Iaido Training Session 71

Things don't always go so well...

Arf! It's funny how sometimes it's hard to disbelieve in biorhythms and rubbish like that and how they might affect you. Tonight was an ideal opportunity to get some consolidatory practice done, there were a few people in the dojo, enough high grades to supervise and some space for me to swing me steel. I wanted to work on Ushiro for a bit for a couple of reasons, a) to see why David Mc was having problems with this one at the weekend and b) to even up the hole in the knees of my hakama.

For some reason it just wasn't feeling good. Something of this I suspect is down to the fact that my feet are quite painful at the moment. The joints of the big toes and balls of the feet are all a bit swollen making seiza and tate-hiza quite painful. Not so much that I can't sit down but I can't do it in the relative comfort I normally have. Some might say I'm getting old, to that I say "shut up and stop talking in my head - GAAAHHHHHHHHGGG!!!"

Anyway, Harry observed me for a bit and said that Ukenagashi wasn't bad. I noticed that I am getting fairly good at not swinging the sword over my should before the cut (unlike some others in the dojo - ahem!)

I went onto the standing forms to see what kind of mess I could make of those. Kesagiri isn't too bad now especially as I have discovered the secret "special way of doing it"....you want to know what it is? It's a secret....

...

...

oh, okay then. It's this. Most people, in an effort to make sure that the upper cut is at a diagonal don't rotate the sword enough. The result is a) the grip isn't strong, b) the hasuji isn't correct, c) it becomes difficult to arrest and reverse the movement at the apex of the cut. Turning the sword so that it is near enough vertically cutting downwards gets rid of all that. One will still find that the cut is inclined enough to hit all the targets and it becomes incredibly easy to reverse the cutting angle at the top.

....however chiburi while gripping the koiguchi is still bloody hard. I'm hoping that the montsuki sorts all that out as I'm convinced that some of it is down to how my uwagi fits.

Sensei worked me on Morotezuki and Sanpogiri quite a bit which was interesting but I now have to reconstruct the latter quite a bit...I hope I have time before the grading...

We all did an embu at the end, I went up on my own. I didn't feel very good, even nervous. When I had finished, Sensei said that the quality was quite low and I didn't look confident. It was true. Some days are better than others....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfm0nGiN46o

Iaido Training Session 69 and 70

Making the most of efficiency here and squeezing two sessions into one post. I test-drove my montsuki and hakama in the last two Wednesday sessions to see how they might affect my iai. The answer - they do. A bit.

First the bad bits. Ukenagashi was comical in that the arm movement tends to make the left sleeve slap you in the face. I had to slightly modify the speed to stop this from happen.

Other than that....not much really.

The good bits, it fits nicely, the hakama is very light moves nicely. Apart from that not much to report.

My sensei gave me some very good feedback on the last two sessions concerning lower body preparation for Mae and Shohatto. My left leg is not quite as active as the right and there is more tension on the entire right side. I worked on trying to get a balance of tension on both sides by rising up and getting both sides with an even feeling. This is a good way of getting the body moving and having a feeling of pressing forwards by pressing inwards.


Did some embu training last night and found I need to:

1. Shorten my forward movement in Shohatto to join up furikaburi with the taisabaki.
2. Speeding up the Tozume link between the two opponents.
3. Lower my arms in the Chinugui position in Ukenagashi.
4. Introducing some merihari into Morotezuki.
5. Sharpening up Sogiri without going into koryu timing.

More later.

Life on board the Marie Celeste

Those of you that follow the blog frequently will realise that I have recently been kidnapped by aliens and am currently being taken to their planet for experiments. I am trying to negotiate my release but the fact that they communicate only through the medium of tap dance and farting is making the whole process quite tricky. This is the best excuse I can come up with to explain my lack of recent posts (other than my dog ate my laptop which none of you would believe in light of the alien abduction story).

Anyway to the truth. I have been busy. Really busy. Even now I am just finishing off some work before I go out for a drink with one of my best friends who I haven't seen for over half a year and only lives about 3 miles away. My last post was an attempt to write about the Swedish Summer Seminar which I got half way through before "the summer happened". Since that time my work has exploded somewhat (which being self-employed is a really good thing) and budo training has similarly taken an upward curve. I guess it's better to be training for my 6th dan rather than writing about it but the guilt has still lain like an iron cross strapped across my shoulders....well perhaps not that bad, more like a hangnail.

I don't want to go into too much detail about the last few weeks so I will summarise it below instead and try to pull out the developments at the end (if I get that far)...

Swedish Summer Seminar

Brilliant as mentioned in the previous post. Lots of clarification on seitei. I spent the koryu doing okuden with Momiyama Sensei which was fabulous and Ishido Sensei spent quite a lot of time with us. I loved the three versions of Ryozume which I will have to consign to keyboard soon before I forget. I also won the embu taikai which was a bit of a joke as I don't even remember what I did. It reminded me that I hate embu taikai but read more in the BKA summer seminar.

At the Dojo - Iaido Training Sessions 63 and 64

Yup, went to the dojo, did some training, helped some students, got ready for the Nationals...

BKA Iaido Nationals

Won the 5th dan individuals meeting Harry in the finals which was very nice. I really tried to calm everything down and I think I was quite successful. I went with my 3-man team into the knockouts and then got the proverbial but it was also nice to be with two other people who were giving their everything to win even when we were against really strong teams.

At the Dojo - Iaido Training Sessions 65 and 66

Well despite the fact that the entire world was exploding (i.e. the BKA summer seminar was coming up which I was in the middle of the organisation of) I managed to make it to the dojo and get some training in.

BKA Summer Iaido Seminar

Didn't get in as much training as I would have liked to as my hands were full translating (not using sign I should add), organising, lunching, drinking and generally running around like a headless chicken. I think for me this was academically very rewarding as in the space of one month I had listened, translated and regurgitated everything Ishido Sensei had to say about seiteigata. We had an embu taikai and I was determined to do something different. I focussed on calmness, quietness and a change of timing. I won the knockout and the final and it actually felt good. I wasn't nervous anymore. I took haste and effort out of the kata and it all snapped together quite nicely without my interference, thank you very much. I think this experience itself started to show me the difference between renshu and keiko. If I had spent the embu concentrating on making sure that my foot timing was correct then I think it would have fallen apart to busyness but I just let it all go. The previous renshu had made sure that the keiko was at least technically acceptable and I could focus on other things such as visualisation, johakyu, metsuke etc.

At the Dojo - Iaido Training Sessions 67

Saw the sensei's off and then zipped off to the dojo. Did the usual practice and I think, if my memory serves me right, I tried to get the lower grades to do some more koryu.

Polish Summer Seminar

This was nicely preceeded with some walking in the Karpacz mountains with my Polish friends. I had somehow ended up being the sole deliverer of the seminar which was at once very liberating but also incredibly tiring. Everyone was wonderful, really enthusiastic and patient as I wanted to ensure that as much new information was transmitted as possible. I spent quite a bit of time pulling bones out of the Japanese version of the ZNKR Iaido manual, which as I explained at the seminar, had a lot of information in it that had not been translated as it would have significantly delayed the delivery of the English version. Furthermore a lot of the info might have been taken a bit too literally and set up as dojo rules (especially those points concerning dojo "architecture"). The seitei part of the seminar I made sure focussed on grading points and special considerations on how to deliver the kata. I tried to make sure that I put in as many points as I could remember from Ishido Sensei. It was nice to see people coming from Slovakia and Czech who also gave me immense mental support (they are very experienced and enthusiastic iaidoka). We had a small taikai and a grading which went very well and I was inspired by a father and son who had been training for only about 6 weeks who took part and tried some koryu. The son won fighting spirit, he well deserved it. We did some MSR on the last day and I tried to draw together the closeness of Jikiden by showing how different branches of Shinden looked (some Shinden is closer to Tosa Jikiden than to other branches of Shinden). The notion I was trying to convey was the fact that the styles are all trying to embody the same thing, the harmony of sword, body and mind.

I would right now like to thank everyone who came to the seminar (especially those that came from other countries), was involved in the organisation and gave their utmost to train.

At the Dojo - Iaido Training Sessions 68

After initial seitei run through we did some embu and review sessions on katas 1, 5 and 9 which was very useful.

And so...

Where am I now? Still on board the ship but a few things have happened over the last 2-3 months:

1. My right arm seems to have completely recovered. I think this is due to a change in my ochiburi and a reduction of shock doing nukitsuke through relaxation and gradual tension.
2. The resultant ochiburi and nukitsuke are much smoother and sharper.
3. My left toes are now painful instead, I think through overstretching them when my toes aren't all that bendy. Going to have to ensure they are properly warmed and stretched (with hands) in future.
4. I feel a lot calmer in my iai now and giving myself thinking space in the kata.
5. I am losing weight, albeit slowly, my target is to reach 80kg by the time of the EIC.

I now want to focus the next few weeks on only practice and embedding good stuff. I don't want to do much analysis or pulling apart. I am going to organise a few separate training sessions and hope that the last year of research and study can be implemented and made solid in my performance.

Ah well, I'm just looking at my alien hosts, they are standing waiting with what looks like fire hose. I wonder what they want....