Yes but it takes a great deal of skill to really employ these arts and allot of what they teach and emphasize. Police manage to do it but not near as well in a lot of cases because the only training and practice they get is at the academy and then after that they tend to rely on things like stun guns and tasers and such.

Aikido really stresses stepping forward and meeting and intercepting the attack before it reaches you and many people struggle with learning and doing this. It runs contrary to their natural reaction of stepping back or increasing the distance which many of them instead do. They also don't develop their skill to a sufficient level in a lot of cases and this concept is taught in other martial arts also at the higher levels but many in those arts also never develop or master the skill to do this either really. Only if their training has been good and of a high caliber and they have learned and developed their skills to a sufficient level can they do something like stepping forward and meeting and intercepting the attack before it reaches them.

This is one of the things you see in fighting and good fighters do this all the time though but fans don't often realize it or think of it in terms like the above. Just watch a fight between two good fighters though and note how they are not waiting for their opponent all the time to finish his attack or combination but instead stepping forward, maybe beating him to the punch, or maybe countering in the middle while he is throwing a combination.

I sometimes get this question from fighters or guys training in fighting because of my background in traditional martial arts. Once I explain some of all this and show them some examples of it using traditional techniques and methods of stepping in and intercepting their attack they then have a different opinion about all this than before. Skills like this along with learning to overcome that natural reaction of stepping back take years to learn and prefect, not weeks or months.

No.

Aikido requires a ridiculous amount of compliance from the Uke for a technique to work, it also uses extremely faked/exaggerated attacks which the nage responds to.

Some Aikidokas hate to hear the truth, they'll go nuts and claim you know nothing about aikido and so on.

But anyone who knows about fighting will tell you the truth. This is even a widely accepted fact throughout the aikido community,

And this is where the Aikido community divides in 2 groups:

A group which says that the criticism towards Aikido (lack of realism in training, excessive compliance from Uke, really, really bad an completely silly/caricature attacks made by uke which nage counters) is unjustified because it really does work. And the 2nd group which embraces the fact that Aikido IS NOT for self defense but rather for spiritual and physical fitness, and encourages you not to use aikido for a fight (in fact they tell you that aikido is to AVOID fighting altogether)

No police force in the world is trained in aikido. A lot of martial arts took moves from aikido (which in turn took them from judo) and modified them for them to be combat-effective, this is usually what law-enforcement officers are trained in, not 100% pure aikido.

Short answer: Yes.

However...

Street fight or street confrontation is not the same as training. Very different.

Street fight implies that you are fighting as well. If you are fighting, it isn't Aikido, it's just bad jiu jitsu. Bad jiu jitsu is probably worse than no jiu jitsu.

If you are simply defending yourself and stay out of your fighting mind it would be hard to find anything *more* effective than Aikido. In a truly Aikido mindset you don't react, you respond.

And you can be creative. The accidental "techniques" that are a result of adapting to the situation combined with comprehensive movement training are often the most impressive.

No technique ever goes as planned. So if you are attached to a particular way of doing things, you are going to get hammered. But if you stay out of the "fight" and just take things as they come your training will handle the situation for you. This is true, really, of any martial art.

The single hardest aspect of Aikido training is learning to stay out of your fighting mind. Not responding to aggression with aggression is *not* second-nature to most of us and it takes a great deal of training and meditation to develop this skill.

That being said: when people say Aikido is not effective it makes me wonder how all the people who I've known personally who've used Aikido to defend themselves managed to do so. Magic?

Yes.

I personally know people that have used it to defend themselves. I have trained with them. It is very effective. It is taught to military and police all over the world.

Aikido is very effective for controlling a situation of a confrontation that can not be avoided.

You might think of the art of Aikido as the most simplified of all martial arts, without kata (other than weapons kata) and composed of individual techniques with exceptioinal foot work, that teaches balance and moving with one's opponent rather than trying to directly oppose him or her.

The late Bruce Lee used ikkyo in his "Tao of Jeet Kune Do" and he was known for only taking what he found that worked and worked well.

The Tokyo Metropolitcan Police has all of there officers study Aikido.

Wakarimasu, tomodachi?

What often makes Aikido difficult for many to learn is that it is not based on one's physical strength and, in fact, trying to use your strength makes it much less effective. One has to relax and flow.

It should alos be realized that Aikido has ever atemi or strike than any and every other martial art also has however, they usually are not necessary.

Aikido has created for self defense, and has been successfully used to this day, many law enforcement agency's teach and use aikido including, nyc, newark, nj, tampa florida just to name a few

aikido