Waikato Kendo Club

Kendo Fundamentals: Mastering the Men Strike and the Art of Receiving In Kendo, the Men strike is more than just a basic move; it is a fundamental pillar of practice that requires precision from both the person striking ( Shite ) and the person receiving ( Motodachi ). Proper form is not only about effectiveness but also about ensuring the safety of your partner . The Receiver’s Responsibility: Safety and Posture When you are acting as Motodachi , your role is crucial for a successful practice session. Here are the key points to remember: Protect the "Cross Path": Ensure you receive the strike on the "cross path" of the Men protector. Keep Your Chin Down: Maintaining a tucked-in chin is essential for proper alignment. Prioritise Eye Safety: A critical safety rule is to avoid looking through the metal bars directly in front of your eyes . If a Shinai (bamboo sword) happens to crack upon impact, splinters can pass through those specific bars and cause se...

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Keiko Reflection by Janet Tonight’s Keiko is a timely reminder of the importance of training in Ji-ri-ichi (事理一致, practice & theory combined into one). While we are constantly receiving knowledge & theory passively from Senseis, one must also be actively applying the theories learnt into action to make it their own through repeated practice.  We must also be proactive in our own learning by actively seeking more knowledge such as observing other kendokas keiko ( mitori-geiko ), reading books, asking questions when in doubt, & constantly reflect & ask ourselves why do we do this? what are we doing wrongly or correctly? This way we can better understand our bodies, the mechanics of each movements & the purpose behind each individual action, therefore maximise our learning outcome by improving productivity & quality of our practice or Keiko.  Remember Kendo is a martial art that descended from Japanese swordsmanship or Kenjutsu, s...

Wednesday 12th April 2023 Keiko Reflection by Janet Following several weeks of absence from Keiko while travelling overseas, it was great to return to keiko tonight. Thank you to both sensei, senpais & everyone who turned up for a great Keiko 🙏🙏🙏 I could tell my body had lost some muscle tone as well as muscle memory, which will need more time & practice to regain & re-adjust. As always Sam & Marleen sensei have thoughtfully adjusted the Keiko menu to suit the needs of every member that are present in order to accomodate every skill level from those who just started kendo to those that had a break from kendo as well as the senior Dan grades to maximise the learning outcome for everyone.  It was designed to help us systematically learn & rebuild our fundamental Kihon skills (such as footwork Suriashi, Fumikomi, Tenouchi, Big & Small Men, Kote Taiatari, Kiai) as well as reconditioning our bodies to minimise injuries, before progressively introduce more in-d...

  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 n...

Saturday 27th August 2022 Keiko Reflection - Janet For the past few weeks as well as during todays Keiko, Marleen sensei’s plan was to help us develop better body strength (in the core, arm & shoulder muscles) through double Shinai warm up drills & Suburis, in particular, by gradually increasing the amount of Haya-Suburis to challenge & condition our bodies to become stronger. Even though it’s still rather difficult for me to keep up with everyone else’s pace, as my upper body strength is still weak, but I can definitely feel myself improving little-by-little each week, with my body feeling less sore afterwards, so that’s definitely something to be happy about❤️ Main focus for todays Keiko was Kihon (basics), which is the basics or foundation of kendo. It includes sets of kendo technique drills such as Men, Kote, Dō, and Kirikaeshi which gets repeated during almost every keiko. While it may sounds repetitive, but it’s way more complicated with many things to consider espe...

Wisdom is never an instruction, but a guide for your journey. Wednesday 6th July 2022 Keiko Reflection - Janet Tonight’s training focus was on: 1. Kihon footwork : both forwards & backwards & swiftly follow up with left foot. 2. Small Men : Remember the striking force on contact with target should be exactly the same as when doing Big-Men, however, we do not need to rotate our shoulders fully over the head, but rather only need to rotate the shoulders to about shoulder height then extend the left arm & wrist & perform Tenouchi. 3. Hiki Waza ( Hiki-Men, Hiki-Dō ): these are techniques made while stepping backwards usually from Tsubazeriai position & are executed with smaller shoulder rotations like Small Men or Dō while the body’s centre of gravity is going backwards on to the left foot first before performing Fumikomi with the right foot at same time as the Shinai strikes the target. It is crucial for Kyu grades to start getting use to backwards foot work & pra...

2022-05-28 Saturday  Confidence comes from discipline and training. Saturday Keiko reflection for beginners & Kyu grades - Janet During Saturdays keiko, sensei emphasised the importance of learning Kihon basics for strikes in the following order : 1. To go Big (such as big Men & Kote, to ensure we rotate our shoulders fully and correctly during each strike) 2. To go Strong (using predominantly the left arm to generate enough power) 3. To go Fast (connect all the movements from shoulder rotation to extending elbow and wrist into one: Ichibyoshi ) 4. To go Light & small (such as small Men & Kote, & have more control of the strikes using correct Tenouchi to retain power while making it crispy & not heavy) Another emphasis today was on making the correct Kote strikes in particular the Harai Kote waza. In Harai & Suriage waza, we sweep or deflect the opponents Shinai off the centre with our Shinai to make an opening before striking. But remember we must k...

  2022-05-25 Wednesday Focusing on Tenouchi tonight both Suburi and Uchikomi. 大強速軽 - Dai_kyō_soku_kei - Large_Strong_Fast_Light Wednesday keiko reflection for beginners & Kyu grades - by Janet Tonight’s keiko emphasis was about getting the correct grip on completing a strike called “ Tenouchi ” or literally “inside of the hand” in order to achieve a good & crispy strike. During Kamae, we need to semi-relax our hands around the Shinai handle almost feel like we are holding a baby bird or an egg within palm of hands without squeezing it too hard to break it.  Then concentrate mostly on the left side we raise the Shinai by raising the shoulders until the Shinai tip is at 45 degrees over head & we can just see the opponent from beneath the handle.  Execute the strike by concentrating on the left, rotate & drop down the shoulder swiftly using gravity & the natural weight of the whole left arm & Shinai combined until our elbow is just below the level of ...

2022-05-14 Saturday keiko reflection by Janet Kendo’s purpose in a nutshell is to train your body & mind, & to keep improving oneself to become a better person. So always come to keiko (training) with a purpose in mind by setting a goal or a specific area you would like to work & improve on. This will make each keiko more effective and you will find it more fulfilling. For Kyu grades, we need to focus on kihon (basics) particularly set practices like Kirikaeshi & Go-hon waza (men, kote, do, kote-men, kote-do) by doing it correctly to achieve Ki-Ken-Tai-Itchi. During Shido- (teaching) or Uchikomi-geiko with sensei or senpai, try focus on delivering each strike with Ki-Ken-Tai-Itchi . Even if you missed or didn’t successfully land a valid strike, continue your momentum by keep going forward & keep your Zanshin to show your determination & quickly get back into kamae to try again. We need to learn to feel the correct distance, Issoku Itto no maai for ourselves to ...

A note after Chou sensei's visit on 17 January 2006 Sunday 29 January 2006 Dear All, I feel sorry to inform you that Chou sensei did not feel well after the six days intensive tour in the South Island and has changed the flight to today (30 January). He said the view in South Island is very beautiful but it was too long for him to stay in the car. And, don't worry, he still has good health. There are 4 Japanese sensei (one 8th Dan and three 7th Dan) are waiting for his return to visit Taiwan. He apologies that he need to go back to Taiwan ealier than his original plan. I just visited him saying Good-Bye and presented the Birthday card ( 84 years old ) and a small gift to him. He is pleased by the card you signed for him. He hopes that I can pass his appreciation to you. The sensei emphasised few things to me and I would like to share them with you. 1. As an instructor, I should always pay attention on the safety and healthy issues . For example, I should ask...

Today's important message from Senpai during training (13/02/2016): We mainly did kihon waza today and the main focus is footwork. The better we can utilised the footwork we practised during conditioning session, the faster we can to adjust to all kinds of scenarios during Keiko/Shiai. Big, normal and small okuri -ashi are foremost important for executing a good seme and thus create a good distance to strike the target for a valid point during shiai . To demonstrate this, we were pra ctising to hit the shinai that was held up with uneven distance and different height by motodatchi along the straight line continuously. A valid strike means that kakarite have to hit the target by the monouchi of their shinai so kakarite will need to seme with big okuri-ashi or a few normal okuri-ashi rapidly before hitting if the distance between target is too far. If the target is too close, kakarite will need seme with a small okuri-ashi and sometime kakarite will have to hit straight awa...

"Please do the kirikaeshi with Dai-Kyo-Soku-Kei (dynamic-strong-fast-light)". ~ Eiga sensei. #1 [After the kirikaeshi demonstration by Teramoto-sensei] (Eiga-sensei:) That was wonderful kirikaeshi, wasn't it? First of all, what was wonderful about that was the stance. As Teramoto-sensei told at the suburi practice that you don't move the axis of your body. Although the opponent comes straight forward, the stance is that you can move any directions. #2 Next, that was kiai! You still say, "ya… ," and "men… ." (He shows,) "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Meeeeeeeeeeeeeen!!!" Show your feelings with this first strike of men. Then, because the breath should be one time, it's not that you were doing like, "men, men, men…, " but "MeeeeeenMeeeeenMeeeeeen!!!" The breath connects. #3 And finally, that was the point of the strike . There are some people still hitting the upper side of the sinai, ye...

作道正夫 範士八段, Osaka Physical Education University, Kyuto Taikai * * * Regarding our training Goal, having the correct posture is the first step! Photo scanned from Kendo Nippon Magazine

After Tatsuya's visit, Marleen has asked me write someting about Kirikaeshi (切り返し). Instead of starting from scratch, I used the article in Wikipedia (only add some colours or break sections to emphasis some points) and we can discuss it from here: Kirikaeshi From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Kirikaeshi (切り返し) is a kendo exercise, combining the practice of attacking and receiving strikes and is meant to develop physical strength, spirit, and vigor. It is a drill done with a partner that involves a succession of strikes to the head (men, in Japanese). Kirikaeshi was established as a basic exercise around the end of the Meiji era (1868-1912). The exercise typically begins with a strike to the center of the head, followed by a series of alternating strikes to the left and right sides of the head (yokomen). Though the exact method of kirikaeshi can vary among dojo , the most common scheme involves a single strike to the center of the head, followed by four lateral stri...