickboxer to know how to spar.
A cardio kickboxers inability to spar isn’t an indictment against kickboxing, so an aikidokas inability to fight isn’t an indictment against aikido. Aikido teaches a specific skillset and fighting is not apart of that skillset. It works extremely well at what it’s designed to teach, which is understanding body mechanics in a dynamic and ever adapting way, and therefore someone who actually knows how to fight AND knows aikido might be able to intuitively feel an aikido technique and hit it from a hyper specific position
Aikido is really about avoiding attachment and going with the flow. It’s not really about forcing the fight to go in the way you want it to, it’s about seeing opportunities and going for them. Aikido teaches how to go for the opportunities but learning how to fight is what teaches you how to see them
This is why Rokas is only now reaching the point where his aikido is working, because despite knowing lots of techniques he hasn’t developed a feel to recognize those techniques against resistance.
If you’d like to develop a feel for that I’d recommend getting a job as a bouncer while you practice aikido. You’ll end up finding out a lot of cool ways to drag people around using aikido techniques where other martial arts, such as bjj, wouldn’t really be effective
By example, I wouldn’t really kimura someone while I’m trying to escort them across a crowded room, and since I’m the initiator of the technique I get an extra split second of reaction time to perform techniques before the opponent resists.
The way I fight in the cage is very different from the way I perform techniques as a bouncer, and there’s just as many bjj or wrestling skills that would be useless in a real life scenario as there would be aikido techniques that would be worthless against an mma fighter who is actively trying to swing on you
So if you trained aikido I think you’d grow to understand that aikido works, however even still I don’t think you’d learn much about using it for a while (hence why rokas has done this shit for years and still can barely do aikido in a fight)
The way to develop that would be law enforcement, security, etc. because there’s a very steep barrier of entry for skill before your aikido will start to work, and once you learn how to perform techniques on drunk people or unexpecting untrained civilians, you got a lot better at doing them against a resisting opponent to where you can occasionally find them against another trained fighter
Understand context. Aiki techniques were practiced by samurai, actual warriors, and it was their art of choice for a reason. Because it works. If you’re a desk worker who never uses it outside of the dojo you’ll never get good at it
@@user-bd5ef2xv9l I get your point... kind of. Minus the aikido being practiced by samurai which i don't think the history technically supports, it does share an ancestor of samurai fighting arts. One way I can see some of these techniques working better is how people are more likely to over extend when using a weapon. I can also see how in a situation with a bouncer you may find yourself in a position where some of the wrist locks and controls may work. My argument here on why aikido doesn't work is actually supported by what you said. Let me explain, my issue with aikido is many practitioners claim it is useful for self-defense as a complete system by itself and some even make that statement for a full-on fight. This is not the argument made by cardio kickboxing or even wrestling. My point in this video is how aikido's training methods and its drills are damn near pointless and training aikido alone is one of the worst at preparing you. From your message I get the feeling that you have trained in multiple arts. You also explain how aikido works when you understand pressure over time. That is actually my general point. Aikido alone can't do this. It is one of the worst at doing this by itself. And while I agree bjj is maybe not the ideal way to practice it as it is more a police/security functionality than sport, I can see how a sports guy who maybe gets some bouncing experience as you mentioned could create new and practical skills to make it more functional as a standalone practice. In my experience even when a guy tells me what to do and where to hit, if I am allowed to move at 80% speed or use 80% strength to resist most aikido guys can't get the lock or throw. The locks may work once fully initiated, like if i just stand there and let them fully do whatever they want before i resist, but they have no method of getting there in the first place. I don't have this same experience with most other martial arts as many can perform even their more questionable techniques under such prearranged circumstances. Aikidoish style practices may have worked for samurai because of their other training added with it, but as you said, by itself you won't figure it out.
Your message points out that you have a ton of other experience plus live bouncing work. You may actually be the kind of person I mention at the end of the video who should be working on developing more realistic training methods so it can work more universally.
@@StrykeTeamOfficial so we agree on a lot of points, but I would like to say that I don’t think that aikido training is useless. I think that the soft training allows you to develop a certain sensitivity to feeling elasticity of someone’s body and developing a mastery of how to manipulate that.
Is far is resisting with strength you need to understand that you can only resist in one so many directions at once. You can easily switch directions and employ techniques if you have a good enough feeling for equal and opposite muscle groups.
For instance, imagine this, to recruit the bicep, tricep is the opposite muscle group, using full strength of the bicep means that you are using zero strength on the tricep, and therefore, if you went full speed in the opposite direction an aikido lock would simply snap the arm
If you know and can feel which muscle groups are engaged you can switch the side you’re employing the technique so that they cannot resist. That’s why I’m these aikido lock flows they normally perform a technique and then after the tap they transition to another, this is to represent following up a technique that was resisted with a technique which attacks the other direction
It rarely looks perfectly like the way it’s done in a demo but a skilled practitioner can come surprisingly close
I’m not amazing at aikido by any means to the point where I’m hitting this stuff in mma fights, but I use it regularly in security, and in grappling specifically I can occasionally hit techniques.
I have a teacher however who I can assure you would destroy me just using aikido, even as an amateur mma fighter, I am 3-1, not high level at all, but people like me are the exact people that critics love to say “any mma fighter would dominate an aikido master”
He is a far more advanced fighter than me even if just using aikido. He is however not someone who teaches me tomiki aikido, and even in that it’s not traditional tomiki aikido but it does include choreographed kata. he trains tomiki aikido, which is a specific type of aikido which was made by one of the original students of judo being sent to learn aikido, who eventually went on to develop a grandmaster rank in either.
I specifically am blessed to have such a teacher, but even other aikido teachers I derive value from their training because I understand the context it’s applied. It’s more about developing sensitivity to certain body mechanics, and learning techniques.
It’s on your own to learn how to fight, which is consistent with the original design of aikido, as Ueshiba only taught master martial artists, he did not teach beginners. Nowadays, beginners with no sparring experience have high level aikido ranks
Nothing is wrong with wrong with aikido anymore than something is wrong with boxing. The only issue is people that don’t seem to understand the way fact that aikido on its own is designed to teach you how to fight
That’s my perspective on the art. If you make claims that aikido is bad, I’m going to address it as though you believe aikido does not work. Aikido does work, and it works as intended. It’s just different from how a lot of aikido people think it’s intended.
What’s interesting enough is the MMA people can often times see value in for instance taekwondo, they have their fair share of criticisms, but it’s usually acknowledged that someone who practices both taekwondo and kickboxing is usually more dangerous than somebody who has only kickboxed
This is, despite the fact that aikido on its own does not pride itself as a self-defense system. If the specific teacher wants to claim that it is, that is their prerogative. But in reality it’s simply claims to be a method of practicing martial arts that are based on feeling the flow of energy and taking the path of least resistance. This, in my opinion is a distinctively different purpose from self-defense.
Think of aikido like pummeling. Plenty of great fighters might not even know what pummeling drills are, but pummeling drills develop a sensitivity to a range of skills that are highly useful. Pummeling is not enough to teach self defense, but it’s not supposed to, pummeling works as advertised.
Aikido is about understanding the path of least resistance and the flow of energy, if you don’t know how to fight it will have very little benefit to you, but if you do, it’s very effective at what it does.
@@user-bd5ef2xv9l I actually agree with your definition of aikido. If the whole world viewed aikido in the way you just expressed it I don't think it would get this level of hate and I wouldn't hate on it. My gripe with the system and why I am so hard on it is because of so much false advertising. For example, I don't get mad at tai chi because it advertises itself like yoga. Can a small few high level martial artists who understand pressure and form application take some tai chi moves and make them work. Absolutely! But its normal training methods are some of the worst for actually learning how to fight. The main difference is almost every tai chi guy I know advertises it at yoga like moving meditation. The advertising difference is why I personally try not to hate on it. The way you just explained Aikido above is one of the best definitions of Aikido I have ever heard. If that was the mainstream view of the system I would not be bashing it.
Aikido techniques can work. It all depends on the person and how they adapted that technique to themselves. I trained Aikido for a bit to get to know it and see if there was anything useful in it. There were a few very useful things I learned and a handful of techniques that work. I can, for instance, catch a punch in my hand. Working on what to do with it once it is in my palm is an entirely different story and took longer. You then want to use that person's momentum and direction to thrown them or incapacitate them in another way. Just an example. But once you have that fist in your hand, unless you are an idiot or your opponent is a martial genius, you usually have your fight won. As many times as I have used it to diffuse a situation one time the guy's hand I caught was a golden gloves boxer and wanted to box right there. At night. In a train station. I said ok, he rushed me for two jabs and a what I would guess was his power punch, a right hook. I slipped them all and but let the hook graze my jawline to see what he had in his hands and he had pepper. Just wasn't enough. At this point his girlfriend tackled him and forced him to go home. I was just glad it was over. I hate confrontation no matter how good or bad I am at mitigating it.
Rokas was and shit aikidoka, why don't use Dan Wolfman who actually skilled in aikido and has used it in street combat and combat sports
I’ll look him up.
Cheers, thanks
Rokkas know nothing about fighting. AFter training other fighting arts for years (like the founder of Aikido) if you train Aikido it helps develop better control and centering, as well as lessening the wish to damage others and let your Ego get you into trouble; it develops the character, which (if you want to develop as a person) is much more important than being able to defend yourself.
Similar to what the top people in karate and all other traditional martial arts preach - you train for yourself, not to destroy others.
Masakatsu Agatsu - true victory is victory over yourself.
People do not train Aikido, to fight; thos who do have reverted back to Aikijujitsu.
sorry but Rokkas aikido IS rubbish for self defence .....because he never trained it for that.
His attempts to use aikido in these videos is laughable and shows that he doesnt know anything about FIGHTING.
ANd apart rom that, Aikido just isnt about free fighting; its something totally different. Dont judge it by your standards; just because others think that all of these ARTS should have a practical application doesnt mean we (who practice it) should follow. The whole idea of an ART is that its for personal development.
Aikido should ideally be trained to people who already are high level in other martial arts; its there as a way of personal development.