Steven Seagal aikido video?

[dirkd1976]

Does anyone out there have the new aikido video that Steven Seagal is offering on his website http://www.stevenseagal.com? I believe it is called Aikido:The Path Beyond Thought. I was interested in it and was wondering if anyone has seen it. Is it an instruction video or something different? There is not a whole lot of information about it on the website. Can someone enlighten me? Thanks!

[Kevin Myers]

Jason,

I have the video and would rate it fairly high. It has a lot of video footage of Seagal performing techniques at seminars, his former dojo in California, and old footage in Japan. It has a lot of interviews with his students and former students who talk about what it's like to train under him. Very interesting to watch.

[dirkd1976]

Thanks for the info Kevin. I think I'm going to pick it up. Sounds interesting, a look at the man behind the movies. Pretty cool. Thanks man!!

[akiy]

I have several reviews on this video tape on AikiWeb for those who may be interested at:

http://www.aikiweb.com/supplies/videos/

-- Jun Akiyama

[Edited by akiy on 10-23-2000 at 02:10 PM]

[Chad Bruttomesso]

One of my friends also seems to think highly of this video.

Jun, welcome to E-Budo. Here on E-Budo is is policy to use our full names when posting/replying. You can do this manually or by adding it as a signature. Thank you.

[Budoka]

I thought the video was great. Not in a pedagogical sense, as it is pretty useless as a teaching tool.

But it reminded me of what it was like to train at a dojo that really trained hard; let me rephrase that: that trained realistically.

This kinda goes back to a string I started a few months ago that had ran several pages of responses about hard versus soft styles.

Aikido as taught by Seagal and his band of students is a very tough, very demanding martial art. The black belt exam is indicative of a certain skill level. As he says, "on the mat there are no old people, there are no young people, it doesn't matter if your a woman or a man." And those taking ukemi have agreed to go all out and let you go all out on them, and if they don't choose to do so, they shouldn't be there.

Granted, in this type of dojo you're likely to see far more injured people, but I can promise you if attacked, they would respond with the same intensity as they use in the dojo. Train as you would fight is their apparent motto.

I liked the video, and for the money, it's worth it.

[Budoka]

I thought the video was great. Not in a pedagogical sense, as it is pretty useless as a teaching tool.

But it reminded me of what it was like to train at a dojo that really trained hard; let me rephrase that: that trained realistically.

This kinda goes back to a string I started a few months ago that had ran several pages of responses about hard versus soft styles.

Aikido as taught by Seagal and his band of students is a very tough, very demanding martial art. The black belt exam is indicative of a certain skill level. As he says, "on the mat there are no old people, there are no young people, it doesn't matter if your a woman or a man." And those taking ukemi have agreed to go all out and let you go all out on them, and if they don't choose to do so, they shouldn't be there.

Granted, in this type of dojo you're likely to see far more injured people, but I can promise you if attacked, they would respond with the same intensity as they use in the dojo. Train as you would fight is their apparent motto.

I liked the video, and for the money, it's worth it.