Iaido Training Session 40 and Hatsugeiko

With the closure of our Monday night beginners class we have now incorporated about 6 new people into regular practice. Last night we received the first three. This creates a refreshing set of circumstances in terms of teaching very basic techniques again. In fact the whole dojo comes more alive when there is more than one training group rather than everybody doing the same thing. I think that part of this is that maybe the optimal teaching group size is no more than one teacher to 3 or 4 students.

It puts some of my "Project Delta" into the backseat but it is all good development for me.

I spent the first 30mins or so just correcting and providing confirmation for how to do reiho and it is amazing how much detail is in it. We then worked on Mae giving emphasis to the Jo Ha Kyu facet of the initial nukitsuke. Again, it is easy to forget how much activity is happening in this simple movement. We got stuck into Ushiro for a bit before I went down the other end of the dojo to supervise the Okuden Tachiwaza group who were murdering some Shinden Koryu.

Before I knew it, the session was up with minimal training on my part. Oh dear. Still the arm is recovering and doing even better from doing some light weight training.

Roll on next session!

Happy New Year.