I have been a student at the Ronin Bushido Aikido Lousville Chapter for many years and would like to clear up some of the confusion. This is not a wolf in sheeps clothing situation. Sensei Boyd has studied Karate and some other martial arts before Aikido. However, He has studied Aikido under Richard Rood who studied under Ueshiba. Sensei Boyd also has studied at a dojo in Japan and has received ranking from them. I also have several good Aikido books and we do all the same things-including the 18 basic exercises and Randori. As for the name Ronin Bushido-We use Ronin to mean masterless, meaning we are individuals. Bushido is the Samurai Code-We try to live by the seven virtues of the samurai. We do practice Tai Chi to help us build our internal strength. I believe aikido is an internal style-it lot of it depends on using your ki. If you try to muscle on a lot of techniques they will not work. You instead must relax and use chi or ki-thus the ki in aikido. I don't know how long you have been training but some aikido schools concentrate more on ki than others. You may want to ask your Sensei about Ki if you haven't been exposed to it yet. Vince, as for your question about Bushido and Christianity- Sensei Boyd is also a Deacon in a Baptist Church (I didn't know this for a long time myself) and I'm sure would be glad to answer any questions you have about tying Aikido in with religion. If anybody else has any questions about our club (or anything else for that matter), let me know and I will do the best I can to answer them.
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