UFC color commentator and lifelong martial artist Joe Rogan hosted Dr. Andrew Hill on his “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. Dr. Hill, who holds a Ph.D in cognitive neuroscience from UCLA, is an advocate for the use of drugs to reach peak performance. Dr. Hill is also an Aikido black belt, and the pair got into a debate on the merits of the highly controversial art.
Rogan: I don’t understand that much about aikido, so I’m sure you know more than me. To me it looks cool. Flipping people around and sh-t. To me, it looks like you have to cooperate. It doesn’t look like it would work.
To me, if you shot a double on him, got a good grip, he’s going for a ride.
Hill: Most of aikido is learning to recognize force coming you, and not getting in the way of it.
Rogan: Right, so just creep up on them slow and punch them in the face. As long as you are not running at them, with your hand over year head like this, I think you’re going to be OK.
Hill: Aikido like a lot of martial arts is very heavy in the footwork. So you step to one side and pivot around, and by the time they’ve swung their fist, they’re kind of over balanced, and you can just knock them over.
Rogan: Yeah, but you take an NCAA Division I wrestler, good luck.
Hill: Put one of those guys against O’Sensei, at the pinnacle of aikido, I’d love to see that. Against me? Kick my ass.
Rogan: You bring your best guy, I don’t give a f-ck.
Hill: There actually were in the 70s multi-martial art competitions, exhibitions, between the founder, O’Sensei, and several other principals of martial arts. … There’s an exhibition one, from the 70s, that shows him knocking people over without touching, and things. … Not his friends, but the karate master from Japan and things.
Rogan: Without him touching them? How do you think that worked? Knowing what you know about the mind.
Hill: Probably, he gave a subtle queue, that prepared them to move in one way, and then switched it, essentially using their mind against them, over balancing them. Like shifting your weight, so the other person moves their weight, and then getting out of the way so he other person falls over.
The pair then watch a video together of Morihei Ueshiba doing aikido on his students. Rogan was not impressed.
Rogan: OK, this is terrible. Show me something good, because this guy doesn’t know what the f-ck he’s doing. That guy’s running into him. See this is the thing with all these doddamn demonstrations – that guy’s willingly cooperating.
Hill: He’s practicing the technique. In practicing the technique, you either cooperate, or your arm breaks.
Rogan: Well this isn’t even cooperating. This guy is throwing himself on the ground. This is silly. This guy is running towards him and letting him clothesline him. This doesn’t ever happen. The guy’s just standing there. This would never work against a trained fighter. Never. Not in a million years.
You get an NCAA Division I wrestler, he’s going to shoot on this guy, and the guy is going to be on his head in seconds. it just doesn’t work. I’m looking at nonsense.
Hill: Well, you’re looking at people practicing techniques. Not a multi, you know.
Rogan: There ‘s a lot of f-ckery when it comes to martial arts and a lot of people that trapped into the f-ckery, and I’ve met a lot of people, very intelligent people, that swear that their sensei is the guy that has the answers, and all this jazz. I’ve just seen too much. I know how much of it is based on pre-determined ideas that you have about this person’s abilities.
Then Rogan’s assistant finds a video of a Turkish wrestler vs. an aikido guy.
Rogan: This is what I expected, exactly. This is what happens, in real life. … That’s reality. This sh-t doesn’t work. It’s a beautiful art to practice, it looks cool. but as far as like efficacy, and actual grappling …
As far as a martial art, it’s one of the least effective, in real practice.
Hill then went into an extended dialogue about avoiding force. Rogan was not impressed.
Rogan (smiling): I think you’re f-cking buying some mumbo jumbo, pal. I think they got you.
Hill: Maybe they do. Maybe I have been indoctrinated.
Rogan: There’s a lot of people that don’t like the idea of mixed martial arts, because in many ways, it’s not traditional martial arts. And some of the positive benefits of traditional martial arts have sort of been cast aside in favor of mohawked, tattooed savages.
But the reality is, a lot of the ideas that powered those traditional martial arts beliefs are bullsh-t, and we thought they were real, for a long time, and there was only one way to find out if they were real, and that’s competition.
And in competition, you find that they reality is, most of that stuff doesn’t work.
Hill then talked about using Aikido successfully in a bar.
Rogan: So what that means to me is, it works great, as long as the other guy doesn’t know what the f-ck he is doing. … The best martial arts will work on trained killers, and aikido just doesn’t.
This is an important subject to me, because it’s something I went through my entire adult life. As a young man, I went through the broad spectrum of what to believe in, and what not to believe in.
Hill: I’m OK with it not being as practical as those. I still think there’s incredible benefit in learning to use your body to keep yourself safe in a crisis environment.
