About this blog..

This is a blog that I started in April 2006, just after I first put on my bogu (kendo armour). It collects the advices given by more experienced kendo practitioners as well as those from my own experiences. Both technical and the mental aspects of kendo are written in the blog. I hope someone will find them useful or interesting at least!

Saturday, June 21, 2008

The end of a training is important

Last night I led the training, as the usual trainers have gone to the Tengu Cup in Frankfurt with many others. Normally one expect very few people and beginners, but there were, nonetheless, a few more experienced kenshi present. In total there were 9, so we could have a very decent training.

Before mokuzo I reminded everyone to have good etiquette, good body posture and the ability to learn by observation. We started with 4x kirikaeshi, 2x dou-kirikaeshi, followed by the usual men, kote-men, kote strikes. We did also 2 rounds of oji-waza against men-strikes. The first oji-waza to learn is perhaps debana-kote. With debana-kote, the most important thing is to have a clear strike without the upper body bending sideways due to wanting to avoid the men-strike. The strike has to be straight without an inclination. If the strike is not straight, very often the shinai hits the tsuba.

Before the 20 minutes mawari-geiko, we had 2 rounds of butsukari-geiko, and we finished the jigeiko with kirikaeshi (50 sayu-men). When everyone was exhausted, I asked them to make two last big men cuts. Reminding them that it was the last chance to make perfect men-cuts with good posture and ki-ken-tai-ichi. I think that helps psychologically so that everyone goes away with positive feelings regardless of whether they had won or lost in the fights.

I was quite pleased myself with the session as I didn't speak too much and I had a good training myself too. I hope everyone went away feeling the same.

Wish the others do well in the competition!

4 comments:

Patrik-san said...

Dear Ivan good day,
every time i read ur blog, i realize that i have the same thirst for kendo as u...and the same problems during practice...today i read about kote and debana kote.how the hit must be done so to be good, and avoid the men-strike.my problem is that i bend when i hit kote.so my left foot stay behind and i accept very easyly the men strike.i know that this is problem with my body posture. if i am straight as the kote hit, then my left foot follow's, and in the most times i hit a good kote.
in previous blog archive, i read about defence in jigeiko. i was the first that i defend my self all the time. but from that time that i read ur blog, i stopped to defend and i tried to be more fast than the others, or to use defence to hit back fast.the problem was that in my mind i had jigeiko and shiai as the same thing.now its more clear in my mind these 2 things.
some times when i read ur blog i say to my self "Stelio these are ur words".its like i am writing in ur blog...
continue writing about kendo...

Unknown said...

Hi Stelios, thanks for your kind words. It's the comments like yours that really encourages me to write on. I hope one day we can practise together!

Patrik-san said...

Hi Ivan, that would be a pleasure for me :). So keep on gathering kendo experiences and write them for us....to learn.

Derek Dawson said...

Your the bestt