Not a Scratch: How Aikido Saved Me in a Bicycle Accident

I was sprawled in the flowerbed next to the road, blood running from my mouth. Covered in muddy water and blood, I had no idea what had just happened. My bicycle lay overturned beside me, its front wheel bent. A sharp pain throbbed above my lip, and blood and tears were both running down my chin. I hadn’t been wearing any protective gear, and it had just rained, so the road was slick and wet.

I had gone to help a junior friend with a computer issue at his rented room and was on my way back — I had homework of my own, so I hadn’t stayed long.

It was nighttime, and I was riding downhill. At the bottom of the hill was a deep pothole in the road, and with the rain that had just fallen, it was filled with water and indistinguishable from the road surface. It was dark, there were no streetlights, and hardly any cars passed through.

My bicycle plunged into the pothole and I went down face-first. My lip slammed into the ground hard enough to crack a front tooth. After rolling clear of the road and gathering myself from the shock, I realized my philtrum had been pierced clean through by my own teeth. Right below my nose, just above my lip, the area swelled up enormously and the wound sealed itself shut.

At the hospital, the doctor said the wound edges were too ragged for stitches to be worth it, and told me to wait until it fully healed before considering plastic surgery — all I got was disinfectant, a bandage, and antibiotics. The wound was deep, and the scab stayed on for a very long time. I grew a mustache for a while and wore a mask to hide the scar above my lip. That was the spring of 1995. Even now, an old scar remains above my lip.

By the time I was in my thirties, that incident had already faded into a hazy memory, and I picked up cycling again — this time out of a sense that my health was at risk, due to issues like diabetes and kidney stones.

Around the same time, I also took up a practice called “Aikido.”

And only a few years into training Aikido, I found myself in a bicycle accident that unfolded in exactly the same way as it had back in my college days.

But this time, the outcome was completely different. Just as the bicycle flipped and I was about to slam into the ground, I found myself standing beside the bike, without a single scratch on me. My body had simply reacted the way it had been trained to, out of pure habit.

The bicycle itself was barely damaged, lying quietly on its side with the wheel still spinning. I wasn’t hurt anywhere at all. My only real concern was whether anyone had just witnessed my embarrassing tumble.

Face flushed, I glanced around, quickly picked up my bike, and hurried off.

A few years after that, a beginner cyclist crashed into me and knocked me down once more — and again, the outcome was exactly the same.

These three experiences gave me complete confidence in the martial art I had been training in.

Like most people, I originally started training in martial arts to gain the upper hand in physical confrontations with others. But this experience convinced me that my daily training was also making me safer in situations that had nothing to do with conflict with another person at all. (I would go on to experience the benefits in actual physical confrontations as well, later on.)

That’s why, whenever new members join, I show them the scar on my face (my apologies for the visual) and emphasize the value of ukemi — the very first thing they’ll learn when they begin training in Aikido.

Starting to train in Aikido means that, in every sense, your everyday life is becoming safer at a remarkably fast pace. And underlying all of it, I believe ukemi — the art of falling, Aikido’s greatest form of self-defense — will support both your training and your life going forward.