There are two sides to this coin. People who practice Aikido will tell you it’s a quite usable and realistic martial art, but a lot of other people, such as mixed martial arts fighters and critics, will tell you that Aikido is bunk. To be fair, even the people who teach Aikido believe the art takes years of training before it becomes usable for self-defense. From a purely technical standpoint, Aikido’s throws and pins are designed to prevent causing harm to your opponent, so even if you’re really really good, you’d have to take your opponent down every time they got back up or be willing to hold them on the ground until the cops show up.

Using an opponent’s momentum against them only works if they’re giving you momentum. You don’t want to bring fists to a gunfight, but if you have to, Aikido isn’t going to help you out. Many people in the fighting industry, such as four-time Taekwondo champion and UFC commentator Joe Rogan, don’t think Aikido would ever work against a trained fighter. “Never, not in a million years,” he says. But, hey, you’d still have one up on Joe Blow down the street. So there’s that.