A Vist to the Aikido School of Self-Defense

11/11/91

Mark J. Norton


I had a chance to pay a visit to the School of Self-Defense, which is an Aikido dojo in Moorestown, New Jersey. I studied at this school for about four months under Alex Rusinko. Alex is an unusual Aikidoist having spent a great deal of time in both the US Aikido Federation (under Yamada Sensei) and the Ki Society (under Koichi Tohei). I had hoped to see Alex, but he was unable to be there due to prior committments.

The instructor for the evening was a young man named Ted. Ted is currently second kyu, bright, intense and in good shape. He was very much a result of the kind of Aikido Alex has been teaching for years. Ted was very uneasy at first to be teaching a class which suddenly contained a student significantly more advanced than he. He was put somewhat at ease by a telephone call from Alex, who asked him to show me some of the recent technique development he had been doing. Ted and I agreed that he would teach for one hour, and I would teach the second hour.

It would seem that Alex has recently had a few new students join the dojo who held black belts in Karate and Tae Kwan Do. These students had a sufficiently open mind to come and give Aikido an honest try, but were frankly skeptical about its ability to handle the kinds of attacks they were used to dealing with. Alex soon had them convinced of Aikido's basic worth, but they still felt that it was weak against very fast punches, snap kicks and the like. Alex then started playing around with modifications to some basic Aikido techniques to deal with this very fast attacks. It was these new techniques that Alex wanted Ted to show me.

Many basic Aikido techniques depend on blending with an opponents attack and then controling it to produce a throw or fall. This can be quite difficult against a very fast snap punch (for example). The fist can be accelerated and stopped far faster than the more massive bulk of a defender's body. Alex therefore deals with the strike without gross body movements. Instead of stepping in and to the side to meet a punch, or rapidly stepping back, these new techniques involve blending hands with hands, which turn the strike aside and into a technique like ikkyo. This approach is most obvious against a round house punch. There is no need to move the body at all, just reach out and control the punching arm to continue its circular movement away and downwards into a throw.

The moves I was shown seemed effective. They could be adminstered quite rapidly, without the need for a large body movement. There is, however, a strong requirement for precise timing, rapid speed, and good awareness on the part of the defender. Some might question the advisability of depending on speed and timing for Aikido technique, but in this circumstance I suspect there is no alternative. The attacker who uses these kinds of blows will be relying on his own speed, timing, and power to deliver the maximum amount of damage.

Ted showed me an Ikkyo response using these leading techniques against a round house punch, straight punch to face, shomenuchi, and yokomenuchi. Re-directing the force of a shomenuchi and tsuki seem to be quite difficult. Ted confessed that he had trouble with them and that Alex was still playing with responses to these kinds of attacks.

My assessment of these techniques is that they are an interesting application of Aikido to a somewhat artficial circumstance. More people than ever know some form of karate these days, so developing effective defense against the kinds of attacks they are likely to deliver seems practical. I also belive that these defenses are extremely advanced and should not be taught to beginners. It is far more important that beginners concentrate all their efforts into learning the basics of Aikido than to be worrying about techniques which require highly coordinated moves at fast speeds. Even someone like Ted could better spend his time preparing for Ikkyu or Shodan requirements. It is perhaps unfortunate that I am unable to practice with Alex on a regular basis, so that I could volunteer to be his uke and let newer students concentrate on learning first principles.