Reviews for Total Aikido

The average rating for Total Aikido based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-08-19 00:00:00 Timothy James A disappointment. Shioda's style was said to be more reflective of what pre-War aikido looked like, and supposedly had more practical self defense applications. Not in this book. We see Shioda himself "throwing" people with implausible techniques with the captions offering meaningless pseudo-philosophical ramblings as a way of explanation of the technique. The formalized attacks are invalid in any self defense context, and require the uke's full cooperation to be "successful". Never fear...there are instructions for prospective use so they can know how to respond. In truth, if a thug off the street came in to this dojo and was given a brief fifteen second explanation of the attack desired, the sht'te (defender would fail. Not ten percent of this book has anything in it of use in self defense, and that would have to be adapted.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-04-12 00:00:00 Michael Enos There are hundreds of aikido technical books on the market.It is my opinion that for any aikidoka searching for this material they need look no further than this book. Obviously it's Yoshinkan material but a student from any discipline would benefit from the precise and exact explanations of the art presented in this book. They deserve to be shelved alongside the Saito Sensei series on Traditional Aikido.5 volumes examine every aspect of Iwama style aikido including the weapons work.Though they seem to have gone out of print or are ridiculously expensive on E-Bay. Yet they can be easily downloaded online. Though from different schools Shioda and Saito books are the premier technical manuals on this fascinating art.Both works stress exact precision and are suffused with the spirit of Shugyo,missing from more modern works.