Why does Aikido have a bad reputation?

Over the years, it’s often been said that Aikido has something of a controversial reputation within the world of martial arts. A lot of this is to do with the traditional values that are found in Aikido that aren’t as common in more modern arts. However, there is also a significant case that Aikido is greatly ineffective when compared to other martial arts.

As a result, it’s fair to say that Aikido’s popularity has dipped massively over the years. Don’t just take our word for it either, the google searches have been down by 90% since the year 2004. This statistic is damning and says that Aikido is going through a real crisis. More about Aikido’s decline in popularity can be found here. It’s also fair to say that popularity is directly correlated with reputation. So, why does Aikido have such a bad reputation?

Steven Seagal makes it look bad

When most people think of martial arts, they naturally tend to imagine the likes of Bruce Lee or ripped muscular champions. Sadly, Steven Seagal’s body is about as far away from that image as you can imagine. In fairness, his body was good in his earlier days, but there’s something off about a massively obese man claiming to be deadly. You can see he lacks athleticism or fluid movements with his footwork and everything seems a bit off. Nonetheless, he is still championed by many in the Aikido community and holds high status.

In fact, Seagal is a 7th dan in Aikido which shows that he’s climbed to the top of the ladder. Perhaps if he spoke with more respect and grace about others, it would reflect well on the art. However, he represents everything wrong with Aikido and like the art, his image is stuck in the 80s. Time has moved on since then and it seems that Seagal hasn’t.

In the modern age of MMA, people can’t get away with wild claims anymore as their words demand proof. So, when people like Seagal claim to have done underground fights and taught UFC champions, it doesn’t quite add up. In brief, if he carried himself better then the arts image may be held in higher esteem as a result.

Rokas Leonavicius and his exposure of Aikido

For those wondering, Rokas Leonavicius is a Lithuanian Youtube star who turned his back on Aikido to train MMA and BJJ. His exit from the Aikido world wasn’t pretty and his Youtube videos did little to showcase the benefits of Aikido either. More can be found in this interview with him where he talks about losing friends after leaving Aikido. Basically, Rokas had a good, international reputation in the art but decided to test it against an MMA fighter in sparring.

The result was that his video went viral due to getting beaten with ease and his Aikido techniques simply didn’t work. For someone who was meant to be an expert at Aikido, this did not help the reputation. As a result, the video is still used to dismiss Aikido to this day. Since creating his viral video, he still speaks openly with his opinions that Aikido doesn’t really work and isn’t shy about it. This is yet another example of Aikido struggling to make it through the modern age of martial arts.

Aikido is not used in MMA

As mentioned in our previous article about the decline of popularity in Aikido, MMA has a lot to answer for. MMA is seen by many as the definitive way to prove your skills against trained opponents. Generally speaking, it’s common to see other arts such as boxing, kickboxing, muay thai, BJJ, judo, sambo, taekwondo, and wrestling in MMA. Even more traditional arts such as karate have proven equally successful in fighting. However, sadly the same can’t be said about Aikido. You would think that across all of the MMA promotions worldwide, you would have an Aikido champion by now…but this is not the case.

The counter-argument by Aikido is often that it’s too deadly to apply in MMA or that it’s not designed for trained fighters and is used on untrained aggressors. The former argument is nonsense as MMA is about as brutal as it gets. Not only this but some argue that Aikido wrist-locks are banned which simply isn’t true. In MMA, small joint manipulation is banned which means breaking fingers. At the same time, fighters are allowed to try and break wrists as they please.

The latter argument actually has some substance. Against an untrained attacker, there probably are a handful of Aikido moves that can be effective. For example, moves such as the Koshi Nage hip throw are legitimate and the Sankyo wristlock is also a nasty submission hold to be caught in. This was covered here in an article we did on the best Aikido moves for self defense. Nonetheless, the point still remains, if your martial art is useless against other trained fighters then why bother learning it at all? Wouldn’t it be better to take up boxing for instance and be better against trained and untrained attackers alike?

Aikido has very few real life examples and is seen as unrealistic

As mentioned earlier, a large part of the decline of Aikido is down to MMA. Since 2004 Aikido has waned in popularity massively which correlates directly with the rise of the UFC. However, outside of the MMA world – Aikido also doesn’t fair well with real-life examples. It turns out that 2004 was also a significant year with the growth of social media and sites like Youtube started to grow significantly.

Now, civilians and regular people could share footage on an international scale which wasn’t the case before. As a result, there are many, many videos showing the advantages of most martial arts in street fights and similar confrontations.

Perhaps the biggest hub for these videos is Liveleak which has less viewer restrictions when compared to Youtube. As a result, Liveleak is full of videos showing the effectiveness of karate, judo, BJJ, muay thai, and other arts. Because of this, these arts are all considered legitimate even outside the universe of professional fighting. But what about Aikido? Again, it falls shorts and doesn’t have much successful footage out there.

If you look deep enough, there is the odd video where a throw or submission hold works. However, as a general rule this footage is incredibly rare and doesn’t represent Aikido very well. Surely with the many practitioners around the globe, Aikido would have much more in terms of effective content? Sadly it doesn’t. This ties into the earlier example of Seagal. Back in the 80s, myths of kumite tournaments and no-holds-barred fights couldn’t be proven or disproven. Now with video technology and social media, these stories have been dismissed.

Aikido has an identity crisis and is seen as dated

Again, returning to Seagal – his image is actually quite typical of a modern-day Aikido practitioner. Often if you go into an Aikido dojo, it will mostly comprise of older men who are out of shape. This says two things. Firstly, Aikido isn’t practiced by the younger generations. Secondly, its users aren’t in great shape.

Away from the physical benefits of martial arts, one positive is also improving your lifestyle and mental strength. For instance, if you look at a typical karateka who trains regularly, they will be in good shape. The same can’t be said with Aikido as it is less physically tiring during training. Put simply, it burns very few calories compared to other combat sports. This certainly doesn’t help the image of Aikido either.

Going back to the origins of martial arts and looking and Ju Jitsu and Kung Fu, it is argued that martial arts should improve the body and mind. With this said, Aikido goes against improving the body when its practitioners are obese. As ever in martial arts, the body and mind are intertwined and this also hints toward having a lack of self control outside of the dojo. This means there are serious questions to be asked about those who train in a martial art yet are significantly out of shape.

Perhaps the solution with Aikido is to try and improve its image and enhance its reputation. Doing this could mean introducing more physically tiring classes and more intense warm-ups. It could also mean heavier marketing towards a younger generation. If nothing else, Aikido should also push its spiritual side more. Whilst this is done successfully with Tai Chi, it isn’t really advertised as much in Aikido. This is a shame as Aikido offers many spiritual benefits that are missing in newer martial arts. In short, Aikido could do better to protect and show its image.

Final Thoughts

Overall, it’s fair to say that Aikido’s reputation has taken a hit in recent years. Whilst it’s still trained by a significant amount of people, this is on the decline and sadly most of its userbase are not youngsters either. Because of this, it’s possible that at some point in the future, Aikido could die out completely.

To overcome this possibility, Aikido could do more to improve its reputation. As mentioned, there are some serious issues that need to be addressed such as its potential lack of effectiveness. However, as mentioned Aikido could also do more in actively advertising its spiritual benefits. In doing this, it could successfully re-market itself as something greater than just physical exercise. With this done, the reputation of Aikido could be restored and breathe new life into this stale martial art.