Aikidon't?

Should you do Aikido? That depends on many things. First understand that according Black Belt Magazine Aikido was strongly influenced by Chinese internal martial arts. I couldn't agree more, which means Aikido carries the same burden of other internal martial arts that means it depends on the three core exercises of these arts: standing meditation, push hands drills, and push hands sparring. Stylized forms of all three of these are commonly found in Aikido, but like Tai Chi, they aren't always found under the roof of the same school.

Aikido varies in quality drastically from school to school. In the North West there's one school of such questionable quality that the instructor's qualifications are 1) an unrelated black belt in some lame karate-for-kids style, and 2) supposedly the founder of Aikido many years after his death appeared to him in a dream and taught him Aikido one night. In general you want to avoid Aikido schools that are that overtly spiritual if you want to learn Aikido.

Aikido in general suffers from a lack of sparring. There are important exceptions to this. Before we get into those exceptions (the styles of Aikido I would endorse if you had the rare opportunity to practice them,) understand that this is a problem that could be easily remedied:

The exercise "Randori" (defending against multiple attackers at once, the main type sparring practice in Aikido) can be practiced with varying levels of intensity. Aikido practitioners could strap on face-protecting head gear (for the defender) and use sparring weapons or MMA gloves (for the attackers) when doing Randori for a far more realistic practice that could be considered real sparring (if done continously without stopping for minutes at a time, as Randori normally is done.)

Most legitimate traditional Jujitsu schools (and Aikido has roots in and is considered to be a form of traditional jujitsu) compete against each other in Sport Jujitsu tournaments (not to be confused with Judo or Brazilian Jujitsu,) which allow significant amounts of stand up striking, stand up throwing, and ground submissions - all three things Aikido black belts should be proficient in enough to compete in. Ideology is no excuse for legitimate martial artists practicing Aikido to isolate themselves from the greater traditional jujitsu community, and participating in these competitions is important for building the jujitsu community and guaranteeing quality in your own dojo:


The two types of Aikido known to normally embrace sparring are Tomiki Aikido (also known as Shodokan), and an even far more rare form of Aikido known as Hatenkai.  First let's observe a round of Tomiki Aikido sparring, a stylized variation of push hands sparring:


Tomiki Aikido is also known for their knife-vs-unarmed sparring which while not as impressive as their sparring in the video above, is pretty much the most serious anyone is practicing knife disarms in today's world.

The founder of Aikido was quoted numerous times suggesting that in a fight, strikes would be employed generously along side more common Aikido techniques. Of course the "atemi" of his time wouldn't have been doing sword-hand strikes to the top of someone's skull, it would have been the knock-down karate being promoted by the famous bull killing karate master. Hatenkai Aikido strongly reflects the striking spirit of Aikido's founder:

And with all that said, besides other internal martial arts, a lot of martial arts practice the theories and concepts of Aikido. Enshin, the softest common form of knock down karate, has a lot in common with Aikido and in some ways Enshin sparring has some of the best Aikido around:

Probably the single most important alternative to Aikido for learning the kind of self defense Aikido is supposed to teach is Filipino Martial Arts. Here's an FMA expert (grandmaster of the first martial art I ever studied) from a sparring intensive school showing off some of his more Aikido like techniques:


One final note is that in MMA competitions the style that incorporates the theory behind Aikido (using your opponent's force against them, not using force against force, and so on,) most often is Brazilian Jujitsu. Most Aikido enthusiasts would profit greatly from a good dose of BJJ training.

Should you do Aikido? If you can find one of those rare Tomiki or Hatenkai schools, sure. Otherwise you need to be prepared to make adaptations in order to make Aikido work for you. Fortunately there are many alternatives.