Tournament prep in Almere

2012-09-29 13:32:00

I don't know why, but our group was a bit smaller today. Six in bogu, five or six without. I guess a lot of folks are off sick. After kata and warming up we proceeded with footwork practice. 

As part of balance exercises we did lunges. 

• Hold your shinai across your belly with both hands, then lunge onto your right foot. Turn your upper body both left and right. Then lunge onto the left foot and repeat. Continue like this across the hall. 
• Hold your shinai in normal kamae. Lunge onto right and strike men. Lunge onto left and strike men. Repeat across the hall. 
• Hold your shinai across the back of your hips and do fumikomi across the hall. First singles, then doubles.

In all of these exercises, if you feel imbalanced and tend to wobble or keel over, then your footwork is too narrow. When lunging, keep your feet at kamae-width and sink deep. Hold a straight back.

After this followed laps of suriashi around the hall.

• The first four laps went fine: normal sliding steps, then variation in length and speed. Some people still put left past right, but most aren't bad. 
• The two/three fumikomi to reach the other side also went "okay", though many show issues with both the right and the left feet (explained below). 
• Charel suggested a shiai exercise: start with small suriashi, then make two/three big slides and then fumikomi with follow-through.
• Then finally, with continuous fumikomi across the hall things went to pieces completely. Everyone was bad.

Loyer-sensei and Kris-fukushou inform us that the problems are twofold. For one, most of us aren't properly launching themselves with the left foot. Either we're not kicking hard enough, or we're kicking backwards after launching. Many of us also lift the right foot way too high when lunging forward. Not only does this clearly signal your intentions to your opponent, but it also slows you down. As Kris pointed out, many of us don't stomp their right foot for forward speed but we come to a full stop because we kick downward or even forward. 

While the beginners renewed their focus on kirikaeshi and kihon, we practiced a few waza.

• Hayai-men and hayai-kote-men. To keep the basics in there :)
• When doing harai-men you could say you're doing a kote-men where the kote strike is actually a push over your opponent's shinai. Keep your shinai on the center line (inside) and when moving inwards, smack his shinai aside and down to open your way to men. This is slightly similar to, but also completely different from the "special" move Heeren-sensei showed us last Tuesday.
• When doing harai-kote, keep your movements small. Make an elliptical path underneath motodachi's shinai and on the way up, smack the shinai upwards to the right. On the way down again strike his kote. Remember, the elipse needs to be very small!
• When doing kaeshi-do against a men strike, use the upswing towards your shoulder to guide motodachi's shinai to the left. Then strike do while staying on the center line. Make it a proper strike! Don't start moving to the right before you've connected properly. 

When attacking, imagine your goal to be two meters behind your opponent! Don't strike and immediately dash aside. Worse yet, don't immediately turn towards him! Rush through them and if they get in the way, go into taiatari. Don't hold your hands too high, as they'll simply topple you. "Tsuba into the mouth", as they say.

Finally, because tomorrow is a tournament day: the practice shiai! I joined Nick and Hudaifa, against Charel, Jeroen and Sander. After each round, both kenshi quickly received some pointers on their own kendo from Kris and Loyer-sensei. In my case:

• I need to build tension, work on seme. Draw my opponent out.
• My movements are too large. I completely give away what I'm doing.
• I should stick to what I can do. I really don't need to try and pull of those do-strikes.
• As was mentioned above, don't dance aside but I need to move "through" my opponent.

Because we don't have much experience with tourneys we also went over the basic etiquette. Both teams decide the order of kenshi, one through five (or three as is the case tomorrow). Only the first kenshi will be wearing his men from the start. The teams greet each other, then retreat to their side of the court. Everyone except the first sits down and pays attention to the fights. Numbers two and three will start putting on their men. Four and five will follow later. Then, each participant will continue as follows.

1. Step into the shiaijo. Step to a position from which you can reach your starting line with three paces. 
2. Bow to your opponent.
3. Three steps to your line, right foot on the line. Not over, not in front, on the line. In your steps, draw your shinai and go into sonkyo. 
4. Do not rise until the shinpan provide the command to "Hajime!".
5. Return to your line when a point has been made.
6. If something is wrong, raise your hand. Both kenshi return to their line, while the shinpan find out what is up. If you need to disrobe, both kenshi step back and the other waits in sonkyo while you fix whatever is wrong. 
7. When the match has been won return to your line. Sonkyo and put your shinai away.
8. Five steps back. Bow. Step out of the shiaijo backwards and take your seat. 

The Nanseikan kendo dojo has a more complete article on the subject of shiai etiquette.

kilala.nl tags: kendo, sports,

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