Recent goals

After almost two weeks of break due to the Chinese New Year holidays, I returned to the dojo last night. It was good to exercise having eaten so much!!! (CNY is somewhat like the X'mas for the Chinese people.)

I've been more sure of my direction in kendo since the long day of matches at the Taiwan national team selection in December last year. Now I pay more attention to:

• The distance between my left and right feet in kamae. 
• Making slightly larger and quick strikes, using the wrist power, coming mainly from the left hand.
• Striking at the right timing.
• Complete zanshin after the strike.

The training turned out to be really good. A few good men strikes made the day!

Goals for the coming year..

Happy New Year!
新年快樂！
よいお今年を！
Ich wuensch Ihnen ein guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr!


It's the last day of year 2009 - a time to look back on the year and set goals for the next.


Until this December, I had just done 4 years of kendo, and a 2nd Dan holder. What new skills have I obtained in the past year? Let's see:

• My hip can now follow up when I strike and during zanshin, which means that my legs are used to the movement, and are perhaps stronger!
• Opportunity for oji-waza seems clearer to me than before.
• Suriage-wazas are better.

New goals:

• Stronger cuts using the left wrist.
• Improve on oji-waza.
• Better performance in competitions. To achieve that I cannot be relaxed during jigeikos. I need to look for every opportunity to strike, and use the wazas.

Keep the body weight low

Training in this warm and humid climate, reactions and responses to opponents do become much slower. Sometimes, underneath the helmet I just try to stay sane...

My current immediate goal is clear: To keep my body weight low while propelling forwards during strike, and thereby making solid fumigomi.

Don't leave the upper body behind

Only trained once a week in the past two weeks because the amount of stuff I needed to do at the moment. I'm happy that things outside the dojo are going in general quite well at the moment. This gives me a more positive feel when I come to the dojo as well. I remember last year during particularly stressful time, kendo was my meditation and my escape. Every time when I came to the dojo I felt like I was coming to take a massive dosage of paracetamol, and I took it willingly.

Stress brings good kendo. I think this was almost what Jindra told me last year as to why kendo in Japan is so beautiful. Because it is shaped by the stress in the society. Though it could be an exaggeration, there is however some sense in it. Apart from techniques, people search for the spirituality as well as the self-confidence in the dojo. These two elements naturally become the main emphasis in the adult kendo.

Yesterday's training was one of those in which I suddenly understand something. This time was to do with men-strike (how surprising..). I put my weight, especially my upper body, more towards the front at the instant of the striking. This make my strike faster and more explosive. Before I tried too much to bring my hip forward, and ha.. the result was that I brought only the hip. My upper body was behind. Of course, if the upper body is leaning too much forward, it's not good either. It's a very delicate tipping point. For me, I need to be more consistent. If I do it once, I need to do it the every next time. This is my goal.

Apart from the body, my left fist sometimes goes slightly over to the right of my centerline during men-strike. This is very bad, as my opponent can easily win during ai-men. 

On a completely different story, there have been over 10,000 visits to this blog! Thanks for continuing to come back. When I started writing this blog I never thought or worried if there'd be anyone viewing, as it's just like thinking out loud for me. It makes me happy that some people find it helpful, and over the past couple years I have got some nice emails from some of you. Thank you!

Breaking the wall

So how has it been since I came back to Dresden almost a month ago? It's interesting to come back having understood more about kendo, and practise with everyone. Obviously, Dresden kendo being so young, is it impossible to compare with the standards of some of the other dojos where there are many 6th Dan, 7th Dan or even 8th Dan kendoka. But I think we're doing amazingly well here. It only takes time. 

The most important thing is that we should never forget to be open-minded and take other people's advices. There is a Chinese idiom - "a frog at the bottom of a well (井底之蛙 [Jing-Di-Ju-Wa])". A frog at the bottom of a well only sees a small patch of the sky. It describes someone who lives in a small world and only sees what's going on within, not knowing what he or she sees is only a tip of an iceberg. 

A new delightful addition to Dresden kendo is Stephan Otto from Berlin Kokugikan. A nice guy with good kendo forms with whom I've enjoyed practising so far.

There are some main thoughts from the trainings in the past few times:

• Interestingly when seme is good, it does not matter if one strikes small or big men. No wonder Senseis always make large cuts and still win against the younger kenshi who use small cuts.
• Stephan pointed out that if I miss the target my upper body tend to lean forwards. I think there's something wrong with my balance during the strike, perhaps my hip wasn't following quickly enough. Have to correct...
  

More men

Today at the end of training I had an Ippon-shobu with Georg, which didn't last that long. I wanted to do a kaeshi-do, but was too slow. I also noticed that I'm not confident with my men-strike enough. What I need is KNOWING (not just thinking) that when I launch the attack I can get a point. Then I can strike without hesitation.

Men-uchi, men-uchi, men-uchi...

Teaching the body

It's definitely not a good idea to eat doener kebab (a type of Turkish fast food, common in Germany) before the training. My body felt so heavy through out the training this evening.

In the previous couple of months, I had been working on seme, and, before then, strong-men cuts. I improved in each category separately, but it's still somehow unnatural to combine to both together, which is something I will have to work on. Especially, for kote-men, my men cut tends to be a bit too weak.

Tenouchi is the word here. At least at the moment my left forearm feels sore -- a good sign!

Today a few beginners wore the bogu for the first time. One of them (I'll insert the name later) had very nice posture, by that I mean back-straight, which something, for a lot of people, difficult to do (including me at the beginning). Another debutante, Mathies, who lately has been showing good fighting spirits consistently, did very well again on keeping the spirit up, even though it was obvious that he was at his physical limit. I hope he keeps it up!


Goals for the month:

• Making the following things my natural instinct:
• - seme;
  
• - fast foot work;
  
• - small sharp cut with left hand (wrist and fingers);
  
• - push the hip forwards;
  
• - and quickly draw up the left foot.

I hope to really rub these things deep into my joints, muscles and tendons.

The past weeks I often went for a 45 mins jog on Sunday, first along the river Elbe and then up the hill to complete a cycle back to my flat. It's amazing how significantly my stamina has improved since a year ago, by just doing kendo. Back then I could only jog continuously for half-an-hour.

Let's do it!

This week I want to train three times in preperation for the competition on Saturday.

I will work on:

• seme: entering the hitting distance with me dominating. Good use of foot work and kensen are important.
• strong and sharp men-strikes.
• speed.
• And, above all, the fighting spirit.

A quicky

Don't have time right now, though I still want to get these thoughts out of my mind. So I just have to be brief.

• My suriage-men sucks.
• Need to practise making the right foot lighter, and lauch the strike faster with the left leg pushing the body.

Communication kendo

This week so far I went twice to the training. I said "sofar" because there will be a KenVO squad training, and I am always confused as to whether Sunday is the beginning or the end of a week. Well, nevermind.

In both trainings I push myself hard. In general I tried to push my physical limitation. But in kihon-geiko and jigeiko I aimed to make every strike on target an ippon, meaning: loud kiai, nice posture and zanshin. A strong emphasis for me in the past few weeks has been seme. Namely, experimenting with different ways of breaking the composure of the opponent. I also found that kendo is much more interesting with applying seme before launching the strike, because you are not merely hitting a dummy but a human being, who can defend. Through the series of exchanging attack and defense, the two in many ways communicate and understand each other in a somewhat deep level.

Yesterday I had jigeiko with Lilli, Martin, Patrick, Un-Cheol, Antja and Daniel. Lilli has really improved a lot since she started training three times a week. Especially one feels her will to fight on, which is what drives us to improve. Quite naturally, as her opponent, I was driven to give all I had. This is perhaps the best opponent to have.

It was my first time fighting with Un-Cheol. He moves fast, and does very nice kote-men, with no hesitation between the kote and men. I think it's because his kote is higher than usual (or perhaps I should just call it harai-men), so that he can execute the men strike immediately afterwards.

Feedbacks:

• Georg pointed out that my hands are slightly off-centre to the right in my kamae. I think this is because my left shoulder was slightly behind my right one.
• Martin: surprise your opponent with minimum movement, or, let's say, redundant movements. This is for me something yet to be explored. At the moment I have try to see what works and then the next thing is to stop doing those that don't work.

Some thoughts

• Striking distance. During seme, for example, harai-waza or renzoko-waza, it is easy to get too close, therefore, renders the final strike invalid. I should watch out for the distance. If the opponent doesn't move backwards, I stomp my feet on the same spot, if they do, I move forward with the left foot quickly followed. Then launch the strike with the left thigh and hip pushing forward + LOUD KIAI!

I am very looking forward to the squad training tomorrow. But first I have to make sure I won't drink too much tonight!

Short training

Tonight I led the training since very few people were there. We had very little time so we did only kihon, and at the end 10 mins of jigeiko.

I should remember to push my hip forwards when striking.

Another thing is, when doing jigeiko with someone who is obviously more of a beginner than I am who couldn't do much against me, I should let the targets open after he/she shows enough seme. Otherwise, it's pretty pointless to them..

Got cramps

Yesterday's training was intense. We practised hiki-wazas. In the previous two weeks I only trained once, so my body was slowly waking up.

Six people with armours turned up. There were also three people without, two of whom were complete beginners. They couldn't even make kiai, and giggled when Stephan and I asked them to before striking. Rather annoying to be honest.

We had about ten minutes of jigeiko. Two minutes against each person. I only made points with men-strikes. My body and mind weren't strong enough to do more, or use other techniques. At the end, we did some sit-ups and the reverse (raising the upper body while lying face-down).

My friends Alex and Britt came to watch the training. I was rather surprised that they stayed the whole time. Of course they were shocked by the amount of noise we made, which for me is always amusing ha ha.

Later when we were chasing for the tram I got slight cramps on both of my calves. I really have to take care of my body more!

Some thoughts:

• think of ichigo-ichie (one life, one meeting) 一期一會. Although tired, still have to try my best and pump that extra energy in me.
• I didn't have tenouchi while doing hiki-waza. Have to improve.
• make openings.
• bring the shinai forwards without raising the tip too much while striking men.

Georg and Tatsuro (waseda student)


After a kote-strike (Tatsuro).



A little souvnier.


Bakka photo

backwards, forwards

After 1.5 week of absence due to injury and hangover, I went to the training yesterday. After the kihon we formed a circle and played the game of "who-wins-stays-in-the-middle". Well, at least that how I imagine it'd be called. But the problem was that the attacker is voluntary, and most people were shy to come up. So we formed instead a queue. I didn't enjoy it so much as most people just charge onto me without thinking and a bad hit also qualified as an ippon. Didn't see much kendo in it.

After this I did jigeiko with Patrick and then Georg. Haven't had the chance to practise with Patrick for a long time, so it was nice. Especially because he has good kihon (basics). With Georg it was fun as well.

Here are some after thoughts:

• When moving backwards always maintain the intention to go forwards again, this applies especially to the oji-wazas.
  
• Do-strike the left hand should drop vertically in front of the navel so it wouldn't be too high or low.
  

Cut too light

After a week of absence in the dojo due to work I attended the training on Friday. The session was short and started late due to the late arrival of the people who did Iaido. It's a bit of waste of my time to be honest. Coming on time and just sitting there and wait. But, that's how life goes sometimes.

After the kihon, we did debana-waza, hiki-waza, kakarigeiko, and finally jigeiko.

• My sashi-men is not strong enough. I hit too lightly.
• I realised afterwards that at jigeiko my performance was too monotonic, which made it predictable for more experienced players. Especially, it made me prone to debana-waza.
• need to work on hiki-men.

Next Saturday is the International Berlin Kyu-level Tournament, which Stephan tried to persuade me to attend. I'm tempted, but also unsure about whether I should give so much time to kendo at the moment when I'm trying to finish my thesis. But I'm going to try. This means that I'll have to train at least 3 times next week.

Open

It was a valueable training session today. I received many useful advices from the sempais. First we did a lot of exercises on foot work, then kihon and jigeiko. Marco, sandan, from Leipzig was also there because there will be a kendo demonstration in Halle, which he needed to discuss with the people from Dresden. This will be big one which includes other martial arts such as shaolin kung-fu, judo, and aikido etc, where the audience will have to pay at least 18 euro to get in! Unfortunately, the conference taking place next week will be my first priority. Otherwise, it would have been fun to meet the shaolin monks.

Feedback from Georg:

• When I do men-men or kote-men, don't pull back at the first strike. Go forwards to execute the second cut.

Feed back from Stephan:

• quickly turn back after striking.

Feedback from Marco:

• put more variations in jigeiko instead of using harai-waza all the time. More seasoned player would notice and anticipate that I first sweep to test the opponent's reaction or strike afterwards, which puts me into danger.
  

Feedback from Rochus:

• be careful of the distance. My feet were sometimes too far apart from each other, ie. the left foot didn't follow up.
  

Overall, I need to improve my seme. Really work on creating an opening.

Distance is important

The training today was intense. Very little time was wasted - the way I like it. After kihon we practised debana-kote and kote-nuki-men.

Debana-kote:

• the kensen needs only to be raised slightly in order to be as quick as possible. Usually in the debana situation the opponent would have raised his kensen as well, so to switch to the other side to hit (assume starting from your right side) kote, one doesn't need to raise it very much.
• the upper-body should stay up-right after hit.

kote-nuki-men:

• when avoiding the kote-strike, draw the hands slightly inwards while raising it for the men-strike. Drawing the shinai straight up is too dangerous.

At the end we line up with one person as the motodachi. The motodachi will have jigeiko with the kakarite for 20 secs, in which they both have to try to score as many points as possible. The motodachi would stay until a full rotation of the kakarite is complete. Good exercise for reaction speed and physical condition.

Some afterthoughts:

• Overall speaking my tenouchi still needs to be improved.
• When striking kote-men, very often the opponent would come forward so the men strike could be too close. Try to keep the right distance.
  

After prague

Yesterday's training was fun. We had quite sometime at the end for jigeiko. Lots of people were late in fact at the begining, and three of us thought the other weren't going to come. So we started warming up and doing suburi until the others showed up almost at the same time. Strange.

When Georg took over the training, he asked us to use two shinais to do 500+ suburis. Very, very tiring.

After a few rounds of long kirikaeshi down the hall and normal kirkikaeshi, men-uchi, and sashi-kote-men, we started jigeiko. We had chance to practise with everyone, 6 people in totoal. For ippon-shobu I drew two, won two, and lost one to Georg.

• I found that keeping the upper body straight during kirikaeshi actually helps the beathing, and therefore makes it easier.
• I repeated the same thing to Wei as I did to Misha on Tuesdays training. I kept hitting his kote until he didn't raise the shinai.
• My hiki-men is still not sharp enough, so my opponent can block it.

After the trainig I asked Georg for his advice:

• don't let the kensen drift too far away from the centre otherwise it'd take a long time or more effort to make the strike (I tend to reverse the shinai and draw a big circle to strike)
• good strong kote. He very kindly said that he hasn't been (or not for a long time ) hit by such a strong debana-kote.
• becareful of the zanshin after kote. Dont raise the shinai backwards.
• He stressed to everyone how useful and important kote-men is.

He said after I came back from the Prague seminar my level shot up, and he now has real fun do jigeiko with me, which is very flattering! He said now I have to try to practise other waza's apart from debana-kote.

• more tenouchi.
  

Pop that kote, yo

Thursday morning training. It was hard to get up both this week and last week. But somehow I managed. I set my mind to give it all before each fight as though I will only meet the person once. (Ichigo ichie, in Japanese) This week the number of people coming to the morning training has reduced from 9 to 5.

Some notes from the jigeiko:

• A few nice kote "pop's".
• Sanbon Shobu: 1-2 Lost to Stephan. Got a kote. He got two men's. Becareful of the distance!
• Make better use of hiki-waza (and more often), i.e. the right moment and the right distance. If a men-uchi doesn't work, then can follow it by a hiki-waza from tsubazeriai.
• Posture after debana-kote need to remain well.
• Harai needs to be sharp. and start the motion not too early. Ideally just after propelling with the left leg. (need to experiment)
  
• Advice from Stephan: when applying seme, keep the centre and make contact with the opponent's shinai.
  

Yasuko and Kuroda-san (see Prague seminar) both have written me very nice emails. I'm glad to have kept the friendships!

Feinting

Today we warmed up with some games. Girls and boys were divided into two teams, and we had to pick up a ball from one end of the hall and put it down at the other end, where the person had to rope-jump 10 times and take the ball back. The girls acually did better on this!

After the suburi, we practise doh. My left forearm was still hurting at this time, and I really did feel the pain.

One noteable thing from the kihon-geiko was that we practised Tsuki, the first time since I wore the bogu. We practised first from distance Chikma, then from Issoku-itto-no-maai. At Chikma I hit on target if done slowly, but missed completely at issoku.

A few notes from the Jigeiko:

• Tried seme with more waza (techniques): harai, feinting, kaeshi.
• Landed a doh on Lillie, when she raised her shinai to block.
  
• Landed a couple of popping kote on Misha, by feinting men first. I repeated doing this technique until he realised that it wasn't a good idea, so he stopped raising his arms like that. I already anticipated this change, so I immediately went for his men after feinting and seeing that his posture was broken. But unfortunately I missed the target. Need to improve on accuracy.
• I also noticed that when feinting, it's the best the keep the kensen within the body of the opponent, so that it wouldn't take long to strike on target.
• Hiki-men improved slightly.
  

Turn, turn, and turn

We had a training yesterday with a somewhat different feel. First we started with rope-skipping to warm up, which I haven't done for more than ten years.. But I was thinking of doing it at home anyways. In fact, in a few minutes I 'll go and buy it. It's especially good to strenthen the muscles on the legs and the calfs at home since there's usually limited space for doing the footwork.

Practising do was essential and inevitable - 20 do-strike (left and right) standing, another 20 with one step forwards while striking left-do and backwards while right do-strike, 20 kaeshi-do, and 30 do haya-suburi. I tried this time to hit on target firm and strong, and it was better than the last time. However, trying to do the same with kaeshi-do was more difficult. I tried to keep the blocking and strike on the same beat. A good drill, but still unnatural to me. However, I think I would improve the fluency a lot with two or three more times of this exercise.

Footwork. With chudan no kamae we practised moving forwards and backwards across the hall. One variation was moving backwards with zanshin (shinai over the forehead), and when Stephan whistled, we have to strike men. Again a good drill!


After a few rounds of kirikaeshi, we did the following combo:

• (1) men-strike, and pass the opponent; (2) immediately hiki-men (3) from issoko-itto-no-maai stike men immediately. This was essentially the application of the drills we did earlier.
  

Another exercise was that, the two would do the (1) and (2) from the above one after the other until the end of the hall and back.

Then kakari-geiko and more kirikaeshi.

Good:

• kirikaeshi is more natural now.
• Do-strike is stronger.
  

To be improved:

• Kaeshi-do. Practise blocking and striking on the same beat.
  
• After turning around there was a long halt, and I couldn't strike immediately. Must be something to do with how I position myself and my stance.
• Push the hip forwards, during kakari-geiko or similar all-out practise. It's hard to do it fast with perfect posture, but one should always try.
• Becareful of the feet not being parallel to each other.

This week the muscle on the inner-side of my left forearm has been hurting, after I started to use mainly the left hand and wrist to strike (since the training at the beginning of this month) While I think I'm accustomed to use my left hand now, I hope the pain will go away soon.