Welcome to the Ottawa Aikido and Aikijutsu Academy!
Locations and Schedules:
• 1373 Ogilvie Rd Unit 1, K1J 7P5
(TRYumph Gymnastics Academy)
• Mondays, Wednesdays
8:00-9:00 PM
ATTENTION! Currently, attending our club requires signing up for a class in advance. This is a temporary measure and will be lifted as soon as possible.
Fee: $100/mo. First class is free.
Our group is open to all levels, including complete beginners.
You’re welcome to come and observe a class at any time, or join right in when you’re ready.
Wear sports pants and a short-sleeved t-shirt. If you have white gi pants and a matching white t-shirt, that’s the ideal uniform to start with.
We Teach:
There are two ways to win a fight: strength and skill. However, once you become strong, you’ll realize that there is always someone stronger. This is why developing skills is essential. To teach combat skills, we use an advanced system of specialized techniques. Due to the level of focus and maturity required, our classes are exclusively for adults, with a minimum age of 14 to begin.
The techniques you will practice often conclude with immobilization or projection, which require safe falling skills to perform correctly. While you will learn safe falling techniques as a byproduct of mastering martial skills, these abilities hold significant value on their own.
Due to the way our bodies work, our muscles tend to tighten over time, leading to various health problems. To master martial techniques, you must learn to relax your muscles. This relaxation comes with practice. Not only will this improve your health, but you'll also understand how to use your muscles correctly to achieve specific effects, for example, you'll be able to learn new physical skills faster.
Martial skills development has no endpoint. Your abilities will evolve continuously as you strive for perfection. At some point you'll attain a new freedom of movement that reveals the harmony of physical expression. While we pursue activities for their benefits, the process itself must remain engaging. You'll continue to develop your martial skills motivated by a unique sense of harmony you can't find anywhere else.
About Aikido (Aikijutsu)Most sources about Aikido are inaccurate. Wikipedia is a good example – almost everything there is false. You’ve probably heard the usual myths: that Aikido is a set of self-defense techniques, that it’s safe for the attacker, purely defensive, or has some “spiritual” dimension. None of that is true.Most Aikido schools do not teach Aikido. Their methods are flawed from the start. You’re led in circles by instructors who spent decades going nowhere. Real progress is almost impossible. Without knowledge, nothing can be seen. A fraud and a master look identical to the untrained eye.The confusion comes from how hard Aikido is to grasp. At its core is a vicious cycle. Without the right techniques, you can’t build the skills. Without the skills, you can’t grasp the principles. And without the principles, you can’t tell if the techniques you’re practicing are right. In most martial arts, you can go far on talent, grit, or time. In Aikido, none of that matters without knowledge.Now it’s time to show you why Aikido is brilliant. But first, a few basics. Two factors decide the outcome of a fight: strength and skill. Strength means power, speed, endurance. Skill is your ability to coordinate movement, timing, and control. There are three levels of a fighter: beginner, strong, and pro. Strength separates the beginner from the strong. Three to five years of training can get you there.The pro level is named for its presence among professional fighters, though many never reach it. What separates the pro from the strong? The strong may be faster, stronger, even more technically polished, but when it comes to actual fighting, they lose. Skill is what makes the difference. If the path from beginner to strong is clear, going from strong to pro is something else entirely. It’s not about more strength or better technique, and there’s no timeline for it. It’s a shift into another tier of skill – one that most never reach. It’s widely believed that progress at this stage comes through sparring and depends on individual ability.But there is an additional way and that’s where the genius of Aikido comes in. The same Aikido techniques that are useless in a real fight, that can only be done in class on cooperative partners, that are so excessively complicated that many struggle to perform them for years, their actual purpose is to build your skills. They are not meant to be used directly in combat, but they are a method for developing fighting ability.The more practical techniques of other martial arts don’t do this as well as Aikido’s “impractical” ones. If strength is a gun, skill is the ability to shoot. Most martial arts hand you a weapon. Aikido, however, teaches you how to shoot.Aikido techniques are designed to change how your body moves and how your mind controls it. That’s what we train. If you want to understand martial arts rather than imitate it, you’re welcome to join. In Aikido, nothing works without knowledge.