Iaido Training Session 29 to 33 and everything else

Should I have shaved on the morning of the European Taikai?

Well it has been a busy period, I have missed posting onto my blog several times but the sheer number of events both martial artistic and work related have kept me away from cold evenings huddled around my computer screen.

Since my last training blog post thingy I have:

• Taught at an Iaido and Jodo referees seminar in Warsaw
• Co-delivered the Jodo seminar and grading in Darlington
• Been to the European Iaido Championships

Obviously it is impossible for a person with as shabby memory as my own to recall each and every details of my training recently so I will stick with the highlights...

In the Dojo

Training has been fairly quiet recently, without Lucy and Aurelien there the atmosphere has been a bit calm and staid and sometimes difficult to motivate myself to doing pre-taikai training without the whole representation of our dojo there. I have been working a lot on koryu lately mainly to try to strengthen my legs and make it look somewhere close to the same level as my seitei. As usual, Chuden has been my choice of forms in the main and I have learned quite a bit about Iwanami especially in terms of how to turn and do the driving cut. Weight distribution seems to be key with this form and it cannot be performed properly if this weight control is lazy. Trying to get the right balance of large and small technique is also interesting with the first three forms and I think this is something I need to personally research.

Raj has also compelled me to think about Jikiden quite a bit to the point of asking one of the Polish guys to show me some of his Omori Ryu to remind me of the finer points. It is quite an interesting feeling to do a different ryuha even one as close to Shinden as Jikiden is. There seems to be a more obvious contrast of large and small movements in the techniques and I guess a lot of this is from me emulating Henry Schubert's expansive way of doing the kata.

I think I now want to start doing the videoing process of tracking my technical progress and have asked George to bring his camera to the dojo. Guess it's time to break out the spreadsheet...


In Poland

Jock Hopson Sensei, Harry and me were invited along with Robert Rodrigues Sensei to deliver an Iaido and Jodo referees seminar in Warsaw. It was a very pleasant experience, not much to say on the Iaido development front though only that the event reminded me how much a skill like judging and examining requires soooo much experience. Jock saw things that I hadn't even noticed during both events of the taikai and the shinsa.


At the European Iaido Championships

The event this year was held in Paris and the BKA team was fully prepped through a 10-hour coach ride from Waterloo, through a wormhole in the Paris orbital and deposited somewhere in Albania.

The event was preceeded with a one-and-a-half-day technical seminar and then a half day referees seminar. I don't want to dwell on this event too much and you will have to ask me personally on my opinion of that event - it wasn't pretty! Suffice to say, it is always an expectation that seitei will change slightly through time, I am however surprised though when it changes from being practical to utterly impractical and actually impossible to demonstrate rationally. Perhaps I should forget it for now.

The taikai event was interesting though. I won my pool and went through the tournament to be beaten in the final by Michael Simonini from Belgium. He has lovely expansive technique but manages to keep it very much under control by not being overly tall but well built. You can see his depth of practice by the sheer control he maintains over his body and sword. The event also allowed me to pit myself against Claudio Zanoni from Italy, my good friend. I have had to change my Iaido in the last few years to beat Claudio by removing the heaviness as much as possible. Claudio is light and sharp and able to maintain a strong posture and I have had to try to do the same. I also went up against Matti Pajaujis from Sweden who only entered into the 5th dan category from last year's grading. Matti is more compact and robust and his cuts are very sharp. Both Michael and Matti were, I think, the only ones to pass their 5th dans when they took it in their group.

So what did I learn?

From Kishimoto Sensei:

1. At 5th dan don't start the embu by standing up and sitting in a different pose such as tatehiza. Start a kata from seiza, this is much more preferable to the judges and examiners.
2. When performing Chuden forms with a one-handed oblique draw, the sharpness of the cut relies upon keeping the yokote of the sword in the saya and then using the hips and chest to get the sharpness of the movement. This is different to Shoden which uses a more regular balance of sayabiki and sayabanare to create johakyu.
3. Try to use breathing to generate the timing of drawing and cutting especially the tension created by squeezing the breath.

From Rene Sensei:

1. Try to turn the hips more to face the body forwards in the stepping cuts.
2. Be careful not to use your right arm as a rifle scope on nukitsuke.
3. Regulate Shihogiri timing more to avoid jumping from one cut to the other.

From Momi Sensei:

1. Watch the footwork on Ukenagashi to create the proper "i" position and not stepping the left foot to far forwards.
2. Avoid stepping off the centreline too much in Sanpogiri.
   

Doing some pre-taikai training with Aurelien and Daniel also was a bit enlightening when Dan was having problems with the "new" footwork with Ushiro. He was finding himself off balance and I rationalised, tested and proved that keeping the back stock straight was essential in being able to do this rotation quickly. The period also reminded me that young 3rd and 4th dans are liable to rush through furikaburi and not be able to create the right merihari.


Having examined the fight on film and listening to things people have been saying as well as watching performances, I have concluded I need to work on the following items as well as regular kata training:

1. Improving my cutting technique to ensure that my balance is absolutely perfect at the end of the cuts.
2. Continue improving nukitsuke to keep my sword down and thus my shoulder (an action that Peter West Sensei keeps reminding me to work on, thanks Peter.)
3. Ensuring that the raising of the hips with Ochiburi is absolutely synchronised and sharp.
4. Ukenagashi footwork and timing.
5. Ukenagashi footwork and timing.
6. Ukenagashi footwork and timing.
7. Make sure that the first draw in Sanpogiri doesn't take a shortcut in front of the face but actually passes over the head (see video above - it's very obvious on both of us).
8. Maintain flexibility overall but carry on working on lower body and core strength - this makes iaido much easier.
9. Start to rebuild strength in right forearm to avoid injury - throwing painkiller-numbed chiburi's around is leaving me a message right now.

Well lots to work on again, I have also noted that although the dates for the EIC 2011 are different to this year, I have now done my penultimate EIC at 5th dan and there is a dizzy slope down (or up) towards my grading. The clock is ticking.

Iaido Training Session 28

A really excellent session this afternoon at Hilary's dojo in SW London. We started with some usual warm up cutting exercises which naturally knackered my right arm during nukitsuke. We next were able to go through each Seitei form 3 times spending our attention on control and making sure each element of each kata was balanced and significant. It was a really good opportunity to do some technical tweaking.

After this was a session of free practice and I managed to get a couple of embu practices in. I am still finding a combination of three koryu plus either all the odds or all the evens of the Seitei makes a nice long but concentrated duration.

We finished with a grading practice and I did Towaki exactly how I wanted to, enough tame to control the form and give it some meaning and enough seme to drive the form at the right okuden speed. It was a bit weird at the end of the form as it kind of went automatically and I wasn't aware exactly of doing the form. Strange.

Anyway, a nice session.

Iaido Training Session 27

Why does Chuden make so many references to clouds? Because I've discovered that you need to climb mountains into the clouds to get your legs strong enough to do the bloody forms!




Prior to this training session I had spent the weekend hiking and scrambling up a few Welsh peaks with some friends. Though I missed a Jodo training session having this nice time away it does have the effect of strengthening up my legs and hips, or more likely, reminding me how pudgey I am becoming sitting at a desk.

This Wednesday in question, we were visited by Aram from NY who is an absolute gentleman and it is always great to have him train with us.

We started going through the seitei in front and back sequence as before and I do find this order to be of benefit in waking up the brain a bit. Each kata starts to become an individual challenge rather than just another step in the sequence.

I noticed that Aram's cutting, while quite powerful, tended to bounce at the bottom of the cut thus inclining his body forwards in a slightly jerky motion so I spent some time with him getting him to put the power into the right place (i.e. at the commencement of the cut) and avoid forcing it through the vertical stroke. The use of tenouchi to motivate the cut, to focus the cut and to brake the cut is so important and I am finding it more difficult to teach these points as it starts to become second nature. I realise that there is a slight difference in emphasis between Ishido Sensei (who I learned this tenouchi from) and Oshita Sensei, however both use a graduated tenouchi to control the sword and I think that this is something vitally missed by lots of people. There is a lot of talk of using tenouchi and shibori at the point of the sword hitting the opponent's head but this kind of misses the point.

(Note, images will enlarge if clicked)

Tenouchi is a continuous action of adding energy to the sword (and I mean the literal physics-based energy, not the woo-woo) starting by moving the sword, accelerating the sword, focussing the power of the sword and braking the sword. These are all smooth transitions and can be easily emulated in "normal life" - try:

a) shaking an umbrella
b) hammering in a nail

If you are confident and competent in both these activities then you will spot the parts of tenouchi being used to certain degrees. When I learned how to do kirioshi from Ishido Sensei it became very obvious that the arms (and by that I really mean the shoulders) do less and less work and rely more on the inertia of the sword being driven by the tenouchi than by rotational kinetics.

It's an interesting movement to study as the whole framework is dynamic: your grip is accelerating the sword, the sword is accelerating your arms, your arms are accelerating the point of grip, the grip further accelerates the sword etc. I think it is this mechanism of positive feedback which really accelerates the kissaki at an exponential rate and marks the difference between Joe public swinging the sword and someone who does iai. It also underlines the important of tenouchi. Have I already said this?

Anyway, this coaching session went on for nearly 30 minutes and I found various things that Aram was doing which was causing problems, one being pulling the rear foot up with too much effort.

I interspursed this with working on my Chuden which felt much smoother with my legs feeling a bit stronger. I hope to continue some kind of regular exercise to keep this muscle firmanent in place. My sensei pointed out that my left hand wasn't being used properly in Yokochiburi and I have to train this tomorrow at the Saturday class. Not enough to simply place the left hand on the hip: it has to utilise as much energy as the right hand.