Iaido Training Session 46

Why we fight

Considering how long we are dead for I think there is often a danger of forgetting one of the outcomes of doing martial arts i.e. it should be something that one enjoys and gets something out of. I guess last night's practise revealed to me how much that had been missing of late as it was, almost by accident, a very enjoyable practise.

We had a very full dojo, I was in charge, we had the whole evening ahead of us. As usual I got everyone to go through Seitei together, twice each form, in an abstract order and with a focus to deal with each kata as a "mini project". This gave me a little bit of time to slow things down and work on posture and in seconds of spare time spot the faults that I had identified with my own performance in others. I find that immensely enlightening and realise that often it is good to do the reverse i.e. to spot faults in others as a means of evaluating if you are doing it wrong yourself. Quite often these are unconscious human responses to particular technical challenges, like for example, performing noto without twitching the thumb to lightly grip the mune.

We went on to split the groups up with some guys doing seated Oku, a bit of Shoden and the rest working on Seitei. I spent most of the time working with the seated Oku group. This in itself can be quite hard work even showing the forms once or twice at a reasonable level of intensity.

Anyway, we got through them all and finished the practice. I don't know quite why but I somehow felt the practise very enjoyable. I am sure part of it was doing some light exercise and stretching before the training to get the endorphins flowing and feeling physically well. Anyway, a gentle reminder of a good reason to train and one not to be forgotten.

Iaido Training Session 45

What happened to our dojo? One minute there's about 4 of us in there, rattling around like peas in a tin and then there's barely enough room to swing a cat (ana). Lucy is back from Yapan for a bit, we are being visited by Andrea Setti and four of our beginners turned up tonight (although they remind me that tonight was their one year anniversary since beginning training - oops).

Anyway, I was determined that I should get some practice in so we started with everyone doing a couple of shots per seitei form. I insist that we don't do them in order these days as I am sure it tends to make people's mind see it as an objective to get through them all as soon as possible. I prefer to do them in a more abstract order, the first one of each being done slowly and expansively and the second being at normal speed. By having this abstract order it is my hope that everyone views each kata as something of a mini-project to work on while we train.

People started filtering in and all too soon our 10-person training space was filled with about 12. It becomes too dangerous to even try practising at this so most of the high grades dropped out and helped teach.

After a while I was getting itchy feet so I asked everyone to stop, for the lower grades to clear to the sides and got everyone else to do a 7-form embu. This was repeated at the end of the lesson with a 5 form embu.

So what did I do. Well I focussed on the bits that I know were highlighted in the recent video analysis including:

• Making sure the front foot is placed before nukitsuke is executed
• Ensuring furikaburi actually passes by the left ear (this by the way makes a much nice rhythm to the kata instead of just launching it above the head)
• Lifting the elbow into ochiburi
• Keeping my posture straighter instead of leaning back
• Doing noto without moving my thumb
• Trying to relax the hands so that hikinuki and ukenagashi ni furikaburi happens more naturally
• Driving the sword forwards and out on the draw of Kesagiri
• Making a larger initial cut in Sanpogiri
• Keeping wakigamae moving and keeping the sword behind me in Shihogiri

I think I am doing quite well on this so far and want to keep up this attention to detail while I focus on some of the other stuff that people have advised concerning hara and posture.

Thanks for tuning in...

Iaido Training Session 44

Quite a nice quiet class tonight so that I could work on my own stuff and have some beginner's presence to keep me on the basics. One of the things that stuck in my memory of this evening was demonstrating how the feet need to assume the cutting position just a slight moment before the cut is delivered thus ensuring stability. My nukitsuke in one demonstration just seemed to fly out on a really regular arc once I had ensured that my right foot wasn't moving during the actual drawing action. This is definitely something I need to work on more so that it happens when I train at regular speed. It is something which adds to the technical challenge in that obviously you shouldn't be standing there for a second while your sword lags behind but equally it makes no sense to try and draw and cut when you don't have a secure posture.

I used the evaluation of the last embu video as well to fix some other things such as making sure that I didn't open my thumb when I did noto. I realise that this is actually quite a deeply embedded bad habit as it felt quite foreign to do it right. Looking around I saw lots of other people doing it with this bad habit as well - oh well, at least they're keeping in line...

One of the things I really wanted to get right was the upper cut of Kesagiri as well as I had realised that while it might feel really good to swish the sword up and down in one action, most of the time I am not actually making a cut on the upward action, the monouchi is in fact following along the same path as the tsuka more or less. Once I tried to ensure that the kissaki was actually moving forward into the cut then this did two things:

1. I could hear the tachikaze - a good sign that I was cutting

2. It gave me ample time to join this with the rising left hand and establish a grip for the downward cut.

In fact it felt like there was time to do a kata (would'ya believe it?) rather than just a flurry of movement a question mark left hanging in the air. I have tried to demonstrate this difference of movement in the image below.

I was also able to work on the first cut on Sanpogiri which bothered me that it is far too small. This is a difficult one, easy to do in a linear action such as Morotezuki, more difficult to do when your body has to enter inside the movement. I will work on this more at the next session.

I am trying to incorporate a lot of Chuden into my training at the moment as I find this one of the best leg strength developers in iai. Toraissoku is my kindly nemesis which is training me to get my big ass up and moving. Quite often this kata doesn't come to life until after a good 20 minutes of solid repetition. Once that is working better then Inazuma seems a lot easier. Chris Sensei told me that my final cut of Inazuma was too dependent on my body and left me to work that out. I realised what he meant after a while and started to ensure that my metsuke was kept correct during this dropping and cutting action and that seemed to work (well, he said that was better anyway).

I have been working on one of the Okuden kaewaza versions of Ukenagashi as this might be a selected koryu if I have to pull one out of the hat. It is one which I feel I can do quite well (a right foot seme-seme-seme then a "leap" off the line to deflect and cut in one action while still keeping the right foot forwards). It is the fact that I feel good about this form and that I get very little feedback on it that is now bothering me. I think I will have to get Ishido Sensei to give me some feedback to work on this at the next opportunity.

Anyway, till next time.

...ooh, thought I would post this rather entertaining photo of a couple of BKA peeps a whole lifetime and hairstyle ago...