Waikato Kendo Club

  Saturday 3rd September 2022 Keiko Reflection - Janet Today we had another fruitful keiko led by Marleen Sensei. Again started off with double Shinai warm up & Suburi which not only helped to condition our body & muscles to adapt to the increased weight but also made us more aware of using our left hand, arm & shoulder more dominantly & more aware of using our finger grips more precisely to achieve proper Tenouchi. We increased double Shinai Haya-Suburi to x30. For some Kyu grades like myself it’s still a tough challenge to keep up with everyone else & made our arms feel very heavy.  Sam Sensei reminded us that in order to perform effective & efficient Haya-Suburi, it’s extremely important for the body & arm to not be too tense for the entire time but rather we need to semi-relax some muscles during the Shinai swinging motion to allow the natural weight of the Shinai to help us to swing downwards & forwards then only tense up the muscles when near end o

Wednesday 31st August 2022 Keiko Reflection - Janet Tonight’s keiko was once again led by our wonderful Marleen Sensei.  We began with double Shinai warm up drills, suburis & 30 Haya-Suburis followed by single Shinai 30 Haya-Suburis. Tonight’s Kihon & Uchikomi-geiko menu: Kirikaeshi x3 Big Men x3 Big Men 10 times rensoku continuous x3 Big Kote x3 Big Kote 10 times rensoku continuous x3 Big Dō x3 Big/ Small (for higher grades) Kote-Men x3 Followed by Ji-geiko then Kakari-geiko with Sam sensei.         Tonight’s focus was: 1. To better feel & use our fingers underneath the Kote correctly to continue working on getting proper Tenouchi during each strikes.  2. Concentrate on using our Shoulders more to raise the Shinai overhead & take care not to use too much right hand to manipulate the Shinai movements as this would produce unintended & unwanted forces & reduce accuracy. 3. In order to reduce time lag & to speed up strikes, try to start pull down left shoulder