Spring break kendo.

Spring break is hard for MSU kendo we never know who will show up when and where.
Break started last Friday. For that practice we did have a total of four:
Jacob, Billy (Christiano), Matt, and myself. I required Billy to lead the
practice. Practice should be able to be led by almost anyone I believe.

He did a good job although he was a bit uncertain I think we'll come back
to that more and more given that there may be times I'll be away.

Sat. Off to Detroit. Not a bad showing there too,
Ron, Myself, Billy, Hosea, Brian, all showed up and practiced hard there. Once more for myself, I find that I cannot find seme. So I'm adrift when I go to jigeiko with Kan or Tagawa senseis, or
pretty much anyone who is strong. In the past I've lived by my kamae and advancing it,
but that's not enough. I need to find ways to hold, break and move my aite.
Perhaps I need to start with the first of the san-po no ho... killing the kamae. and use that
as a framework for attacking.. Killing kamae should provoke a reaction or create a
chance for sutemi.

Sun. Waited for people to come to practice, evidently Hosea and Billy were looking for me and
never found me... did a bunch of 'administrative stuff' instead:

• Got the Detroit photos uploaded (taikai not visit).
• Checked over Matt's combined handout.. and made a few copies for the club.
• Thought a bit more about the whole seme thing.

Fri: Billy, Matt, Emre, myself... but only 1/2 hour to practice since the IM was closing
even earlier. So 1/2 hour of kata. We'll see about Sun... and then Mon things should once more be back to normal.

Did a bit of looking over one of those books that collected 'techniques of champions'
and I have a few ideas of things to try for seme... but some of them seem a bit risky,
so I need to figure out how to balance those, or choose when to apply them.

Happy Birthday Brian

Tomorrow (Feb 4) will be Brian's birthday.
It was a great practice for several other reasons too:
- Menjo arrived.
- A new member Andrew a shodan who practiced in Hong Kong and some in Detroit.
- All the beginners from Fall semester are now in complete bogu.

We had 5 people who could function fully in bogu. 3 more new ones, Chris, Jake and Matt
They did very well for their first time. No tenugui in the face, a few loose men, and himo
coming untied. For this practice, they just did what they normally do.
Next practice we will teach them how to be motodachi and we will add them
to the full rotation.

Alisha and friends were hitting for the first time. Just suburi like.. their action changed
immensly at first, but by the end of the practice they were beginning to look like
they usually do. Next time we will have them do men-kote-do suburi-like and maybe
men-kihon uchi, although that's a little rocky right now.

Brian got to have 8 continuous jigeikos for his birthday. He thought it wasn't as bad
as he was afraid it would be...I must be getting soft again.

Fri/Sun 27/29 - hard for them..

We've lost a bunch of experience members this last week.. Hopefully this is temporary both
due to school and, in one case due to travel. I can still make it hard for our beginners...three of whom will have men next week which will make it a bit easier to run a harder practice.
Pushing on basics as conditioning as well as basics for basics. Today especially, I had two motodachis... we ran them back and forth so almost everything was like uchikomi-geiko.
My own kendo is still showing inconsistency. Friday, it was really crappy, I could not find
a way to strike effectively. Today, a completely different story. I felt much more in control
of the match.
I think some of this was watching the final match of the ZNKR tournament. Seeing how much
more active those kenshi are than I am. So I cranked up a bit of that and found some much
simpler ways to get in and hit.

I'm getting behind on these posts!

Friday, 1/20, Sunday 1/22 ... lots and lots of footwork... then more of the
three ways to hit...with an emphasis towards the uchikomi style.. my objective
is to build a more aggressive kendo in our group and a constant capability to strike
regardless of the situation.

Three ways

Sunday's practice I wanted to show three ways to practice basic hitting.

We started this with suburi. Very often, if you watch suburi there's a
one, two; lift cut rythm to it. In fact, more effective is cutting 'ichi-byo'
one action from kamae to extension. So we forced the suburi to be
first consciously 2 actions, lift/cut to get timing correct, and then next
one action.

This carried over into our fumikomi practice... first seme, furikaburi, cut/step
and through. Then seme-cut-through in one action one thought.
Carrying through as well to nikyodo and sankyodo actions.

Now we put the men on and did everything as follows:

1. Timing: step, lift, cut...very basic and broken down.
2. One-action seme-cut-through turn and reset.
3. Stringing together (uchikomi) Seme-cut-through-turn-seme-cut-throug all with no breaks in breath, intent.. adding zanshin.
4. All sets of cuts strung together.

We did this for basics.. and then we did continuous feeling kiri-kaeshi with three consecutive motodachis.
Finally finishing off with about 12 min jigeiko.

The effort and intensity continues to roll on. Practice is very efficient and business like.
Everyone is steadily improving.

Keeping it going.

So now we have Friday night, the first 'real' practice with everyone getting back from break.
5 in bogu, the returning 3 out of bogu of Chris, Matt and Jacob...three new members.
But still no sign of Mark.
We kept the momentum of the first two practices.. very brisk business-like basics.
Next the kihon-uchi...everyone took to heart the advice to always feel like we are attacking. As a result we got so much more done in so much less time, and also time for verbal corrections and demonstrations that we normally don't have as much time for.
Then spirited uchikomi with enough people in bogu that we could rotate the receivers to get everyone in the act.
And finally about 20min of jigeiko. Billy's getting better with his timing so I need to dial my jigeiko up a notch in order to keep him pushed.
What we need to do from this:
- Keep the practice pressure on in practice.
- Start Chris, Matt and Jacob wearing bogu.
- Integrate our brand new beginners with the rest of the practice.
- Get the paperwork done for membership, Detroit, and Testing.
- Get new officers and a Shinai order in..
- Collect the dues.
- Figure out if Mark's going to come back and get him involved.

2006 looks like a really good year.

And continues to begin...

A few more people for this practice... total of 6. I imagine people are still trickling back from Winter break. Today we did a practice of 10's After our usual startup and non-bogu basics,
We did: 10x kirki-kaeshi, 10x rotations of 5 men each, 10x rotations of kote-men.

Today we concentrated, not only on proper form but the idea that we are always looking for ways to attack. Doing this helps to keep the breaks from the kendo we do...improves zanshin.

We then did a bit of jigeiko to finish. But I think that for the most part we were a bit off with that.
From this practice I think that we need to work on several things:

1. Left hand use.. I still see too much right handed pushing on the cut at the end of the action, and too much right handed backswings.
2. Timing ... too many times the right foot lands well before the cut.
3. Continuity

..And 2006 begins.

Our first practice... only four people but that's not atypical the Friday before classes start:
Myself,
Matt,
Billy,
and Welcome Back Hosea!!!

I would expect that Sunday we'll have a few more than that and we'll do another "first practice"
then.
I've always thought that first practices of the year should have two elements:

• Lots of basics to remind us what we're about.
• Some thing special that we don't always do.

So I decided that there would be no bogu worn this first special practice... especially since pretty much everyone had done nothing over the weekend. Warm up... then our normal basics which are:

• Okuri ashi step-by-step across the room.
• Continuous okuri ashi forward across the room.
• Continuous okuri ashi forward then backwards then forwards again across the room.
• Suburi:
• Jogei suburi
• Shomen suburi
• Sayumen suburi
• Fumi-komi without shinai
• seme, fumi-komi and through then repeat across the room.
• seme 2x fumi-komi and through then repeat across the room.
• seme 3x fumi-komi and through then repeat across the room.
• Fumi-komi same as above, but now with the shinai to synchronize the cut and step.

Next.. out came the uchikomi-bo. For those of you who don't know what an uchikomi bo is, imagine a thick shinai, that has been chopped off about 8 inches past the end of the tsuka, with leather wrapping both ends of this .. and you've got an uchikomi-bo. I've seen people make these by cutting a real shinai and using two tsuka, or you can buy them. We then did bunches of:

• Men kihon-uchi
• Kote-men kihon-uchi

With the uchikomi-bo as targets.

Now the something special... This I stole from kenzen dojo (thank you Ebihara sensei), they did this when I visited them several years ago with Tagawa and Kan senseis for their first practice of the year. 1000 suburi.

We did the first 900 choose any suburi you want. The last 100, we all did haya suburi.

Then conclude.

2005 ends..

The last two practices of the year were a study in contrasts. At the end of finals week, Jake and Chris. A lot of motodachi time for me. I sent them away to their break throroughly tired.
For them, still basics kirikaeshi and more and more... uchikomi.
The final practice, with just the other Ron. Lots of work on smoothing his fumikomi and I think we've done that. Then applying it with basics more basics and still more basics. We did a nice jigeiko session too that I think sent him off to Texas also a bit tired.
Looking forward impatiently to the new year: 35 students in KIN 102M, and putting some of the more experienced MSU beginners into bogu too.

December 11 MSU Practice..

This was the last practice of the semester before we go on to break hours.
This practice involved a lot of kirikaeshi and basics interspersed with uchikomi.
A hard practice for all... a chance to drop some pounds before the 'overeating'
of the break.

Now on to our winter hours...until next semester.


Michigan State University Kendo Club