Disclaimer and Stuff

Firstly I would like to say that all of the material contained within this blog is of my own opinion and any inaccuracies in technical content or other's personal quotations are completely my own.

Secondly I would like to thank everyone in advance where I have used photos of you or photos you have taken. I have quite a library of digital photos and virtually no record of who took them so I hope you will take this general thanks as adequate gratitude. If there are any photos of you or taken by you that you would like removed please let me know.

Thirdly, some articles have been published on my dojo website if you would like to read them in an easier format
https://www.ryoshinkan.org/more-detail/shugyo-blog-highlights


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7th dans achieved. Come and visit Ryoshinkan Iaido and Jodo Dojo Website at www.ryoshinkan.org

Monday 28 February 2022

Control and Calibration in Iaido - WTF?

 Blogs are a pain. 

They are though aren't they? Why should I take the time to write and check something at the risk of people doing checks on it afterwards when I can just record a video, make all the grammatical and vocabulary mistakes I can and no one will pick me up about it later!

And this is why (and yes, you can start a sentence with "And") I started using Youtube to record more of my thoughts and experiences on Budo. But, I still think it's worth taking the time to write something which has been considered and is carefully put together...I just wish someone would do that for me.

For those of you who have protected yourselves from listening to my droning on, you might want to torture yourselves with the complete and short library of C&C-based videos here:

C&C Iaido Playlist

You may have also heard me talk about C&C in interviews with Patrick Suen in his strongly-progressing "Inside Look" podcast:

https://youtu.be/P5H6rnFQYIk

Anyway, enough self-promotion, I wanted to simply share a tangible output/outcome from this focus on C&C. Any though we have started coming out of lockdown from COVID-19, I continue to hold Zoom coaching sessions with my European students and friends. On one evening, I asked my student from Hungary, Gergely Vass, to focus on his performance of Mae using all of the aspects of C&C that I had been coaching the guys with for the previous few months.

Naturally, just like everyone else, it wasn't perfect, the direction of furikaburi and the final position of chiburi still needed some concentration but this was such a substantial difference to the way that Gergely was doing Mae a few months previously. You will note that the form is perhaps a little slower than some people of his grade would perform it - this is exactly the point though. By eliminating the focus on speed and power he was able to produce a near-perfect nukitsuke and pre-cut position in furikaburi. These were the main points that I wanted him to work on.

Anyway, enough talk, I will let you be the judge. Please find the video here:

https://youtu.be/VW1xQx-Dg_g

Thank you to Gergely who allowed me to use this video for this post.