Kendo Klub Duties

Dojo leaders helping their students prepare for the Cleveland Kendo Tournament

Through my final days of attending Purdue six years ago (heck, even WAY before then, in a sense), I knew that I wanted to move to a location that had Kendo available (my potential locations were the Patuxent River Naval Base in Maryland and Cincinnati, OH).  In the back of my mind, I knew that I wanted to take on some sort of a leadership position with whatever club I would belong to, but I felt that it would be a few years before I would be able to do something like that.  When I think about it, part of it had something to do with me not really having the confidence to take the leadership roles in anything in my childhood.  The other part had to do with a sort of naivete when it comes to what is really necessary to be a good leader in the Kendo world.  My expectation was that I would be required to have X rank or X amount of experience to be able to contribute anything meaningful to the day to day running of local Kendo organizations.  Regardless of what I was thinking at the time, I quickly found out that what I believed, and what reality is, are two completely different things.

Not long after I moved to Cincinnati, I became a member of the University of Cincinnati Kendo Club (UCKC(.  Since I had the extra time on my hands, the desire to get better, and had more relative experience than most of my peers at the time, I ended up leading the practices at that club, and the nearby Northern Kentucky Kendo Club (NKKC), of which I was also a frequent attendee.  Little did I know that, from there, my responsibilities would only increase.  Due to the sudden absence of the secretary of the East Central United States Kendo Federation (ECUSKF), I ended up becoming the new secretary--well, more like drafted :).  After that, I started running the warm-ups for the Miami Valley Kendo Club and then became an officer for the promotion exams that are given semi-annually.

Of course, I had no problem with taking on these responsibilities.  Being a single person in my 20s with a 9-5, Monday through Friday job, I had the extra time on my hands to take on these additional roles.  I also like to be able to help out whenever and wherever I'm able to.  In the end, I think being responsible for these things has turned out to be quite beneficial to me.  I've learned some things about what it takes to be a leader in various aspects in my life, and I've learned a lot about what it takes to bring the Kendo that people know, expect and love.  It's certainly a lot of work, but I'm glad to be a part of it.  What I didn't know was that, years down the line, I would be given a responsibility that I really would never expect.

A few months ago, the previous leader of the Northern Kentucky Kendo Club told me that he has been too busy in recent months to effectively run the club and was seeing if anyone was willing to take over for him.  The other person in the club wasn't able to do it so, instead of just letting the club die off, I decided that I would take over as the leader.  Little did anyone know that he would eventually get a new job in another location in the US.  On top of the responsibilities that I have been given over the years, now I am running a Kendo club.  The good news is that, due to my past experiences, I'm more familiar with how to run a club and I have some ideas on how to keep this particular club going.

One problem with NKKC is that the club is very small.  At the moment, there is only one person that's officially signed up and a paying member of the club.  The first thing I need to do is try to increase the visibility of the club.  There are some web pages and a Facebook group I can take advantage of and some avenues of advertisement at the moment, but I still need to get everything set up.  Overall, the goal is to try to make the club more self-sustaining and be able to pass off the responsibilities to those that are willing and, at best, take a more advisory role in how the club is run.  There are some other things that I know is getting in my way, but that's better left for a different, and more controversial, article.

I'm also involved with Muso Shinden Ryu Iaido which, due to the previous leader moving, I am the only member practicing.  On top of the problems with bringing in more Kendo people, the nature of Iaido, and the fact that I'm the only person doing it, makes it a difficult thing to sell to the masses.  The good news is that there are people that are currently practicing Kendo in the area that's interested.  The problem is finding the time and place to be able to get a group going and perhaps have Iaido knowledge grow that way.

In the end, I'm very grateful to have the opportunities to do what I have been able to do thus far.  I've been able to learn a lot about what I am capable of and I've been very fortunate to have the ability to allow my ideas to be heard, as meek as I have been in the past.  With all of this, I think one of the most important lessons of my adult life has been imparted on me.  There are some people that really work hard to get into leadership positions in life, and others that are comfortable just hiding in the background.  Whatever the case,  you could never know when those leadership responsibilities will be thrown at you and there's nothing that can be done other than dealing with it in the best way possible.

The More You Know

The Iaido practice last Wednesday night was another lonely one.  Jim had some other commitments, so he wasn’t able to make it to practice.  There are only two people that attend Iaido practice on Wednesday nights, this is actually quite a common occurrence (man, we should really get more people!).

I do admit that it has been about two weeks since I did anything Iaido related, other than watching Youtube videos.  I injured my left leg and foot during Kendo practice by using it harder than I really should have.  I think all I need to do is get massages more often on my leg to loosen up my muscles since I feel a lot of knots that tie up quite a few things.  Then, since Thanksgiving was last week, I had my parents over so I was using my time entertaining them.

It’s great to have someone more experienced to help fix various problems with my kata performance, but it’s just as nice to be able to take some time to have some uninterrupted time to work on some personal issues that I want to work on.  Lately, I’ve been performing kata two ways.  First, I would just work on the technical stuff, such as making sure my hasuji was good and performing enough saya-biki.  After doing that a few times, I would switch to performing the kata with more mental feeling behind the movements to not only apply the technical stuff to the kata, but to put more feeling behind each individual movement.  I did a mix of Seitei and Shoden kata with little rhyme or reason for performing each one.

The great thing about an art like Iaido is that the overall basic techniques are the same, but just applied differently.  For instance, doing nukitsuke for “mae” is performed differently than the nukitsuke for “San-po Giri,” but the overall concepts of saya-biki, hasuji (blade angle), and body posture are the same.  This allows me to approach the same technique from different angles and better understand the backgrounds behind each technique.

This makes me think about a post I recently read on the Budo Bum blog.  In this particular post, the author was talking about his thoughts on being able to do many techniques and being able to do a few techniques well.  There is a certain allure to being able to move on to the next step, which is commonly learning about the newest technique but, after doing a Judo for a while (or even just growing older), he started to appreciate the inner workings of the techniques he does know.  There’s a lot more to the physical aspects like angles, heights and necessary force, but adding the mental aspects to everything literally adds a whole new world to what he knew.  At that point, he began to take more value in learning more about the things he already knew than just learning more techniques on top of what he already knows.

I consider myself to be mostly in the category of being enamored by being taught the latest Iaido kata.  It could be easy to just say that it’s due to my age and/or experience level, but I think it runs a little deeper than that.  Learning a new technique seems to be the easiest way to feel that I’m progressing in Iaido.  When I’m introduced to a new kata, I feel like Jim has said that I performed the previous technique well enough to move on to the next kata.  With that thought in mind, I can really see why people advertise and emphasize the amount of techniques one can learn in their marital art style and how it can be beneficial to attendance and retention rates.  It’s easy to sell something that’s so tangible and easily understandable to the public at large.  I could go deeper into this subject, but it’s not really the point of this post, and I feel that I should do more research and introspection on the subject to even begin to understand what I want to say.

At the same time, I can understand the value that I get from being able to perform the stuff I already know better than I did before class started.  The source of this sentiment is likely from the fact that I also do Kendo, have been doing Kendo for five years longer than I have done Iaido, and that simply, Kendo has fewer techniques, so I’ve been forced to be able to better my performance of the few techniques that are available in physical and mental ways.  I feel like that this is where the real magic of martial arts comes from.  It’s one thing to say that I am X-rank, so that means that I know #-techniques, but it’s another thing to say that I was able to learn more about Seitei “mae” and be able to examine and perform the kata better than when I walked into the dojo.  Since Iaido is mostly done with imaginary opponents, that measure for me is feeling more comfortable with each technique I do and be able to perform it more effortlessly than before.  There are actually sets of kenjustu kata, but I don’t really know much about those, but I certainly would love to know more about them!

Again, it could be age, or it could be my Iaido experience level, but I feel like I have a lot of years left before I really start to not care about the number of techniques I know.  Maybe it’s simply when I learn all of the kata available in Muso Shinden Ryu, or it could be after I reach a certain age or experience level to where I feel overwhelmed with improving on what I already know before I start to shift my thinking.  Maybe my sentiments will change years in the future after I get older and learn more about Iaido, but I feel like I’m within the range of having a decent enough thought process to these martial arts I’m doing.

2012: A Year In Review

Happy New Year everyone!  Or, as they say in Japan, 開けましておめでとうございます皆さん！(Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu minna san!).  I thought that I would take some time to think about how my Kendo and Iaido training has gone this year.  Unfortunately, I am dealing with the flu right now.  But hey, the good news is that I get at least an extra day off from work!

The first big thing that happened with Kendo last year was that I got to organize the Spring and Fall promotion exams for the ECUSKF.  Since I was new to all of this, there were several mistakes that were made along the line for both of the exams, but I’m taking each mistake as a lesson for next time to make sure that everything runs smoother.  Actually, I’m in the throes of planning the next Spring exam as we speak.  Since the planning for the exam is starting earlier, I hope that everything goes much smoother than last time, when there was only a month to plan everything and get the application forms out.

The second big achievement last year was that I got my 3rd Dan after my 3rd attempt!  Unlike the first two times, I felt like I was in total control over my technique to make sure that each strike was clean and on target.  There was that sense of calm after finishing my bouts of jigeiko as opposed to the sense of dread and panic about my performance.  Now I get to spend the next three years improving myself for my 4th Dan test.

For now, I’ve been really working on my seme.  Of course, it’s much easier said than done because that’s when sparring becomes less about what you can do to the other person and more about what you can make the other person do.  This involves pressuring the opponent to give up their center for me to capitalize on either by flinching, or making them attack.  And then, it’s not enough to force them to attack you, but you must dictate where you want them to attack so you can counter-attack.  The good news is that, based on the comments that were given to me last Saturday, I’m well on my way to doing just that.  I just need to work on it more to see how I can make it part of my Kendo.

As for Iaido, I really don’t have too much to report on that.  I regularly go to practice and get corrected on things, but there really hasn’t been any big events that I attended last year.  The class size has remained small as it always has been, which has it’s good and bad points.  On one hand, I get ALL of the personal attention I could ever want since it’s mostly me and my sensei about 98% of the time.  On the other hand, having a larger group of people to practice with adds to the spirit of practice and makes things a little less lonely.  I sometimes do wonder how Iaido could be marketed to increase numbers.  Initial thoughts tell me that it’s nearly impossible to find such techniques (or we would have had larger classes a long time ago)

For the coming year, I’ll just continue practicing and improving on my technique.  On top of that, I need to work on putting some emphasis and meaning behind the strikes, which involves investigating what I am doing in the kata and thinking about the context of the situation at hand and how I would dispatch the enemy.  The good news is that, since most of it is left up to interpretation, there really isn’t a wrong answer to this.  But it does lead to some healthy discussions to how we feel each kata should be performed.  I would like to try and test again, but with travel expenses and room and board, it gets quite expensive to go across the country to get another kyu rank.  We’ll see, but I might have to sit out again and try to plan for next year or something.

A lot has gone in in the martial arts world for me last year.  While it was great and all, I think I will appreciate this relative break from the excitement.  There are the usual tournaments and practices, but I don’t have to worry about taking the promotion exam and I am starting to settle into my role as promotion exam organizer.  I could try to test again for Iaido sometime this year, but with travel being all expensive and me wanting to concentrate on the direction of my finances, it might be a little difficult to travel across the country to get another kyu rank.  Nothing is really set in stone, so anything can change.  There is the AUSKF nationals next year that I might try for, but all I need to do to prepare for that is train my mind and body like I always have and hope for the best.

Well, Happy New Year folks and good luck with whatever goals you have set for yourself!

Kendo Ain’t Easy

Too bad I actually fail that men…

A friend of mine posted an article on Facebook titled, “5 Little-Known Secrets to Utterly Successful Karate-ka” which briefly talks about some of the things that some of the most successful Karate-ka go through to reach whatever level of success they want to achieve.  I think that the article itself touches on some very good points about what it takes to be the best in Karate.  What I got from it was that the great Karate-ka are willing to examine themselves and not too prideful to go back to the basics to improve on the advanced techniques and not rely on natural talent.  Quite naturally, I applied all of this to Kendo and even thought about how I approach what I feel is success in Kendo.

One thing that I can definitely understand is that, whatever we are seeking, we would love to find that small piece of information, that familiar grouping of words, that magically gives us all of the answers.  Of course, we all quickly realize that life just doesn’t' work that way.  I am most certainly guilty of that myself.  In the search of improving my quality of life, I would hope that there is an easy way to achieve my goals, despite that never really happening.  In terms of Kendo, I really want to be able to apply very effective seme and take advantage of those results.  I read books, read websites, watched videos and seeked advice from fellow Kendo-ka in the hopes that I would find that deus-ex-machina.  In the end, I just better understood what seme means, but it wasn’t information to directly apply to my everyday practice to quickly apply said information.Well, I most certainly got more acquainted with what seme is, but I was no closer to finding the answer to my question of HOW I should perform it.  At the same time, I knew that, in the back of my mind, that I would not be able to find that answer just by asking a few questions, watching a few videos and reading a few books.  In order to be more effective in seme, I need to put in years of trial and error to see what works and what doesn’t for my style of Kendo.  I can listen to and employ various forms of advice, but I would still need to see how that works and, if it does, spend lots of time working on it to even feel like its working.

As much as I want to improve on my applications of seme, I still need to be able to employ the basics well enough to be effective in it.  Unfortunately, it does involve lots of work with things as simple as working on my kamae.  Everything from the footwork to where most of our strength comes from provides that foundation that allows us to effectively employ those advanced waza that we love so much.  Even after I have done Kendo for 50 years, I can’t forget about the things that got me to where I will be at that point.  In our minds, we want to do all the fun stuff like harai-waza, suriage-waza, or even hiki-waza, but we can’t forget about doing simple things like holding a shinai to perform them correctly.

I did mention earlier that my quest for finding out how I can better employ stuff like seme only resulted in me finding out more about what seme is.  Regardless of that, we should be willing to search for the information that we seek.  It could be through books, videos or talking to sensei and sempai, but there is the difficult task of finding out more about what we are trying to do.  One thing that really helps is that, the people that we are getting advice from are either currently dealing with the struggle, or has at least learned how to deal with it.  Getting advice from people who have “been there” makes the advice seem more useful.  However, despite getting that information, the next thing is to be able to use the information in real-world applications.

I mentioned earlier that my quest for information about seme didn’t really answer any of my questions about how to perform seme well.  That doesn’t mean that my search was fruitless.  I was able to learn more information about what it is.  Another point that was brought up in the article is that we must be willing to seek out information and learn from the best.  Getting information from those that have gone through similar struggles can help get a grasp on what’s going one.

The most important thing that I got from the article is that we must really love what we are doing.  It seems obvious, but in the daily routine of our lives, it’s very simple to just go through the motions because it’s what we are used to.  However, if progress is to be made, we must really be able to examine ourselves and find out what’s REALLY important in our lives.  If Kendo is one of them, we must be able to learn from our victories and defeats and work through those moments that are so frustrating that we just want to quit (I’ll admit that I had that feeling once a few years back).  Working on Kendo can be very draining, painful and exhausting, but we must WANT to work through the troubles.

One very important fact is that, in the end, success is relative.  Everyone has their own opinions on what the goals of Kendo should be.  The most important thing is that we must be willing to do whatever we can to reach whatever goal we set out to achieve, whether it’s to get that next rank, get a gold medal at a tournament or just hit men better than you did last week.  One thing that I think we all can agree on is that, whatever path we choose, there really is no easy route to reach our destination.

Dear Diary…

Bleh, yet again, there is yet another long time span since I made my last entry.  Things were getting a little busy around March due to events happening at work and balancing the responsibility of setting up the promotion exam for Kendo in the ECUSKF.  After that, I’ll admit that some laziness and distraction came up since I’m involved with other things in life that makes me wish that there was more time in a day to accomplish stuff.  Ah well.  Hopefully I can be more consistent with posting, as long as I have enough stuff to write about.

A few things have happened since I last posted.  Unfortunately, I failed my 3rd Dan exam when I went up to Cleveland.  I wasn’t able to get any advice since, by time they posted the results, we already started the Iaido seminar and just about everyone had already left by that point.  All I can do is continue practicing until the next round of exams and try again.  To compound that, my drive back was okay until the last five miles or so when heavy rain and hail started to fall to the point where I couldn’t see more than 10 feet in front of me.  Then there was the sprained ankle that magically appeared the next day, which still baffles me how that happened.  However, most of that was trumped by the fact that the UC team got 3rd place at the tournament.  We were able to defeat the other teams until we had to fight against the Canadian team.  The results really helped boost our spirits to continue practicing, improving and seeing the fruits of our labor.  Koizumi-sensei from Miami Valley Kendo Club was nice enough to post a video with just my matches in it, so you can take a look below at the team matches we had.

Video of my team tournament performance. Now, if only I can feel this good during the individuals, then I’d be all set.

I’ve had some ideas on what to type about next, but it was just a matter of actually posting.  At first, I wanted to talk about the last WKC in Italy, but I felt that, by time I would post it, most of what I wanted to say has already been said ad nauseum so I didn’t think that I had much value to put into it.  It doesn’t help that I’ve never been involved with something of that order of magnitude, nor was I even there so that was an additional strike against it.  What I did settle on though, was the concept of having a budo diary of sorts and talk about what it means to me.

When I first started this blog, I thought about making this a diary of sorts.  I guess I can say that it kind of is, but not in the sense of telling everyone how my last practice went.  I could very well do something like this, but I felt that I could provide more to the internet budo world than that so I finally settled on just talking about how I feel about certain concepts that I encounter through my practices.  Also, I don’t think I could get as personal on the internet than I can with written pages in a book where I can air my frustrations that I might not want to discuss nor do I want to bore people with the laundry list of things I did with little explanation to what they all mean.

I have considered, and tried, making a written version of the diary so that I can put my personal thoughts down on paper.  I know I really want to do something like that, but I don’t know if it’s something to do with being too lazy to keep it up, or if it’s something to do with the format of what I want to talk about.  My thoughts in the past tended to be very boring, only consisting of “we did X, Y and Z during practice and I thought I did well, or bad, performing those,” without any further reflection beyond that.  If what I’m writing is boring, then how can I really keep it up.

A few months ago, I was talking to a Kendo bud of mine and the subject of Kendo diaries came up.  He was talking about how he really goes into his feelings of the recent practice, down to if he agrees or disagrees with the lesson for the day.  It lit the light bulb in my head, giving me some additional ideas to make writing these entries a bit more fulfilling.  Instead of doing what I have done in the past, I really need to dig deep into myself to articulate my feelings on my practices.  And since it’s not really intended for others to see, I can get as personal as I feel I need to be in order to really reflect on how I feel about things.

Whether it’s online, on paper, or just in our heads, anyone that has done martial arts for even a little while notices the benefits of reflecting on practices.  On the surface, it seems like that practice begins and ends in the dojo and just attending practice a lot is sufficient to improve.  However, I think that the thoughts that are necessary outside of practice makes martial arts seem like one of those full-time jobs that people really don’t see until they are knee deep in it.  Recently, the things that I have been trying to understand go way beyond just mechanically doing techniques right.  Concepts like seme has popped up quite a bit in recent months that can’t be improved upon just by going to the dojo every day.  I really need to examine what needs to be done for me to understand it in the context of my current ability and understanding of Kendo.  You know what?  Maybe I’ll try again at one of these diary things.  There’s really nothing to lose, right?

Not Thinkin' About It

This has sure been an interesting couple of months.  I've been dealing with quite a bit of stress lately to the point where it has cut into my Kendo and Iaido practice schedule a bit.  This actually wouldn't be entirely bad if it wasn't for the fact that said stress affected my health for a few weeks.  In short, I had the typical cold symptoms that improved, then worsened after yet another hard day at work.  The good news is that I've recovered now after actually putting my health before my occupation (go figure!).  I've also been exercising my new duties as the ECUSKF Officer of Promotions as we set up the next promotion test for early next month.  It hasn't really been a source of stress, but I'm sure understanding what people have to go through to set these things up.  I've had a few hiccups along the way, but I can take the lessons I've learned now and apply them for the next round of exams for sometime in November or December.

Not too long ago, I was watching some episodes of Transformers that I have been recording on my DVR as of late, since The Hub started to finally air season 3.  There was one episode in particular that caught my attention due to a short Kendo scene in it (the scene below is about 15 seconds or so).



The clip above comes from the episode titled, "The Burden Hardest To Bear."  In this particular episode, Rodimus Prime lets the stress coming from his new found leadership position get the best of him and runs off. Later in the episode, he (now Hot Rod again after losing the Matrix) watches a "Kendo" class and ends up getting a very valuable lesson.  More details on that particular scene can be found in the clip below, which is about 2 minutes.



From the above clip, the quote that I took notice to was, "You should not expect to win, you should not expect to lose....expect nothing...One can not think of victory without considering it's opposite...and thinking of defeat distracts the mind from what must be done in order to win."  The subject matter contained in this scene is something that we've all had to deal with in life at some point or another.  While it's much less dire than the situation presented in the clips above, and even most aspects of our lives, it's something that we have to reconcile, and deal with, in our Kendo development.

After some thinking, I've applied the situation previously described with a term that most of us in the Kendo circles have at least heard of, which is mushin (無心).  According to the 2011 edition of the Japanese-English Dictionary of Kendo, is defined as the condition of the mind when it is not preoccupied with anything.  On its surface, it's a really simple concept to understand.  Through practice, we must get to the point where we're able to automatically deal with the situation at hand without the outside influences of extra thoughts, such as possibilities of success and failure with specific techniques or the whole match.  As we all know, it's much harder to actually perform.  I would also like to bring up the definition of a possibly lesser-known term, munen-musou (無念無想).  Munen-musou  is defined as  the mental condition of selflessness, free from worldly thoughts.  A mirror-like mental condition which reflects all phenomena.  The mind functions best when it is purely concentrated and undistracted, and the spirit is replete.  That particular term seems, to me, to further define the state of mind in which we need to approach the subject.  Much like how Hot Rod needed to clear his mind of the worries of success or defeat to win against the Decepticons, we must be able to do the same when faced with someone in front of us, or even when faced with no one while just doing suburi.

Now, I think it's important to contrast this from those situations of no thought that occur early in our Kendo careers where we just mindlessly flail about hitting whatever we feel like it.  The difference between that and the state of mind described above is that, in the beginning, while we aren't thinking, we don't have full control over our bodies.  It's like writing a computer program for your body, where you give it some conditional statements and commands and let it do its magic.  The program only works for the situations that the programmer can plan for, which is quite limited.  In the sense of Kendo, in the beginning, we only know how to execute a limited amount of techniques a certain way.  Through time, we must move beyond the computer programming operate in a way where we do what needs to be done without sacrificing any of the basics that got us to that point.  It seems like something that would be confusing to understand, but we all have certain activities that we have done for a long time, like turning on a TV or playing a video game.  At first, we're fumbling around with the buttons and commands.  After some time, we can pick up the controller and perform the tasks that needs to be done without thinking about it.

Of course, this is only my current thinking of what mushin is.  Through further experience, my interpretation could just mature a bit or completely change.  One thing that I do know for certain is that this is something that can only be done in time as we're faced with new experiences through promotion exams, tournaments and practicing with people we're not familiar with.  Unfortunately, unlike the physical applications of better footwork or more efficient strikes, it's not as simple as tweaking an angle here or applying less force there.  It's a state of being that seems like it might take some time without over-thinking the situation.  Trust me, I've tried only to end up being more frustrated than when I started.

Using clips from a cartoon series seems a little weird to me, and possibly to many people.  But as much as we bemoan the depiction of martial arts in various forms of media, they all do come from come kernels of truth.  From that, those aspects get peppered with gross exaggerations to make the shows more viewable or games more playable.  Even a show like Dragonball Z, which was made famous by the 30-minute bouts of screaming and bright flashing by muscle-bound dudes that only live to pummel each other to death, has some basic concepts of martial arts in there if you care to look hard enough.  I'm the kind of person that likes to find those gems from unconventional resources to hopefully understand life better, so I'll continue to do stuff like this when appropriate.

Well, until next time!

Year in Reflection And Looking Ahead

To open up the new year, we held our annual Hatsugeiko practice.  It’s an opportunity for all participants to start the year off on a high note to make the current year better than the last with a high-spirited practice amongst friends and families.  For us in the ECUSKF, that involves having a dinner the night before, and then make it to the practice spot so that we can start at 6 AM on New Years Day.  Afterwards, we have some food, like zoni, kimchi and other dishes that I can’t really identify (but tasted good) as well as the requisite alcoholic beverages (and water for those that don’t drink or are too young to do so).  I love going to these kinds of practices as it’s a surefire way to start off the year on a high note.  I get to hang out with my friends as we all battle through the initial sleepiness and grogginess of waking up so early, and it’s just a nice Kendo practice overall.
In addition to that, I like to do some personal reflection on the past year’s events and think about the year ahead.  For Kendo, it was surely a big year.  I was able to participate in the AUSKF Kendo National Tournament in Atlanta on the men’s team and attended a wonderful seminar in Seattle, whose purpose was to give the attendees ideas on how to build and maintain a Kendo club, no matter where you happen to be based.  Iaido was a little less exciting, but I did attend the Iaido national seminar and tournament, which is where I got my 3rd Kyu.  However, some recent developments makes this next year for Iaido much more promising, which I’ll get to shortly.
This year isn’t going to be chock full of events beyond the regular tournaments and seminars held every year, but I expect nothing less in terms of acquiring better knowledge about the martial arts I know and love.  For Kendo, I plan on taking my 3rd Dan exam in March.  I’ve been preparing for this for a long time now by improving whatever I can, so it’s just going to be up to the judges as to whether they feel it’s enough.  I was also recently put on the promotional exam committee for our federation so I will be responsible for planning, organizing and running the exams every year.  I’ve never planned events of this caliber before so I’m a little nervous, but I have a great support structure to help me out if I have any questions.  For Iaido, I would like to be able to go to another seminar and test again.  I don’t know about the events that are being planned this year, so I don’t know which ones I will be able to attend.  The biggest thing though is that I’ve been hearing about there being a large demand for Iaido in this area of the country.  For now, people are making do with the materials they have, but they would like to collaborate with our dojo, being the only official AUSKF Iaido dojo in the immediate area, to help build up interest in their areas.  It’s nice knowing that there’s a demand for Iaido, and I’d love to be able to see it grow and give people more opportunities to practice it.
While I’m not much of a fan of setting those new year’s resolutions, I do like to be able to think about what I want to do based on where I’ve already been headed and set some goals along the way.  First and foremost, I want to be able to pass my 3rd Dan exam.  The sooner I pass it, the sooner I can concentrate on other things .  I’ve also been gathering materials to try to make a good program to keep practices fresh and kata learning more fulfilling.  I got copies of the Japanese-English Kendo Dictionary and Kendo Kata:  Essence and Applications for Christmas, which should really help out.  Of course, I’d like to get better and Kendo and Iaido and blah, blah, blah, but why should I plan for that?  That tends to happen just by virtue of going to practice regularly.
Anyways, I wish all readers a successful 2012 in their budo practices and everything else in life.
あけましておめでとうございます、皆さん！(Happy New Year everyone!)

Mind Over Matter!

 

The past few months have turned out to be the most stressful that I’ve been under in recent memory.  I won’t go into the boring details, but the short of it is that tight deadlines, coupled with a tough project, hasn’t made things easy on me.  Heck, things got to the point where my heart would race as I approach the doors of the building in anticipation for what would go wrong.  However, things seemed to calm down a bit, so I’m able to sort out some things and catch up to some stuff that was on hiatus when I had little time for anything.

Other than the times where I had to stay extremely late, or if I had such a long day that I was just physically and mentally exhausted, I would still go to the Kendo and Iaido practices that I could.  Being able to go home and sleep for a few hours was somewhat decent, but it was even better when I had that form of healthy escapism from the stresses of the real world.

The thing is, this isn’t the first time in my life where I’ve encountered levels of stress that bleed over into other parts of my life.  Heck, to remain more Kendo related, I’ve heard situations from friends where stressful situations cause them to not be able to attend practice for a few days, weeks or even months.  In short, situations like this happen all the time and we all have to deal with them in our own special way.  One thing that I’m sure we all can agree on, is that being able to go to practice to break the monotony can really help in calming one’s nerves, even for a little while.

As much as I would like to be able to attend all practices, regardless of the situation, there are times where the stress can become too much to the point where the practice is unproductive to oneself, and those that you’re practicing with.  That’s something that we all know and have felt before, but it’s ultimately up to us to decide when we get to that point.

When we’re in practice, we have a responsibility to ourselves to make each practice as productive as we can make it for our own development.  However, one element that should also be considered is that, due to the cooperative nature of Kendo practice and development, we also should be able to make sure that we do our part to make the practice productive for others.  For instance, when doing kirikaeshi, the attacker needs to do what they can to hit from the right distance with the best technique that they are able to in order to improve their abilities.  But then, the receiver should also have a hand in making that happen by trying to keep that distance, deciding to block or not block and just simply having their head in the game.  If we’re at the point where it’s difficult to separate our outside lives to our Kendo lives in a way to facilitate that sort of practice, then it becomes a question as to whether or not we should attend practice, or better yet, decide how we must approach the day’s practice to still make it productive.

How we deal with situations like that is very much a matter of personal taste.  There are some that need some time to decompress on their own and then they come back after a little while once things are sorted out.  That is okay to do.  Then, there are some people that fight through it and somehow succeed in their own way through practice, and that’s okay too.  Personally, I think that it helps that I’m also teaching practices here in the area so I’m able to easily get my mind off of things due to more stuff occupying my mind.  Even if I’m not teaching practice, I would still do things like focusing on some sort of goal for that night or just taking myself into the culture and temporarily erase the crap from my life.  From the inside looking out, it seems to work out pretty well.  I haven’t heard any complaints so either I’m doing as well as I think I’m doing, or they’re just too afraid to tell me .

Through these last few months, I think I’ve learned a bit more about myself in hindsight.  It isn’t so much whether or not I feel I can attend practice as that’s a relatively easy decision to make.  It’s the fact that I can develop a coping mechanism that allows me to still attend practice, be productive to myself and others, and provide some sort of normalcy in my life.  In the end, I think that’s what’s important here.  When the chips are down, it’s nice to be able to grasp onto that one thing that’s consistent in your life, whether it’s family, friends, your favorite TV show…or even Kendo.

American Kendo Leadership Seminar

I know I’m pretty late with making a post about this, but better late than never, I guess.

Over the Labor Day weekend, I attended the American Kendo Leadership Seminar in Seattle, Washington, led by Jeff Marsten Sensei and Robert Stroud Sensei from the Pacific Northwest Kendo Federation.  The purpose of the seminar was to present materials and resources to build the leadership ranks of Kendo throughout the US.  Here is a quick rundown of some of the material covered:

• Tips on structuring Kendo classes to benefit the students and the instructors
• Advice on building and running a dojo
• Explaining the requirements of shinsa and shiai
• Learn how to deal with the Japanese cultural aspects of Kendo within the American mindset
• Provide a network of resources for future reference

For most of us, the trip was very expensive.  The seminar fee was actually very low, but when you factor in the plane tickets, hotel fees, rental cars and food, the prices added up very quickly.  Naturally, I had some concerns as to how much I would get out of the seminar since this is something unprecedented, as far as I know.

One thing that can become apparent when leading practices is that, once the initial awkwardness of telling people what to do for two hours per day, leading practices becomes very easy.  As long as you know how much time you have and a list of techniques you want people to perform during practice, it’s easy to make it through class after class.  However, there is another layer called effectiveness.  Anyone can lead people through practice by taking the previously mentioned situations into account.  But being able to convey the material in a way that everyone can learn from it is a totally different matter.  From dojo building, to shiai, to shinsa, there are many facets of Kendo that are available for all that want to practice it, and it’s up to the dojo leaders to know what goes on to be able to lead others through the process.  This seminar went over a lot of that information to serve as a jumping off point to be able to perform those tasks.

The overall tone of the seminar was very light-hearted but serious.  I had a lot of fun doing jigeiko against people from different regions of the country, and it provided a nice fresh look at my fighting style and how to steal some of their techniques for my own use later .  It wasn’t all business though because after practice, we went out to eat at a few places and attended a wonderful barbecue at Marsten Sensei’s house.  Each moment provided a chance for all of us to bond under the common goals to improve our own Kendo, the Kendo of the students, and Kendo in the US as well as provided us ways to network with each other for future needs.

The seminar has been over for almost a month now, and I’m still trying to compile the information I learned together, which is due to how much was shared, trying to find the best way to share the information, and partly my own laziness with getting things done as of late.  Whether or not I will be able to attend future events (I most certainly would love to provided I have the money and the time to do so), I hope that both Stroud and Marsten Sensei can continue providing the seminar for those that are interested.  If they do, then I can totally recommend anyone with even a remote interest to attend.  The trip itself was very expensive, but the information I received and the bonds that were formed made it worth more than the price of admission.

P.S.:  While none of the pictures are Kendo, or seminar related, I took the extra time I had after practice to take a few pictures around town.  Please feel free to take a look at them here.

2011 AUSKF National Tournament Thoughts

This past weekend, I participated in the US National Kendo Tournament in Atlanta, GA.  I might have elaborated on this in previous posts but, in short, it’s a Kendo tournament held once every three years in which each of the 15 regional federations in the United States send people to fight in various divisions (Youth, Senior, Men’s, Women’s Teams, etc.) on the national stage.  How you get on the team will vary from federation to federation, but the overall goal is the same.

Ever since I found out that I got one of the positions on the team back in April, I have been trying very hard to improve my skills.  Whether I am instructing a class or just learning, or if I am fighting against a more advanced person or a complete beginner, I was learning about myself and where I needed to go from each experience. 

Based on the how I felt about my performance at the time and what I saw on video, I thought that the hard work paid off.  I must thank everyone that helped me, whether they were doing it actively or passively, and regardless of relative experience.  While I didn’t score anything from any of my fights, it wasn’t an all-out domination as I was able to hold my own for an appreciable amount of time.  The odds were most certainly against me since the people that I happened to get paired with undoubtedly have more Kendo experience that I did.  Despite that, I did my best to shed my worries about that and just did what I could to perform the best I could in my capacity.

The main things that I was working on for these past few months lied in both the physical and mental realm.  On the physical side of things, I needed to work on my posture to be able to reduce my acceleration time when I wanted to do something.  The solution to this was to play around with my center of gravity to unstabalize myself so that there was little to no prep time when the moment came that I wanted to move.  Also, I needed to gain the center, and keep that center when I begin to do something.  The problem wasn’t so much that my tip would always be to the side.  The problem was that my tip would move up too early which can give an opponent the opportunity to take advantage of the distancing and any openings that occurred.  Unfortunately, it’s something that I’m still trying to work on until it becomes habit.  Mentally, I would say the issues lie on being affected by doubt in my own skills relative to the person I’m going against.  Whenever I want to do an attack, there would be doubt in my mind as to whether or not my attempts would work which would only serve to slow me down as my head wasn’t in the game.  The solution is to just not think about it.  But the more complicated solution is to create situations in which I don’t have to think about it.  Particularly, I need to do what I can to read the opponent to see whatever openings there might be.  If there aren’t any openings for me to see, then I can create them through manipulation of my shinai, posture and movement.  This is something that I have just only started to understand myself.  While I was able to put it to use to some extent during my fights at the tournament, I’ll need much more time to be able to use it more effectively based on my own skills and the skills of the opponent.

Despite the results of my own performance, I was able to walk away with some very valuable lessons.  The most important one was that the skill of those that I was fighting and the caliber of the tournament at hand had helped change my perceptions of those that I fight in tournaments and during normal practice.  The high skill of those that I was fighting, and my own performance during the tournament, makes the various situations that I have faced and will face not seem as dire as they used to.  Confidence issues such as this has always been a thorn at my side ever since I started to have to think about more things during jigeiko, so a lesson like that should really help me.

After tournaments and promotional exams, I tend to take some time to reflect on my past experiences and try to formulate a plan for how I want to proceed.  In most cases, I’m usually concrete in where I want to go and what I should do with whatever acquired skills I gain.  This time, however, I might know where I want to go, but how I want to achieve that goal has become much more complicated.  Usually, it’s enough to say that I want to improve my tournament performance and that improvement would be through getting faster or hitting harder.  While those sorts of sentiments remain true, the mental improvement that I feel is necessary throws a whole wrench into the thought process, which might require some meditation on my part to sort out to an acceptable level. 

The tournament has provided me with such a great experience.  While I participated in the nationals three years ago in the mudansha division, the caliber of the tournament, the divisions that I was fighting in, and the necessity of making sure I helped represent the ECUSKF well provided me with all new thoughts and perceptions that I plan on taking with me into my future Kendo career.  I was given the opportunity to fight against people that are considered the best in their region.  Since I knew that they would be giving it their all—as opposed to regular practice when the goal is to teach people and possibly hold back—I was able to give it my all, and take home very valuable lessons and thoughts on Kendo.  I was able to gather a lot of material for myself, which I am still trying to sort through, though.

P.S.:  Please take a look at my Flickr gallery for some of the pictures I took.

What Is a Hobby?

There was a thread started on the Kendo World forums not too long ago that was discussing whether or not Kendo should be considered a hobby.  One thing that everyone can agree on is that there are various elements of Kendo that personally makes it enjoyable enough for use to continue.  However, the fact that it’s easy for Kendo to go from just an activity done outside of the home to something that affects just about every aspect of our lives made the discussion all the more pertinent.

Over the past few years, I’ve been able to involve myself in many Kendo events in the area and sometimes around the country.  I usually attend between three and five practice every week, attend tournaments and seminars and I try to help out the Kendo community as I am able to spread knowledge of the activity that I hold so near and dear to my heart and hopefully transform knowledge into interest, and ultimately into attendance.  In that regard, it’s easy to see how Kendo has become something more than just something I do on the side.

First, we can look at the dictionary definition of what Kendo is.  The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that the word hobby means, “a pursuit outside one’s regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation.”  In other words, it’s considered any extracurricular activity or any activity that is done outside of working hours.  For some reason, the term hobby has turned into being perceived as something that’s fun, but doesn’t take much effort such as things like video games or sewing.  While the word hobby states that it’s something that we do for fun outside of school or jobs, it doesn’t mention anything as to how involved we are in these hobbies.

For instance, video games, sewing, and even stamp collecting can be considered activities that don’t take much effort.  However, a little searching can show how much dedication that people put into putting themselves on the tops of the leaderboards with video games, making the fanciest sweaters with sewing and trying to find the oldest and rarest stamps to add to their scrapbooks.  Kendo is not much different than that.  There are people that just go to practice and go with the flow, and there are others where they let Kendo permeate to other aspects of their  lives to reach their highest potential, whether it be rank, tournament performance or just technical prowess.

I can understand that Kendo has become something so important to us that we can’t really define what it means to us in just a word or a sentence.  But, at the same time, we must remember that it is also something that we do in our free time.  The other issue I see with those that feel like calling it a hobby is a bad thing is that it also diminishes people who are just as involved in many other activities which can also take the same amount of dedication to become great at what they do.  That sort of thinking doesn’t exactly help anyone since, instead of seeing what we do as a wonderful activity that we would like to share with everyone, people might get the perception that we are an elitist crowd of people who put ourselves above others who might not necessarily like the same things that we do.  Ultimately, maybe we should just find solace in the fact that Kendo means many different things to many different people, and just get together, relax and simply just enjoy practice together.

AUSKF Iaido Summer Camp 2011

First of all, I apologize for the long break in between posts.  It’s been a mix of lack of time, laziness and figuring out just what my next post would be about.  I’ll have to consider a better system for more frequent posting sometime.

I attended the 2011 AUSKF Iaido Summer Camp at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.  The entire seminar lasted four days which included a seminar for the first two days, a tournament on the third day and a promotional exam on the fourth day.  There was also a jodo seminar that occurred right after the exam, but I wasn’t able to attend that.

I signed myself to participate in everything the seminar had to offer.  My time in the tournament was short-lived since I was knocked out in the first round by the person that got second place in the mudansha division.  Despite that, I wasn’t all that disappointed since I was mainly there for the seminar and promotional exam, with the tournament being included in the seminar fee.  But that doesn’t mean that I went through the tournament with nothing to gain.  Seeing the nice Iaido that people performed to move up the brackets gives me ideas on what is expected for me to do the same the next time I get the opportunity.

The promotional exam went really well for everyone from my dojo that attended since everyone passed their exam.  My instructor got his 4th dan, a kohai got 4th kyu and I passed for 3rd kyu.  There was some confusion as to how the grades were handed out because I had signed up to go for 1st kyu, but only went up one level for the test.  Since this happened for everyone who was testing, this was some sort of institutional thing which is different from how most Kendo exams are handled, which allows you to test for 1st kyu after initially getting a lower kyu rank for the first time (Kendo and Iaido are under the same federation, which is why I thought that way).  In any case, all I can do is just improve myself the best I can and test when the opportunity comes and if my sensei allows me.  If anything, it should just make it that much easier for me to test for the higher ranks when the time comes .

For the seminar, we were broken up into smaller groups based on our present rank at the time and given Iaido information commensurate to our experience level.  In my group, each day started off with a discussion session before moving on to learning about the actual kata.  First, we would go step by step through a particular kata before trying it out on our own.  In some cases, we did those things and then moved on to another kata.  But then, what we did next proved to be the most enriching experience for me.

After doing some of the kata, we would break into groups of two or three people to do a set, and then critique each other on them.  At first, it would seem kind of odd that they would let us loose to let us give our thoughts on the kata to other people given our rank, but there really wasn’t much to worry about and it was handled quite well.  For one, other people are able to see some of the smaller twitches that I might not notice, like for instance, dropping my hands before swinging.  It also gave us a chance to examine how we were taught to do something and then provide suggestions to our partners based off of that and then compare notes.

The seminar itself was a lot of fun and very valuable.  I was able to learn a lot and bring the information back here to Cincinnati for the rest of the club to chew on.  I was told that the seminar next year will be in Washington.  It’s such a long way from here, but I would really like to go if time and finances go my way.

P.S.  The picture above was one of the photos that I took during the seminar.  If you want to see more, they’re on my flickr account here.  And comments are welcome.

Preparing for AUSKF Nationals

This coming August, I will be participating in the AUSKF Championship in Atlanta.  The tournament is a very big deal here in the United States.  Every three years, each regional federation chooses people in their area to represent them by participating in the tournament.  Naturally, that means that each federation will send what they consider their strongest Kenshi to vie for the top spot and bragging rights (to an extent).  Taking this into consideration, the fact that I will be participating in something like that gives me feelings of happiness, excitement and some nervousness as well.

The fact that I’m participating in this is something that I’m not taking very lightly.  This is a great opportunity to learn a lot of new things about myself by putting myself in this situation, and come out a stronger person in character and ability.  However, knowing that I will be going against some very strong Kenshi from other parts of the country that I’ve most likely never fought before at a tournament in which I want to represent our federation’s and my strengths does fill me with some feelings of nervousness.  I may be up to the challenge, but will I improve enough by time the day comes?  Will I be able to fight in the manner I want to and, whether or not I win, come out of it pleased with myself by knowing that I did myself?  These are really great questions that, unfortunately, won’t be answered until the day comes.  At the same time, I know that preoccupying myself with questions like these really doesn’t help matters, since it really has very little to do with the actual steps I need to take to improve myself, and it also casts doubt on myself, which will only bring myself down to where I don’t want to be.

At this point, all I can do is do my best to augment my strengths and strengthen my weaknesses.  Through past experiences of successes and failures, I have been able to identify what they are at this point.  Of course, through training, I’ll most likely discover new things about myself that I need to learn to deal with before, on and after tournament day.  Whatever the case, I’m prepared to cross those bridges when I get to them.

The biggest lesson that Kendo has taught me is to face unknown challenges head-on.  Opportunities open up for a reason, so it’s best to walk in those doors if I plan on moving ahead in my life and career.  This is something that has worked quite well for me at work.  Now I must go back and use what I learned from Kendo…in Kendo.  Despite how I’m feeling at any given moment, I am ready to face the challenges, successes, failures and frustrations that tend to come with this kind of training.  It is funny how some lessons can come full-circle like that.

Tightening Muscles

First of all, I apologize for the long delay in making a post.  I blame it partly on my own laziness (hey, I did hear about that two-year slump where bloggers tend to get blogging fatigue) and the fact that I made my plate a bit full with other things and interests.  Hopefully, I can try to be more frequent in the posts in the future.

These past few weeks have been rife with various musculoskeletal problems that lead to issues with my shoulders, lower back and, in some cases, my knee.  At first, I wasn’t entirely sure if it was just tight muscles or signs of an injury, so I even opted to take a week off from Kendo and Iaido practices to give my body some rest and see how it would react when I’m not putting in the stresses that I usually do when practices get rigorous.

The results for the first couple of days really wasn’t all that much different than when I started the hiatus.  My shoulders were still feeling tight and I could feel some knotting in my lower back.  Various stretches and a heating pad seemed to help temporarily, but the tightness would just come back after a few hours.  After a bit, I decided to make a visit to the massage therapist one Saturday morning.  At that point, the issue at hand became more clear.

As she was giving me the massage, she was asking me whether or not I was feeling any tenderness in my muscles and remarking on how my neck, arms, back and shoulder muscles were pretty tight.  Due to the limited time of one hour, she wasn’t able to get everything, but I did notice big improvements to how I was able to move around.  My muscles felt looser and my shoulders didn’t hurt when I moved them in certain directions.  In the end, I just decided to return to practice the following week.  I probably could have used a few more days, but practices haven’t been to bad as of late.

I did do a little research on the subject to see if I could get a little information about causes, treatment and prevention of any muscle problems.  Pretty much, there are various reasons why muscles tend to tighten up, whether it be through poor stretching, poor posture or automatic protection from micro tears of the muscles from exercise.  This can cause the muscles to not get everything that they need to repair themselves if they aren’t treated which can cause further issues.  Along with the discomfort throughout the body that can come from muscles operating differently, there can be a higher susceptibility to tearing because flexibility would be lost^{. [1] [2]}

The most important thing is that I was able to catch this issue early enough to fix most of the problems that have been ailing me for the past few weeks.  I was only gone for a week, instead of letting the problems fester and end up being out for a much longer time, similar to what happened to me last year when I was having problems with my back.  Another mantra that I keep telling myself throughout all of this is that I won’t stay young forever.  I’ve been able to run around and rely on my youth to push my body to lengths I haven’t experienced before and get a quick recovery.  However, a time will come where that just won’t be possible, and it will be even more important to make sure that I know how to adapt to the situation.

1. “Tight Muscles of the Upper Back and Neck”. Sports Injury Clinic. 2011. March 3, 2011. http://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/cybertherapist/back/upperbackneck/tightmuscles.htm
2. “Tight Hamstrings”. Sports Injury Clinic. 2011. March 3, 2011.   http://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/cybertherapist/back/hamstrings/tighthamstrings.htm

I Don’t Like Your Kendo Style

One of the most common pieces of advice that we are given while we are fighting other people is to be aggressive.  It’s common to overthink the situation and start to play defensively, especially if we’re familiar with oji-waza.  The former case causes delayed reactions while the mind shifts back and forth between the internal consciousness and the fight at hand, while the latter case only prolongs the fight, and even presents openings that an experienced person might be able to take advantage of.  Instead, we’re told to give our 100% devotion to attacks and go for whatever we might see being open.  As we gain more experience, then we are taught to read the opponent’s kamae—posture, balance, shinai position—and create openings to take advantage of them.

When we attack, we all know that some hits are successful, and some hits aren’t.  The ones that aren’t successful can result in either receiving a hit or missing the intended target, whether it’s a complete miss that causes the shinai to fly to random places, or accidentally hitting an unprotected part of the body.  No matter the kind of miss, we both know what it’s like to be on both sides of the fence, so we usually tend to blow it off and laugh about it later…while possibly waiting a few seconds for the pain to subside.  We all know that accidents happen, but we still must attempt at attacking or nobody is really going to learn all that much.

However, there are those that might cross the line.  The excessive pushing and overly hard hits can really do more damage than help, especially if accuracy isn’t part of their repertoire.  Once that line is crossed, then the potential for injury goes up from getting knocked down, pushed the wrong way, or getting hit in all the wrong places.  When faced with these kinds of people, the benefits can be low since the attacker just only knows how to hit and the receiver might not know how to respond.  However, once you find out how to deal with the situation, then you can most certainly learn more about yourself and the style of Kendo that you would like to achieve.

One of the first things that we might try to do is fight fire with fire.  While the sentiment is very common, and most certainly understandable, it’s only going to just make the situation worse.  Trying to increase your aggression to get revenge on the other person might only ignite the other person to just do the same.  Also, you end up doing the other person’s kendo and not the kind of kendo that develops you and makes you feel good.  Besides, we are taught that Kendo is an exercise in controlling yourself and, through that, controlling your opponent.  If you get angry and start getting into “revenge mode,” then that means that your opponent is controlling the match which, in the end, means that they are winning the battle.

There are various ways in which you can deal with fighting against that style, and maybe even turn the tables in your favor.  One such example is keeping a strong kamae if you happen to be in chudan so that the other person can be kept away by use of the shinai tip.  However, each situation is different and your sensei or senpai would probably be able to tell you what to do based on the situation you’re in.

Over our Kendo careers, we are faced with many different kinds of kendo; the kinds we respect and the ones we don’t.  While the situations can be different depending on if this is just general practice, tournament or testing, there are various ways to be able to deal with the kinds of kendo that might not be what we “like.”  However, the most important thing to remember is that your own Kendo development should come first.  Spending too much time worrying about defeating or getting revenge on the other person is that much time less available where you can develop your own techniques and your own style.  When you think that way, then you’ll always come out on top.

Yearly Retrospection

2011 is now here.  When the year is ending, I like to go back through the year and evaluate what happened and how I performed throughout the year and think about how I can improve myself the next year.  Since martial arts is such a goal-driven activity, it’s especially important to think about these things to give yet another frame of reference for where I want to go.

The biggest achievements of the year were in the grading realm.  In Kendo, I successfully got my 2nd Dan rank in March, followed by getting the rank of 4th kyu for Iaido.  The Kendo rank is much more surprising for the fact that I was able to get it on my first try, when it took me three tries to get my 1st kyu and 1st dan ranks, each.  The differences between my dispositions for my 2nd Dan exam and the other ones brings up another issue.  For the previous ones, I was very nervous to the point where it really affected my performance.  Not being able to think straight caused me to not perform based on how I usually would in class and get very concerned afterwards before the grades came out.  However, this time, I had a plan to go out there and do what I wanted to do and feel satisfied with my performance.  Obviously, whether or not I passed or failed depended on how the judges thought I did, but it was one of those things where passing would be excellent, but failing would just mean that I need to fix some things and try again later. 

Some analysis on that fact makes me think of a few reasons as to why I might have felt more calm under pressure than I usually have been.  First of all, I have been instructing classes and helping out with Kendo demos pretty often.  Over time, I began to get used to performing in front of people which started to carry on into other points in my life, even promotional exams where the stakes are much higher.  Because I was able to think more clearly, I was able to go out there with a plan and execute that plan and just leave it up to fate whether or not I passed or failed.  Another reason could just be as simple as just being used to the grading environment after going through the cycles quite a few times.  While the stakes are still pretty high, sensory adaptation could be present.  In other words, going through the same processes bring out the same sensations which begin to have less of an effect on me.  Whatever the case may be, I hope that this is able to continue so I can put my focus on the things that really matter when doing a performance.

This year seemed to be the year of learning how invincible my body REALLY is.  I’ve been able to go through Kendo for seven years without any major injuries until I messed up my back in April.  Luckily, all it took was some trips to the chiropractor and a little time off of Kendo and Iaido to make myself as good as new.  Then, about a week after I was able to go back to classes, I sprained my ankle while doing suriashi-men early during Kendo practice.  While it was painful due to not being able to take any medication for it, the injury wasn’t too severe and I was as good as new by the following week.  What I’ve learned from these events is that doing martial arts as often as I have been doing requires much more work with maintaining my body than usual.  More care has to be taken to take preventative measures so that I can avoid injuries as much as possible, especially considering that problems will only be compounded as I get older.  Unfortunately, the information I have now is pretty small, but I would like to try to find out more and report those findings on the blog when I do.

Now is the time to think about next year and make goals or resolutions that I would aspire to achieve over the next 365 days.  Before I begin that, there is a small concern that I would like to address when it comes to making them.  When making goals, we have to be very careful of the kinds of goals that we make for two important reasons.  First, there needs to be a metric of improvement when the goal is being made.  For example, some common goals for Kendo would be to be able to hit men better or perform better seme when going against an opponent.  Well, both of these are things that even 8th Dan people are working on so it’s not like there’s much of a clear end goal for improvement.  Second, the things that we work on tend to change pretty constantly.  One practice might be spent working on men, but another practice could change to working on fumikomi due to other issues that might crop of.  Of course, you could go back to working on men, but then there’s the chance that the derailments become too numerous to where it’s hard to go back…or the original goal gets forgotten in the mix.  Thus, when I’m making these goals, I’d rather try my best to provide a metric of improvement and/or base my goals on events that will happen next year.

In Kendo, I don’t have any promotional exams to take next year.  However, there are a lot of tournaments and perhaps a seminar or two that will still be occurring.  What I would like to do is work on improving myself so that I can do better in the tournament setting.  I can see that my basics are very sound, as evidenced in the video taken of me during the Johnson Cup.  But, due to some weak strikes, anything that I was making contact with wasn’t convincing enough for the judges.  Thus, I would like to be able to do what I can to make my hits more solid so that there’s no question to the quality of the attacks that I’m making.  Also, there’s this issue of me lowering shinai before I make an attack, which needs to be addressed as it’s making me lose precious seconds in attacking and tips off the opponent that I’m about to do something.  They may not know what it is, but it’s just enough to react and nullify my attempts.

Iaido is looking to be pretty void in terms of events going on.  There is the seminar going on in the summer in Cleveland which includes a tournament and promotional exam, which are things that I would like to try for.  As I don’t really have any specific issues that I can think of that are holding me back from anything, I’ll just continue training like I have been and addressing any big or small issues that tend to crop up after during practice.  When I’m out there, my body is going to just do what I have practiced for months and months through practice so there really isn’t much additional that needs or can be done.

From what I can see, next year will be filled with the usual events of Kendo and Iaido events that are within reach for me.  Whatever the case, I’ll do what I can to just continue training to reach my goals for improvement and take care of any issues that crop up during training.  However, no matter what the result at the end of the year ends up being, I will be happy as long as I feel decent improvement over the previous year.

Thanksgiving Thankfulness

I recently made it back from Milwaukee to visit the sister and see other family for Thanksgiving.  There was no Kendo or Iaido involved for the trip, but it was all worth it with the good food I ate and the cool things I saw in the area. 

In the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday, I want to take the opportunity to list the things I am thankful for when it comes to my martial arts circles:

• I am thankful for the support I have received from my family from day one of me starting Kendo and Iaido.  I have heard of many cases of family members not giving people any support due to lack of understanding on the parties involved or general family dynamics.  I have been lucky enough to even have my family willingly fly out to see some of my tournaments at their request.  That really means a lot to me and it’s been a major catalyst for me sticking with it.
• I am thankful for the friends that I have gained from doing Kendo and Iaido over the years.  When I moved to Cincinnati almost three years ago, I was able to instantly make friends due to having a common activity with people that are very willing to support each other.  I do sometimes wonder how my life would have been if I never continued with these arts.  Beforehand, I was playing video games, watching anime and hanging out online.  I imagine that I’d be living a lonely life similar to that, which honestly wasn’t all that much fun when I look back on it.
• I am thankful for the many opportunities that I get when it comes to participating in Kendo and Iaido events.  Because I have limited obligations outside of work, I have been able to participate in various seminars, tournaments and promotional exams throughout the country.  I have also been able to participate in up to five practices per week which gives me a lot of chances to improve myself throughout the week.  I’m even able to lead practices for some of those times, which has helped me in ways that I never thought it would in terms of ability and confidence.

Whether or not we have ample access to reliable resources to improve ourselves, we should always be thankful for what we have in front of us.  On one end, having one practice where one can learn a lot and reflect for the rest of the week is better than having no practice at all.  On the other end, one must be happy to have such opportunities for ample training.  Because or lives can change at any moment, there are possibilities that we might not be able to do it with such frequency as easily later in life.

Well, I hope that everyone had a good Thanksgiving weekend, whether or not you celebrate it.  Now that everyone has eaten their fill of turkey and other random food stuffs, it’s time to sit back, relax and prepare for our return to the regular work week.

Quality Over Quantity?

I really, really want to improve in my Iaido…

I’m very fortunate with Kendo because the three dojos that are in the area provide me with up to five days of practice per week, but I’m not so lucky when it comes to Iaido.  Usually, we have two days per week to practice, which is fine.  But due to some scheduling conflicts with the Corryville Rec Center for the fall/winter season, we only have time to do Kendo on that day.  As a result, I am now down to one official practice per week.  The club is getting an additional location that should be opening up within the next couple of weeks, but with my busy Kendo schedule on top of work and other activities to keep me sane, I’m not sure how many of those I would be able to feasibly make on a regular basis.

One thing that I like to do on Sundays is to get to the dojo about an hour early so I get some time to warm up and work on some things before the main class starts.  Unfortunately, that means that I’m there at around 7 AM on a Sunday morning, but that’s a sacrifice that I’m willing to make.  For the most part, it works out pretty well.  Though lately, I’ve been learning how to take better advantage of the situation.

Recently, I’ve been able to give my practice a little more focus.  Instead of just doing the kata for the sake of getting the movements down, I’ve been able to really pinpoint the things that I would like to improve, like my balance, blade direction and zanshin.  It gives my practice a little more purpose so I can feel that I’m improving.  It also helps me form any questions that I might have so I can ask them when one of the instructors comes in. 

One particular example is me working on one of the exercises that was taught during the Iaido national seminar earlier this year.  It was a modified form of seitei mae where yoko chiburi is performed at the end, instead of the usual oochiburi.  Then, this was done once in the front, once to the right, once to the back and once to the right.  In essence, it’s like doing the first four kata in the shoden set without really formally learning it.  I’m most certainly am getting some leg work out of it but I’m also getting so much more.  Being able to do proper cuts from all directions and maintaining zanshin while keeping balanced are some of the things that I would like to achieve from doing these.

The advantage that Iaido practice has over Kendo practice is that it’s much easier to be able to practice on your own.  While there are some things in Kendo that can be done solo, like suburi or footwork, a lot of the execution is dependent on having at least some tangible object in front of me to work on various other aspects.  Iaido, on the other hand, involves a lot of imagination to perceive that someone is there that you’re cutting.  At the same time, the balance and zanshin can be done on my own time.

While the practices may not be as numerous as what Kendo in the area provides me, it’s more important that I do what I can to get the most out of the time I do have.  Using technology like video cameras, Youtube and even blogs like this one allows me to expand the dojo outside of the place I practice in and gives me time to reflect on what I particularly want to achieve on a given aspect of Iaido.  So maybe the situation is not so bad after all.

Keeping Members

Originally, I wanted to give some advice about how to retain members in the club, based on my own personal experiences.  But as I keep pondering on how to go about doing that, I'm slowly beginning to realize that, in most cases, there's very little anyone can do to try to make people stick around.

The biggest thing that gets in the way of retention is the sequence of progression.  People tend to drop out after the honeymoon period of doing Kendo is over several weeks or months after starting and after the moment bogu is worn.  At these points, they see what Kendo is all about and then figure out whether or not Kendo might be for them.  Of course, there are other reasons why someone might quit, but going in depth with that could fill up a blog post.

The one thing that could be done is to create a sense of community around the club by doing things outside of Kendo together.  It could be as simple as gathering somewhere after practice, traveling together for tournaments if that is available to everyone or holding parties throughout the year.  Giving someone a place where people feel they belong is very beneficial to allow people to stay.  An examination of teaching style might be beneficial as well.  Something like incorporating new teaching styles, techniques or even different facets of the techniques they already know.  Repetition is very important in Kendo, but sometimes it might become overkill to people to the point of boredom that they might not be able to handle.

Despite all that, it's important to remember that there is no magic bullet to keep people coming.  Sometimes, it's almost like rolling dice where, some years, you get a lot of hangers-on.  Then, the following year, the total amount of people that stay till bogu is like zero.  Despite that, it shouldn't hurt to see how the club is going and examine what works and what doesn't and continue on based on what you see and hear.