Yet another example of why I don't have a whole lot of respect for most martial arts classes I've ever seen. This would be a very different video if, instead of set technique demonstrations, it featured folks wailing on one another like they do in, say boxing matches, wrestling matches, or mixed martial arts tournaments.

Oh, and at the risk of sounding like a complete pan troglodyte, I can count on the fingers of my yakuza friend's hand the number of women I have met that could take on a male assailant. Mostly, this has to do with the fact that female martial artists (at least in this country) don't get hit, don't hit, and, by extension, don't really fight.

That beginning tumbling looked god-awful. She was hurting herself with each fall.

In my fencing class, we have very different abilities. There are many girls in the class and some of them are moving like they are in dance class. Even some of the guys are very soft in their style. That's nice. I'll cut your arms and legs off while you prance around. We're using bloody 2-handed long swords, not fairy wands! Oh well. Some folks are in for different reasons.

Hmm. I don't think the fact that boxers and wrestlers wail on one another reduces the number of willing participants. What it DOES do is reduce the number of folks that can't fight pretty drastically.

Amen to that. I would go a bit further though and say that, unless you have a mechanism for ensuring non-compliance (eg: full contact wailing on one another), you're just practicing another flavor of McDojo stuff.

Most Hapkido demos I've seen don't look like this. Hapkido is usually about 65% Aikijujutsu, 35% TKD stuff.

In this video the Aiki* techniques were executed superficially and without understanding of what makes them work in real life. The attacker just stood there with his arm outstretched and paused. This is not a realistic flow of a technique. It looks like this school is more about TKD kata-like stuff, high kicks and impressive falls than it is about Aiki* technique. It is of course their choice but it does make them a VERY traditional (and not very effective in real life) MA school.

However, I've seen Hapkido demos much more impressive than this one and I wouldn't judge an entire art by one video. Just look at how Aikido's multiple attacker drill can differ from school to school:

Proper randori
Sloppy/ineffective randori

In the latter video the half of the throws are incomplete, people are throwing themselves, slowing down, running past the thrower with no reason, and waiting for the thrower to be "ready" even when they have clear path toward him. In the first video they don't get an opportunity because one of them is constantly being thrown in the path of the others - with REAL throws (broken balance) and REAL explosive footwork.

Good, I'm not just imagining things then. It really did look hurtful.

Though I agree that the first one is infinitely better than the first, it still appears that (even in the first one) the attackers are willing participants in getting their asses handed to them. They come in straight lines with slow, predictable techniques. Overhead strikes they execute are slow with large sweeping arcs. It appears even the "good" version is full of pure gifts from the attackers.

Agreed! If you watch the video more than once, the last person the defender squares up against runs from one corner of the area to another just to approach from the front. Still... nowhere NEAR what I could do. And still a much better presentation than the second video which seemed like consentual hugging without eyecontact.

Back to work...

EDIT And just for the record, what I could do amounts basically to trying to fall down without hurting myself too badly and then crying for mercy while rolling into a ball to protect the tender bits.

Shihonage, after I studied Hapkido, I visited some Aikido schools to see whether I liked them. When I visited Dr. Yoji Kondo's school, he asked me to show some falls, in with the other students during warmups. I dutifully did some forward and backward rolls. Then came a sort of up and drop fall. I executed it as I was taught in Hapkido - I went over and once I was horizontal and falling on my right side, I extended my right arm up, scissored my legs and landed full-body, which of course spreads the force out very neatly. It looks painful, but done right, it's not. Done wrong is another matter, like, broken hip matter.

Dr. Kondo immediately pulled me aside and asked me where I'd learned that. I explained, and asked him why he was concerned, and why Aikido did not have that fall. He explained, still looking perturbed, that it did, but it had been removed during the changeover from a jujitsu focus towards an Aiki focus in the 1930's, because the fall itself could be dangerous to students. He was shocked that anyone was teaching a style that old, and quizzed me strongly. I don't think he liked the answers much, but it was dead obvious that I was doing a technique that had derived from early century ju-jitsu, and he merely instructed me that I'd have to change my ways if I studied Aikido. Which I did, for about a year and a half.

This fall is good when you are forced into a waist or shoulder level horizontal drop, or if you are "spun out". The splayed legs help stop the rotation on the ground, and the extended arm reduces torque on the wrist. It's the first one the girl does, where she clearly hits smack on the hip - not a good result on concrete.

I guess what I meant was that there is a range of engagement and that most martial arts classes increase that level as one becomes more proficient, to the point that at the very highest levels (which make for the more interesting videos), the best "masters" could make a small adjustment and they would actually break that knee or throw you in a way that would injure you instead of kindly laying you on your back. It actually requires more control not to injure your opponent, and so at lower levels, those in that first video who clearly don't have that kind of control yet, are going much slower and more carefully in order to avoid injury.

What we didn't get was a video of a Hapkido tournament with participants who have been "weeded out" through competition like you're imagining boxers do. No doubt we'd all find that much more impressive and convincing.

Take two young students, teach them the correct way to knife-hand strike someone's throat, and tell them to go at full speed and you're asking for trouble, as they lack the control not to kill one another. But I agree, put them on the street when they're getting mugged and they won't last if they choose to fight back. At that early point their martial arts training is most useful as a way to learn discipline and self-control.

I have little comments to make about a lot of what people have said, but instead of that I guess I'll just reiterate my point that not everyone that studies martials arts is immediately good at it, like movies lead us to believe. The other videos posted of "correct" styles and speed are not young students taking a black belt exam like in the first video. They're masters and teachers of their respective styles.

Here's what I do, German Long Sword.
This is Dennis, my favorite sparring partner. We're comparable in size and temperament.

Here we are having some fun. I'm sparring in the trey T-shirt.

Yes, we hit each other. Hard. They are padded swords, but they still pack a whollop.

Frankly I don't know the level of the demonstrator in that video. However I've seen people on the first degree black belt test give performances which are very similar to it. The skill required from the "attackers" is not extraordinary, so they create a certain playing field, which ideally, does not scale down in difficulty. The skill of the thrower is born out of necessity not to fail in this field. In this drill the outcome is pretty binary - you either can do it or you can't.

Of course in schools like in the second "hug me" video, the attackers create a crappy, dishonest playing field and lower the requirements on the thrower's skill.

You know, I practiced karate (Yes, yes, I know...) for pretty much the whole of my teenage life in a very rough, full-contact, feel-your-mistakes kind of dojo, and only stopped after moving into an area full of 'grace of movement'-schools. Still, to this day, my eyes glace over every time someone starts to talk about real-world confrontations. Why is it impossible to see a martial art as a way of achieving a certain fitness and body control? Why are martial artists only accepted once they can kill people with their pinky?
Are basketballers sissies because they can not break other people's legs with rubber balls? Is skill in tennis measured after the number of teeth knocked out?

There's sport, and there's combat. Whoever can't tell the difference shouldn't be allowed into either situation, anyway.

Yes. So this is a subtle distinction to try to explain. If you saw it, you'd see what I mean. Imagine a breakfall without the roll along the back. Instead of the bottom arm slapping out and the legs extending after the back contacts, the arm extends up to create a line with the side of the body, while still in the air. The legs scissor and lock in such a way that the hips are sideways to the ground and the legs are both positioned to hit, the lower on the outside of the leg, the upper on the inside. The upper hand bends to the waist and the elbow points up to keep it out of harm. Ideally the entire side of the body, hand to toe, and the lower portion of the upper leg, all land simultaneously. Thud! The idea is to impact with the absolute maximum area possible, so that the energy is spread out across the body as much as possible. It's a bone-rattler, but it works.

I've seen and done Aikido Ukemi as a beginner and while I've seen shoulder-height breakfalls, I've never seen this used. Dr. Kondo's Aikido style is not "no fall"; I'm sure I explained it badly, you should not ascribe any weakness to his style or technique because of my description. I have the highest regard for his abilities.

First off, I thought that Robear has already maxed out my potential to be amazed, but he just continues blowing the doors off all kinds of limits. Over all these years that I "know" him, I never heard until now that he practiced Aikido and Hapkido.

Also, it is nice to know that we have another fellow TKD player here. Cheers to Montalban.

Finally, on to the matter. It is plainly obvious from the vid that this is not a demonstration. It's a belt test. You can see the table at the end of the dojang, with the inspecting judges presiding. The woman -- notice that this is a woman, not a young girl -- has been filmed along with a higher belt by friends of family, perhaps.

Her first two breakfalls were lousy, the third one (with the half-hip roll) was OK. Her kicks combinations lacked snap, but probably she was already plenty tired by that time. The way these tests go, the activities go non-stop and the intensity goes only up. She also has a decent stretch. Her flying techniques plain sucked. She didn't nail the triple flying front snap kick, and didn't turn her body in double flying side kick and ended just pushing the paddles (if those were boards instead of paddles, should wouldn't break them).

Her self-defence stuff was OK. Like it was said before, it is usually demonstrated in large-circle, slowed down way to prevent injuries. Like it was also said, it takes more mastrey and control not to harm your opponent. Additionally, the footage is slowed down a great deal (check out the way her hair moves).

The bottomline is, while she doesn't represent the best and finest of the art that go about giving the demonstrations, she's still definitely exhibiting an admirable effort. She's definitely giving it 100% of hers. Notice that it looks like she's past her prime competitive age, but nevertheless. Perhaps she could stand her ground in a sparring tournament in her age/belt division. Regarding this whole "street" bullsh*t, and the usual "not a chance against XYZ style"... It is very admirable that the only person who brought this up thus far is, predictably, Paleo (with his enshrinement of boxing respectively).

We've been there countless times, so I won't venture there again.

I still don't see the difference between what you're describing and these (see the falls from around #3 to around #7 - some of them are the fall that you describe).

This kind of fall is often taken from a particularly cranked out kote gaeshi (wrist turn). The uke throws himself over the arm and floats in the air for a moment. If I didn't know these aerial falls I would have been in serious trouble in the Judo class.

Disclaimer: I'm not making judgements about all instructors and all students of Judo, just the school I saw.

a) The instructor liked to scream at his students a lot and try and get them really angry at one another during sparring
b) The students were all in the range of 16-20 years old, with a lot of unresolved "mad at my daddy" issues floating around, staring each other down, etc. I've been to high school before, and I don't plan on visiting it again. On the mat, all kinds of demons come out under andrenaline, and I don't want to train with people who don't have control over their emotions and can crank something up way too much.
c) Judo footwork is reverse of Aikido footwork, which would confuse me
d) Judo footwork IMO is not well suited for reality self-defense, as it does not count potential presence of weapons. Aikido footwork gets you away from the other hand (which may carry a knife). Aikido's techniques are all weapon-aware and also deal with weapon retention (if someone's trying to take a weapon FROM you). Judo doesn't seem to care about these things most of the time.
e) Going back home from a Judo class after a session of Judo sparring made me feel like I was covered with bruises for a week. It has decreased my quality of life. Judo is an athletic sport, Aikido is a Budo - a martial way. They cover a lot of the same ground but their most intense focus lies on different parts of it.

I think it is important to note that most Asian martial arts used to have the evaluation mechanisms I keep insisting upon, but lost all of that when folks decided that the only way to make any money at it was to become belt factories (and compete with other belt factories). There once was a time when you needed to be a stupendous baddass not to get your face broken in a kung fu class. Now you just need to pay your bill on time.