Iaido 6th Dan Training Session 9

This is probably where I should add and confirm that the last year or so has seen a decrease in my iaido "fitness" due to lack of concerted practice. Having to get people through their grades and the unexpected fullness to the dojo had me put into a bit of a teaching position which is probably one of the best ways to lose ones physical build of the muscles required to do Iaido smoothly and in control.

The last few weeks of training since starting my 6th dan preparation in ernest has led to a noticeable strengthening of the legs and the reduction in tendonitis is, I'm sure, caused by a development of arm muscle (which is obviously much better at brakeing a cut than joints and tendons).

On this particular Wednesday night I was compelled to do a little embu before we started practice. I chose my star forms for the time being, Shohatto and Towaki, and had Ushiro, Tsukaate and Soetezuki assigned as Shiteiwaza. Rather than doing the reiho in the clipped military style I have been used to I decided to try and do it completely silently and as polite and smooth as possible. I could feel the seconds slipping away but was aware that my forms were quite short (except Shohatto which, and this may come as some surprise, has it's seitei version, Mae, as the second longest form in duration of all the seiteikata, beaten only by Ushiro). I tried to replicate the same feeling in the closing reiho and finished to find out I had gone to 6 minutes and 19 seconds! Oops.

This is quite rare for me as I am fairly used to taikai timings and making sure I don't go OT so I was less surprised and more disappointed that the allocated time didn't leave time to do a nice polite reiho. I was asked to repeat the reiho only once (which I got down to 39 seconds for each of the opening and closing sequences) and the katas only once (which was down to about 3 mins 45 secs). The fact that I could ramp it up to more optimum timing was no surprise but it still left me wondering about the validity of a 6min time limit for a kodansha grading. I can understand wanting to stop people from doing a full dance of the 50 swords for their grading but this feels a bit like the tail wagging the dog. Should grading-enforced time limits affect the nature of the iaido form? (That's a question for consideration rather than a prompt for an answer)

I then set about focussing on Shohatto and Towaki for the rest of the practice (of course while picking on those around me). My sensei indicated that my initial footwork on nukitsuke had to be more defined and in time with the sword (MSR having a kind of double step, a difference to MJER and Seitei). It was very difficult to do, almost elusive and I reaaaally had to slow everything down to work out where the sequence was going wrong. I eventually reached the realisation that my feet weren't getting under quickly enough when I kept finding myself skidding across the floor instead of stepping. I put a concerted effort into pushing down with the backs of my feet as I was rising to both propel me up as well as getting the toes under quicker. This seemed to get my feet ready a lot earlier. It still wasn't quite good enough for my sensei's approval but I think this is work in progress as I need to get the right foot moving forwards before my hips are at their maximum extension. I'm still bumping along the floor a bit too much during the kata but it is slightly coming together. I was informed that if I focussed on keeping my composure during noto then it would add a sharpness all of its own which I tried to a nod of approval. Gotta keep that one noted down!

Towaki training was a bit less complex timing wise but I was told that the first draw needed to be bigger and dare I say it, "cuttier". This is quite a bit different to the way that some of my contempories perform this nukitsuke with the first action being a bit of a flick followed up by a bellowing roar for kirioroshi. It is more obvious to me now that both cuts need to be equal in power and speed and this may mean ramping the power off the second cut and more focus in the first.

A little bit of Chuden at the end underlined the need once again to ensure my posture and composure was maintained as well as an alternative way of doing noto which I will not write about here but will give it a try and consign it to blog later.

That's all for now...

Iaido 6th Dan Training Sessions 6,7 and 8

Ok, so I'm lazy!

I am combining this post with last Wednesday's training evening with this year's Iaido Spring Seminar which I have just got home from.

Wednesday night I thought would be nice to get stuck into some seated okuden with a few of the other highish grades from the dojo. This was because a) I wanted to explore the seated oku which I had tasked myself with training for my grading b) because we don't do it much and c) because I am getting a lazy fat arse which needs some more training.

I explained the "kotsu" of Kasumi, the first okuden suwariwaza and we worked on it for a bit. I swear this is a nice form and I hate it because it sooo bloody difficult to do with a large heavy sword. I think this form alone requires more than the usual amount of dedication and training to get right - where else do we do a right-to-left cut? It is however a fantastic kata for developing merihari, its sudden ebb and flow of speed is quite unique, I just have to learn how to do it without my tendons popping out of my arm in fear.

Working through the rest of the set really revealed some interesting facets of my iai, most notably that I am very much out of practice. I remember actually being quite flexible and agile with some of these forms but now feel a bit clunky and unbalanced especially with forms like Shihogiri/Yosumi. I realise that this can be fixed with some dedicated practice but I am a bit aware that I need to "catch up" with myself before challenging more to the kata in order to get it to "6th dan-ness".

Onto nicer things, Towaki and Tozume came out quite shiney. Both of these are potentially koryu forms for my grading. Towaki I think is becoming a favourite, Tozume is a little too much like Tsukaate to make it distinct for the grading although I feel quite able to pull a good one out of the hat, as it were. Towaki however allows a bit more challenge, personal interpretation and expression.

I'll jump forwards a bit now to this weekend's seminar because of its Towaki relevance. For the benefit of the readers of this blog, in case you don't know Towaki it begins in tatehiza facing the front. You draw and cut an opponent to the right front diagonal across kesa finishing with the sword outside of your right knee. You then move to the left front diagonal and perform kirioroshi.

During training today I was quite keen to give this a bit of a go when we had some peer-reviewing exercises with each other. At one point my sensei came over and suggested that I go for the Kanagawa version rather than the Tokyo version. The difference being that the former makes the second cut with the right knee forwards, the latter requiring a full step out with the left leg. My teacher explained that the former version was much more compact and looked a lot sharper. I gave this a try and sure enough it was indeed much easier to control especially the speed. I think I will continue to train with both version if anything just to try to get the second version sharper (I'm sure it will help all my iai anyway).

Harry had a look at my Shohatto and noted (as Chris Sensei had done previously) that I was leaning too far back and sticking my belly out a lot of the time and we worked on trying to create the right tension in the belly and chest. For me it means having a bit more tightness in the lateral part of the abs (in fact I can feel a bit of fatigue in them now) rather than pushing my belly out (which with me is easy to do ;-p). Ron Sandford from our dojo was also able to help me with this a bit.

I went onto ask Mathew Cook and David Green for their opinion on Towaki and both agreed that the Kanagawa version looked a lot better. For me, this kind of peer review is important, as well as getting technical feedback from my seniors it is also very nice to have people give feedback who don't have any more advice to offer other than that. The feedback is quite raw in that sense and sometimes that is just as reinforcing as more expert opinion.

At the end of the Koryu training session each group was asked to do an embu and so this was quite a nice opportunity to try some of my Koryu forms with a bit of pressure. I did Shohatto, Seichuto, Yamaoroshi, Towaki and Ukenagashi. The two shoden forms came out more or less how I expected they would. I would still like to feel more in control of the timing and slow parts of them down but there is a part of me that drags me through the form rather quicker than I would like. That might be quite a natural instinct and something best not fighting against so I will have to ask Chris Sensei a bit more about that. Yamaoroshi came out quite good and I was quite happy to do this with a bit of pounce and scarper. I have always admired the blinding speed that Ishido Sensei can do this at and he has often expressed that most of the chuden forms cannot be realistically executed unless done at a fairly rapid pace due to the close proximity of the enemy. At the same time however it is important not to get busy and I felt that I managed to just stay out of that saucepan.

Towaki was by far the best form, I will have to ask Tony Devine if he saw it and get some feedback as he is something of a specialist with these tight, sharp forms. Finally Ukenagashi (the seme and quick draw version) - I didn't get quite the right amount of "linger on the centre line" as I wanted but the cut came out good.


The rest of the seminar including the previous day was nice to get some long practice and I am grateful to Tony and Nobby for pushing us through the Chuden and standing Oku quite quickly.


To conclude this posting (and I think it would be a good idea to start drawing up conclusions after each session posting):

• Towaki should be almost a certain koryu for me - it can be big, sharp, clearly visible and have the capacity for some merihari demonstration.
• I need to keep my shohatto dynamic and not sit around after nukitsuke but at the same time keep everything definite.
• Tummy exercises are a must and I have got to keep an eye on my posture development.l

That's all for now...

Iaido 6th Dan Training Session 5

My Sensei has had it made clear to him now that I am ramping up my training to prepare for my 6th dan, I thought I would drop a hint to him on Wednesday in case he thought that I had been thrown out of my house...

It seems strange to me now how much one can feel that they have absolutely no competence in what they are doing one week when the preceding week (or hour or minute) one can demonstrate an uncanny naturalness in demonstrating a technique. Like the story of the centipede who, when asked how he ever walked, found that he no longer could when he gave it any thought, to change, reconstruct and integrate new factors into ones form can lead straight back to being stuck solid.

In this instance it was a period of reforming my shohatto, the only kata I practiced on this particular evening. I was told by my sensei that the mechanics and tempos of what was going on required more attention to their individual emphases, some requiring vehemence, some accumulation, some moderation, some spontaneity...the resultant juggling act had me dizzy.

For example:

• The hands need to grip the sword with a feeling of compressing the centre rather than lifting.
• The above however must be done without thought or intention but should be generated by a feeling in the body.
• The projection of the sword with the right hand must be exactly matched by the retraction of the left hand. This must neither be too fast or too slow - the essence of shohatto is suppression and warning rather than outright attack.
• At the right moment however the attack must overtake and overcome the enemy.
• The right hand should fix the mune of the sword against the bottom of the saya whilst retaining a virtual tension to make the sword leap out at sayabanare.
• Up to this point, tame must dominate without the kata losing its exuberance and dynanism.
• The kata must remain un-busy must must also flow and accelerate but retain control and moderation - all the time!

All of the above sound very philosophical, I have witnessed them all becoming physical manifest in my seniors. It is very easy to talk about them and understand them from a mental perspective, it is also easy to perform certain aspects of them in isolation, it is easy to contrast them with poorer executed technique - it is something else entirely to exhibit them consistently.

I said to my sensei to please come back in two weeks and that I would need some time on it. He said not to let these points restrict the dynanism of the form - all changes would have to be taken on board with a combatitive pace on and it was pointless to try to integrate them at artificially low speeds. The battle commences....


I spent quite a lot of time trying to implement these factors often finding that they reduced the speed of my kata to a crawl, I think I am going to have to work at these things approaching from both ends of the speed scale and hopefully meet in the middle.

I am slowly getting used to looking down my big nose after cutting to offer the correct metsuke - I had no idea that my snout could create seme towards a downed opponent.

So not wishing to be too pesimistic I will do my best to identify my good points about this form....

Err...

Ah yes, I have now discovered how to make the sword reach a horizontal plane earlier just before it flies off to nukitsuke - I'm going to keep this to myself for a while just in case I'm pulling a Eugene but it seems to work quite well and I'm not breaking any rules. I'm gradually getting my right shoulder down a bit at the end of nukitsuke and must work on cutting from the belly to cement that position. I believe my furikaburi is right on the spot at the moment with it's plane of movement back being preceded by an adequate amount of seme and a following continuous cut without it being rushed. Kirioroshi is a bit low at the end and I need to moderate that a bit - I think I'm getting too enthused with cutting big! Chiburi is still a bit unsure and I nearly scalped myself on Wednesday trying to do a Shoden-style ochiburi timing but it is at least getting "stronger" and isn't hurting my arm as much as it used to. Noto comes and goes but I definately need to keep my left hand far more forwards of the koiguchi than I have done in the past - it fixes everything!

More training tomorrow at Hilary's once I have finished fixing everyone's swords....

Have a good weekend dear reader.