Taido

Taido is a mar­tial art cre­ated in Japan by Seiken Shukumine.

Shukumine had for­merly cre­ated the Genseiryu school of karate, but grew to see karate as lim­ited and unchang­ing. In 1965, he expanded his the­o­ries of motion beyond the con­fines of what could be con­sid­ered karate and founded Taido.

So what makes Taido different from karate?

• Taido tech­niques uti­lize changes of the body’s axis in order to facil­i­tate simul­ta­ne­ous defense and attack­ing movements.
• Taido empha­sizes the use of foot­work to take advan­ta­geous angles and dis­tance to the opponent.
• This foot work is func­tion­ally con­nected to the body mechan­ics that launch each kick, punch, or other technique.
• Taido uses dynamic body move­ment to cre­ate pow­er­ful strikes and con­trol the spa­tial rela­tion­ship with the opponent.
• Taido’s strate­gic ele­ment is based on cre­ative responses to unfold­ing sit­u­a­tions rather than pre­set pat­terns of attack and defense.
• Taido’s move­ments are designed for pro­mot­ing health and longevity.

See It

But after say­ing all that, unless you’ve actu­ally seen Taido, you prob­a­bly still won’t have any real idea what I mean by the above. Maybe the fastest way to get a feel for what Taido looks like is to check out some Taido videos on YouTube. I can’t vouch for the qual­ity of any­thing you see there, but I think they can give you an idea of what kinds of move­ments we’re talk­ing about here.

Read About It

Of course, just see­ing the tech­niques doesn’t tell you what Taido is nec­es­sar­ily about. To really under­stand any mar­tial art, you have to get an idea of why the tech­niques are devel­oped as they are. To under­stand that, you’re going to have to read, and I sug­gest start­ing with these two arti­cles:

• What is (My) Taido? — my per­sonal def­i­n­i­tion of what Taido is all about
• A Rough Definition — some thoughts on what Taido is (and what that means)

These two arti­cles are only my opin­ion on Taido, but I think they do a good job of explain­ing why Taido looks like it does and why we prac­tice it the way we do.

Taido is an evolv­ing art, so no def­i­n­i­tion can really encap­su­late every­thing that Taido is. Everyone even­tu­ally devel­ops their own ways to apply Taido to what they do and how they move. Taido itself empha­sizes cre­ativ­ity and the devel­op­ment of new tech­niques. This is not a mar­tial art that will stand in one place for long.

If you have any ques­tions at all about Taido, please get in touch, and I’ll direct you to the best resources.