Iaido 6th Dan Training Session 18

Not much to say about tonight as there was quite a lot of talking going on. Shame really, last week was so active at the seminar that I was hoping to keep the inertia going. I was chastised a bit for my hips not being stable during noto so this is something to work on I suppose. Apart from that I spent the session working on Shoden. Ah, just remembered, I must combine the preparation for the tsuki on Gyakuto into the forward movement to make it a bit more cohesive.

At the end of the practice we were made to do Koranto with ever decreasing number of steps and I thought I would make it more challenging by throwing in a double kiritsuke at the end. It was surprising how easy it was once I had forgotten what the feet were doing.



Right arm is feeling a bit painful today probably due to the rather large amount of ochiburi's I had to do. That particular part of the technique is feeling better I think largely due to following:

1. Making sure there is a small rotation of the sword in the hand prior to lifting it. The most reliable time to do this is just after kirioroshi. It is much more fluid to do this while lifting the sword but also much more likely to get the angle slightly wrong (a tiny bit seems to be enough to throw off the whole movement).
2. Really allowing the hands to relax as the sword approaches the top of the head so that the chiburi action can be initiated by a squeezing of the grip rather than a flinging of the arms.

Anyway, that's it for now, might throw in some more memories of Villingen soon.