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.

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.

AUSKF Iaido National Seminar 2010

I got to spend five days last week in San Antonio for the AUSKF Iaido Seminar.  While I have been to two Iaido seminars in Cleveland, this is the first time I've attended the national seminar.  To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect to experience and learn.  In the end, I was very pleased with the organization of the event, the people I met and the things I learned (minus some political issues, but that's for a different discussion).

The seminar had the welcoming party on the first day, the seminar on the second and third day, tournament on the fourth day and the promotional exam on the fifth day.  It was the perfect recipe to finish each day with sore legs from all the seiza and tatehiza, and a sore brain from taking in all that new information.

The seminar days went over some new exercises, such as a modified ipponme where we do the nukitsuke to the front, left, right and back and adding some kiai to the nukitsuke with the modified ipponme.  We also basically spend some time with each of the 12 seitei kata, learning various things like what's required for the movements and what's required for effective zanshin after we swing.  I would say that these were the most intense days as it was filled with tons of new information.  At the end of each day, I was mentally exhausted due to taking in so much.

The fourth day was just the tournament which was a whole new experience for me.  I'm more used to the Kendo tournaments where there's a lot of screaming and whacking going on and people running all over trying to get to where they need to be.  Because there was complete silence, the pressure was more intensified than the Kendo tournaments since there aren't any other sounds to drown yourself into.  In the end, lost at the second match against a really good opponent.  It was one of those moments where you could tell someone's skill just by looking at them.

To be honest, I wasn't all that wild about participating in Iaido tournaments in general.  It was something to do just for the experience, but I wasn't sure about really traveling as much as I would for a Kendo tournament to participate in one (if there are even such events existing in the US).  My initial impressions was that there wasn't all that much to gain from participating in these things because I saw it more as just doing the same thing in class, but having a different set of people looking at you.  After actually participating in one and feeling the different sorts of pressure, I do feel that there is just as much to gain from these tournaments compared to the Kendo tournaments

The final day was the promotional exam, which I also participated in.  There was a little less pressure on me that day because:

• I was just going for whatever kyu rank they felt I deserved.  So this exam wasn't a matter of "pass-or-fail".
• The tournament prepared me for the procedures and atmosphere so the experience was less jarring.

I was able to make it to 4th kyu, which I'm happy with.  It serves as a jumping point to know what the Federation expects of me to improve, which is pretty much all I feel gradings are for anyways.

Overall, I was really pleased with the seminar.  Not only did I learn a lot, but I met a lot of great people from all over the country.  I look forward to seeing them again in Cleveland next year (which is great since the driving distance is small :)).  In the meantime, I'll take what I learned and work with that until I find out more that needs to be fixed.

I had a chance to use my camera skills while I was there.  I think I'm starting to get the hang of using the camera so I feel that these came out better than some of the other ones.  A friend of mine told me that the ISO might be set too high so I guess that's another thing I should spend a little time with.  Without further ado, you can view the pictures on the flickr slideshow.

Until next time!!!