Thursday, October 8, 2009

A Beginner's Point of View 102-103

Day 102:

Today we practiced getting our men strikes and kote strikes for perfectly. It was important to judge our distance and timing correctly. It led up to the drill for kote-men to show it all coming together. Whenever I would be teamed up with a student who was not in bogu, I would be the target always while they did the drill twice.

Head Sensei was here today, although he was not in uniform. Instead, he would lecture us and correct us during our drills. He even came up with a drill that is “one side act as if this next one kote strike is for promotional, the other side receive”. The side he pointed out would perform the drill once and then he would tell everyone if they passed or failed and why. Most of the time, we failed. He explained that we failed because we would not kiai loud enough or that we rushed without seeing or making an opening. We had to be smooth in our execution and that includes not looking rushed or harried. We did this for men and kote strikes.

Afterwards, we did a lot of kata. Sensei was trying to get everyone who was testing to be ready for the kata test. Most people were testing for shodan or higher, so I was teamed up with someone who was practicing the first five kata.

I have been looking for a treadmill for a while now and I finally got one. It’s used and cheap, but it still works fine. I need to oil the rollers and then work up some kind of schedule to exercise on it regularly to build up my endurance.

Day 103:

Today we had a special guest. He was a sensei from another dojo that we are friends with in another county. He came over to practice with us. This reminds me of a philosophy that I read in the Definitive Kendo book Sensei recommended. I forget what it is called but it is reminiscent of the practice of travelling to kenjutsu dojos across Japan in the feudal period to see how other schools practiced the art of swordsmanship. Nowadays sensei and students often ask permission to attend a class or two in a different dojo out of friendship and learning with the understanding that they may be expected to reciprocate.

I learned a lot from Guest Sensei today. He was very vocal about doing things the proper way the first time no matter how low-ranking you were. Normally, I do kiri-kaeshi almost vertically with slight sideways deviation to the men on the downstrike. Instead, he told me to exaggerate the motion to it comes in at 45 degrees all the way. It took me a couple of tries to get it right but I started doing a much wider and clearer sayu-men motion. He even held his shinai out to bock me if I did not widen my arc of strike until I got it right.

Guest Sensei also taught me how to finish the motion for hiki-men and hiki-kote properly. When you perform hiki-men, you raise your arms up as if in jodan while backing up. This protects your kote as you retreat. When you perform hiki-kote, you pull your arms back towards your body and off to the left as you retreat. I think this protects kote and part of your men as you back up. You also kiai as you retreat so you can call attention to your strike so the shinpan may award you a point in a match.

The fourth kata is difficult for the shidachi. When you parry the tsuki, you must simultaneously move the opponent’s blade aside as well as rotate the bokken upside down. Your left arm actually goes higher than your head. In one fluid motion, you also ‘windmill’ the sword to strike your opponent’s men in the center. You also take a diagonal step left and forward to take the proper distance.

I notice that I wasn’t completely out of breath during class and I didn’t need to have to stop. I came close once after training with Guest Sensei, but after it was over I had enough time to recover before sparring with Sensei. I think all these weeks of Kendo training after the seminar are paying off. Now if I can get in the habit of walking on that treadmill regularly, maybe I can increase it further.

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