At the beginning of the camp one of the 8th dan sensei from Japan covered a number of philosophical topics regarding Kendo. Unfortunately I did not have my notepad so I was only able to recall 3 things emphasized at the end of his lecture:
1) “In a word or small phrase, what is kendo to you?” – He said everyone who practices kendo should have an answer to this question even if they are never asked it.
2) Fun – If you are at kendo practice because you feel you are forced to be there and not because you want to be there and enjoy kendo then ultimately you never advance far in Kendo.
3) Accepting defeat – It is important to accept defeat when you lose in a tournament or fail an exam. If you feel the point scored on you was bad then you need to ask yourself what you could have done to prevent the strike from being made in the first place. The people who figure out how to prevent that strike will improve, the people who just complain about the poor quality of the strike will not.
After this lecture, we were assigned a court (the courts were divided by a very thin divider) based on rank groups. 4 dan and up were in court A, 1 dan to 3 dan were in court B, and Kyu ranks were in court C.
Since I am shodan I am unaware of what was taught in courts A and C, however in court B, basic Men, Kote, and Do strikes were being heavily dissected. The points made were too numerous for me to keep track of everything but here is a run down of the things I did manage to walk away with:
- We’ve all gone over keeping your right arm extended and at shoulder height, and that was mentioned as well at the seminar. However, extending your left arm as the strike is made was also emphasized. This helps your attacks extend further.
- Those studying Iaido might have already heard this; movements and attacks made should be made as if there was a string attached to the top of your head. This means you aren’t changing heights as you move or strike due to your head bobbing up and down.
- An emphasis was placed on being able to stop on the kote strike at exactly the moment the strike is made. The point here is that if you can’t stop at that point and you go stumbling forward then how can you hope to follow that attack up with a men strike?
- Make sure your shoulders do not over extend, if you do this you will begin to have your attacks made with your right arm much further out and you will be off that center striking line.
Towards the end a 30 minute Q&A session was held, courts A and C were still doing their things so it was kind of difficult to hear the questions but I did catch a few, the answers provided are not exact quotes:
Q: What should you be thinking about when you are in a match?
A: Nothing. If you are thinking about “winning” or “losing” you will get into thinking about wanting to hit the opponent but not wanting to be hit by the opponent. The problem with that line of thinking is that you will start to do deflections that may be legal but all in all make your Kendo look really bad.
Q: Watching some of the 7th and 8th dans on many of the tournament tapes coming out of Japan, you see them moving back sometimes, however when you keiko with the 8th dan sensei at these camps they never move back. What are your thoughts on moving back?
A: Don’t move back, your stance looks weak when you do that.
All in all, it has been a very informative seminar. I think dividing the 120+ people into 3 groups is a very good idea, each rank range got a seminar that was more tailored to what that group needs in terms of Kendo at the moment. My only compliant is that it was often difficult to hear what was being said. Aside from competing with the air conditioner (which was extremely effective), sensei and his interpreter often had to compete with yelling that was taking place in the other courts. That’s a very minor complaint though, as I still walked away with a lot of stuff to work on.
More to come tomorrow.
(Thanks to Brenda for taking the pictures.)
