Allright in the beginners sanctuary, I've posted a huge tutorial on aikido - but it's messy jumbo and completly disorganized and is a bit too shallow in some points, plus, the grammar sucks and it doesn't use fonts to organize the categories. Still, I always wanted to write a guide, and being inspired by Nighend's wushu tutorials I've decided to do a small series of tutorials on aikido, which I hope will span everything from the basics of aikido - to specific moves and comebacks commonly used in aikido - to starters and their counters to definations of common aikido terminology. Now I would apperciate it if some people posted a few good aikido replays for some points I make yet don't have the replays to support in order to allow newbies to not only see everything in theory - but also per example in replays. Anyways, let's begin:

The basics of aikido

If you don't know - aikido, or sambo, is a game type for Toribash that is commonly played on the official servers of Toribash. It's mostly about grabbing another tori (in game avatar) and trying to drive him into the ground or outside of a small ring where a tori will instantly disqualify. It's quite rare to see a game which goes on without a disqualification win in aikido - as such, you should make it more of your point to drive your enemy into the ground rather than try to attack him until you're good.

And of course, to even attempt to drive someone into the ground, you'll need to get a firm grip on him. To grab just click on one of your hands and make the hand touch his body - the simplest move being to hold all (press c) and to contract the pecs while grabbing with both arms. Gratz! You just did a so called 'noob clap', which should've given you a firm grip on your enemy, hopefully he didn't just dismember your limbs.

Now, purposely trying to drive someone into the ground is not as easy as it sounds... for they will do anything to stay away from the ground. On a simple level of aikido this means you'll be pitting all of the power you can harness against how much power the other person can harness. This begs the question, where the hell does my power come from?

Where the hell does my power come from?

The arms don't play an important role here! Most of your power comes from your weight and your legs. Your weight is what gives you power after you start moving - and your legs are the source of what starts to move you. Let me give you a quick overview of what the legs do and how to use them:

The hips ; This is the most powerful joint - even more so than the knees. It does a large boost of consitent power over a long time. While in the default postion - standing on both legs with the body parallel to the line of the legs - it will send you upperward, while contracting will send you downward. Depending on where your weight is shifted, both contracting/extending will send you foward or backward (if your weight is shifted foward, then it will send you moving foward, if it's shifted back, it will send you moving backwards).

While you're not on your feet and balanced, e.g. you body is going towards the ground strongly, using the hips to smash your feet against the ground will lift you upward - depending on the circumstance you'll need to either extend or contract the hips to smash your feet against the ground. Attached is a replay in which I show what I mean (it's called "smashing the feet"). fyi, the same can be done with an arm.

Protip#1 The same applies even when you're on the ground! If you're on your feet and your body is 90 degrees in accordance with your legs, then using the legs to push yourself against the ground will send you upward/foward/backward (depending on where your weight is shifted!)

The knees; The knees are the second joint that guide your legs. They sometimes give you a short boost of enery that you might just need to win... but they're not as powerful as the hips. This can easily be noticed, if the weight of your enemy is concerated on your knees, then there's a high chance there won't be enough power in the knees to repel all of that force coming on to them - which can lead to the knees eating ground/disqualifying. I'd warn against contracting knees just so you can extend them the next turn! It's a very risky move, and could well lead to your disqualifaction!

Protip #2; Relax your knees until you need them! This will automatically set them up in a contracted postion when you need to use them for a quick burst of power!

Protip #3; If you're going for the ground very quickly legs first, this following move will save you about 50% of the time! Extend the hip of one leg, and extend the same leg's knee, while contracting the knee and hip of the other leg! From there you can extend your hip and knee on the contracting leg to push yourself foward/upward (depending on where your weight is shifted)! A replay can be found at the bottom of the post showcasing this! Protip inside a protip #1: Try relaxing the knee instead of extending - it might give you a more stable jump... but it also may lead to your disqualifaction, careful!

The ankles; While on the ground, extending the ankles will send you upwards, while contracting will do almost nothing. Relax the ankles if you want them to align with the ground - which is recommanded if you want to keep the best grip possible on the ground. If your weight is shifted foward - extending the ankles will give you a small boost foward, and vice versa (if your weight is shifted to the back, not if you contract the ankles I mean).


Now you know the basics of the power that comes from the legs, but there's one more important lesson you should learn!

Basic Weightshifting

Earlier, in the hips shifting section, I mentioned that shifting your weight will cause what your hips do to change, with quite a large diffrence. As such I'll guide you through, very basically, through a small guide of how to shift your weight.

The abs Contracting them pushes you slightly foward, and extending them pushes you slightly backward. Not a big force to be seen here.

Lumber Left bending will make you slightly push your weight left, and vice versa.

The shoulders After you've grabbed, use your shoulders to manipulate the height and distance of your enemy to you. Raising them will make your enemy go slightly away from you and upwards and lowering the shoulders will make your enemy come towards you and downwards.

Protip #4 After you raise your enemy via raise shoulders, he will be pushed slightly away from you, and because the two of you can only be a certain distance away from each other, and because the enemy is moving away from you, you will be pulled towards your enemy, meaning your weight will be shifted foward!

The rest of the body parts are for more advanced courses - which I will link in this post after I made them. Now, if you're a complete newbie, I suggest you'd go, make an aikido game in singleplayer (from the main menu, setup->mods->double click on aikido), then grab uke, raise him into the air, and push him outside of the dojo! (tip, if your legs are heading for the ground, use the hips to push them agaisnt the ground!) If you pass this test, congratz, you've got enough knowledge to play aikido until you're a green belt, after that you should return to this guide - and hopefully then the guide will be extended with a new article with the stuff you need to know as a green belt.

"smashing the feet" shows how pushing your feet against the ground sends you upward, with 'extending'

"smashing the knees and contracting" the same with contracting and extending knees

"aikido test nr1" this is a possible solution for the aikido test, and how it should look like!

"beat a 9th dan in sambo" landing on my feet with protip #3 (excuse the name of the replay ;p)

Other parts of this guide

Recommended for someone with green belt experience of aikido, covers balancing and a couple of mistakes that are commonly made by green belts;

http://forum.toribash.com/showpost.p...6&postcount=12

Recommended for blue belts to (starting) black belts, covers 'evasion';

http://forum.toribash.com/showpost.p...3&postcount=26

Many people have struggled to make a decent aikido/sambo tutorial, but this is the best I've seen.

Read this carefully, noobs.

nice work. this will help all the new palyers alot

i took the advice, and won 8 games in a row

Wow, this is really good.
This must help a lot of new players, look at what the guy above me got ;)

But I dare say, this teaches them how to shovel :|

thanks for the love


Congratz on your wins, I'm glad I could help!


Thanks for the compliments ;)

Of course it teaches them the shovel - the test in my psot is to make a shovel - but I believe that the shovel is an important part of the learning process of aikido - first of all, the shovel is the first thing that teaches newbies about shifting their weight, using the power in their legs, and to a small degree, balancing, all of which are essential parts of aikido. Secondly, the shovel is what introduces a newbie to counters/reversals/comebacks in aikido. Let me explain ; if one newbie (green/blue belt or so) outshovels the other newbie, then the shoveled newbie will try, desperatly, to find counters against shovel in order to avoid eating ground. After being shoveled 10 or so times the newbie will do their first reversal - and with it their first step into a bigger world of aikido.

When I do my next post on green/blue belt aikido, I will give several examples of countering shovels, to give newbies insperation on trying to counter the dreaded move. But for now, I have to show them the way of lifting, the way of pushing, and the way of ballance - for without them, they are lost in the next stage. I am, in esscence, teaching them to shovel now, so that they can avoid to shovel later.

Ah, of course.
After I thought about it, I figured that most moves in Aikido develop into a shovel anyway.

thanks for tut, i am translating it to russian

Great job.
Everything is true so far.

Awesome!
TY! :3
now, how do i +rep