Traditional Iwama Aikido

[mic]

As a beginner i cant tell one style to another.... is there history/background to this style that anyone knows of? i can only find what it says on the website for the club but there must be more!
Ive started MA in order to get fit, but ive tried Aikido a couple of times and it just seems to draw me back everytime i think about it, even tho im sure kickboxing will get me to a fitness level Aikido never will!

[Theghillieman]

Well, I don't know about the words that came before Aikido, but Aikido came from Aikijiujutsu. When...now I don't know the name of the founder of Aikido, but Hapkido too came from Aikijiujutsu.

Ultimately, the teacher of Choi Yong Sul and the founder of Aikido committed suicide and both took their knowledge and tweaked it to create new styles. Aikido and Hapkido were born. Very brief history lesson for you .

[Bobbin Threadbare]

Iwama is a later version of Aikikai that arose around Ueshiba well after his son had basically taken over. There's more emphasis on weapon forms and "magic," basically. The latter of which can also be found in "Ki Aikido" dojos, though that's a nebulous term. In other cases, weapon forms are approached as a tool for refining movement in general as it carries over to unarmed techniques.

There really isn't much of a tangible difference between most of the styles since there's a fair amount of tolerance for personal flair, though it may not appear that way to an observer.

Yoshinkan is probably the most deviant of the styles because the techniques are significantly truncated and involve subtler movements.

Shodokan involves competition, which makes it different in spirit, though I can't really say what impact that has had on the style itself one way or the other.