JimEllison

We've had some. In the class I teach, we had several that started in their 50's and are now in their 60s. In fact, the majority of my students are 50 and older. We've had one lady make sandan (3rd degree black belt) in her mid-70s and another guy who made nidan (2nd degree) in his mid-80s.

In our style, we don't use a lot of force on each other in the learning process. For example, when doing a technique, we might take an opponent to the point of being off-balance, but they don't actually take the fall all of the time. When applying joint locks, we try to to it gently. I don't need to yank on your arm or put a lot of force on your joints for you to know my technique was effective. We also emphasize going very slowly, in order to develop control. In our dojo, we believe in working around peoples' various limitations - some skill is better than no skill. We try to have fun and let everyone learn according to his/her own capabilities.

I was hoping someone would ask me this!

Aikido has helped me learn to avoid conflicts - and I don't mean just physical ones. It has helped me examine verbal and emotional conflicts, and practice a form of "mental aikido" where I can resolve these conflicts in the way that causes the least amount of harm to everyone involved.

In aikido, we learn how to fall safely. This has helped me and several others in my dojo. I fell off a stepladder a few years back and managed to land safely without injury. As I get older, I suspect that being able to fall safely will help me if something like that arises again.

In aikido, I try to put the least amount of energy possible into performing techniques. Over the years, I've realized that there are situations in life where I have been putting in way too much energy. For example, I used to have road rage - I put so much of my energy into what the other drivers were doing that I ended up making myself miserable. The only one who was affected by all my energy was me. It's a lot like aikido - we have a saying in our dojo: "He who generates the energy eats it". It kind of made me think about the concept of karma - the energy you give out comes back to you - I realized that I didn't want to generate all this negative energy. I started trying to minimize the amount of energy I spent worrying and getting angry about things, especially those I couldn't control.

Are there any offensive moves? In our practice, we don't teach any offensive moves specifically. However, since our practice requires that we work in pairs, someone has to be the attacker. We do teach basic principles - keeping good structure and moving with one's center - that can translate to attacking. However, our primary focus is on defending.

We do have some defensive techniques that can be used for disarming someone with a gun or knife. However, a real-life situation involving a weapon is much different than practice in a dojo.

Unless you are absolutely certain you are about to die, I wouldn't recommend martial arts against a gun (and probably not even a knife).

Most people who have done these arts for any length of time are going to do anything they can to avoid a street fighting situation. That being said, in aikido, we train our subconscious to perform. The very first things we teach our students are evasion - we want to NOT be in the path of an attacker's energy.

Have you ever tried to punch something that moves right before your fist gets there? Have you leaned on a chair that moves out from under you? It throws you completely off balance and messes with your structure. Aikido is designed to take advantage of situations like this.

Don't know much about Stephen Segal's claims. But I've enjoyed most of his movies.