Apollo Bay Kendo Club Seminar

-


ABKC - note Her Majesty the Kamiza in background



Just got back from a wonderful four days in Apollo Bay. Thanks to Peter, Libby and family for their warm welcome and showing me and my family some of the many sights in the area.

The Apollo Bay Kendo Club has recently been recognised by the VKR and congratulations to all the ABKC members for their perseverance up until now. I found a really keen and committed bunch of individuals who already show a solid grasp of basics and especially reigi saho(etiquette). We trained three times over the four days including all day on Sunday. There was a lot to get through as I had spoken to Peter, the club's instructor, prior to getting down there on what they wanted to cover. The two restrictions were a very hard floor (ceramic tiles on a a concrete base - ouch!) at their current dojo, and the lack of armour and armour experience of some members.

For that reason we looked closely at the Bokuto ni yoru kihon waza keiko ho, as a way of teaching shikake-waza and oji-waza to everyone regardless of experience. This worked very well and revealed the real usefulness of this sequence in this instance. As a result of training in the Bokuto Kihon, all ABKC members can develop a working knowledge of waza that can then be further developed when they reach bogu stage. They also started to get an insight into how timing and distance affect waza execution.

We followed this up with practicing the Bokuto Kihon in bogu with shinai for a further extension of the principles of waza, but this time with the added feedback of striking a live target. All these waza were practiced using suriashi rather than fumikomiashi so as to prevent injury on the hard floor.

Even with the shortage of bogu, everyone was able to try wearing full bogu, some for the first time, and then have brief go at jigeiko.

We also spoke about some basic concepts to do with the kendo mindset such as seme, sutemiand zanshin.

Dinner at the pub on Sunday night was great: wonderful to be able to eat lobster caught within view of the hotel!

Thanks again to everyone for a great seminar and all the best for the future of the club.



Looking down on the rainforest from 45m up in the canopy!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nishimura sensei's Kendo HIIT routine

-
Image
Former All Japan champion, and star of his own NHK documentary , Nishimura Hidehisa produced this workout routine for the All Japan Kendo Federation last year during the early stages of lockdown. It's an excellent HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) routine, sometimes called Tabata Training after the coach who invented the idea. Basically it has been theorised that you get better results in terms of fitness and overall body strength from short, intense and focused workouts, than you do from extended workouts. Some say it is also beneficial for improving endurance and longevity . There is even some evidence to support that it kickstarts mitochondrial function , that you're exercising at a cellular level. That's pretty amazing. Whatever the research says, it is very easy to feel the positive effects of interval training and it has several other benefits: PROS It doesn't take long, so you can fit it into a busy schedule   You can do it by yourself   You can do it almos
Read more

Results and pics - 2008 VJKC

-
Image
Another great Victorian Junior Kendo Championships today. The standard gets better every year. This year we had two divisions, 14 & under and 16 & under. Unfortunately only three Victorian dojo were represented, Nanseikan (of course!), Fudoshin and Ballarat. Firstly thanks to the shinpan who came along today: Gary Oliver, Khay-Lin Teoh sensei, Richard Ward, Jason Widdy and Andrew Lam. Thanks also to all the parents for bringing their boys (and they were all boys this year, more girl-kendoka needed!) as well as supporting their kendo throughout the year. Last but not least, thanks to Tony of UMKC, who took all the fantastic photos below. All pics are (c) Tony Shearer. Straight off the 14 & under matches were high quality. Newcomer Yuichiro Sato of Fudoshin won his first match in his first ever taikai against Thomas Goh, also of Fudoshin. Sato (red) scoring men against Thomas Goh. Poor Thomas didn't fare any better in his next match against our own Mr Weber. Geoffrey won
Read more

Koryu that are not like Kendo at all

-
Image
In the previous post I listed the various branches of Itto Ryu and asked you to consider the similarities between their use of the sword and Kendo. Sometimes when one becomes used to a certain way of doing things, one can fall into the trap of thinking that is the only, or maybe the best, way of doing things. In learning iai kata of Tatsumi Ryu, we are trying to break out of that thinking by exposing ourselves to a system devised long before even the Itto Ryu was founded. This means that there are some fundamental differences in how the sword is used.  In these posts I am mostly interested in the differences in how to swing the sword. In Kendo, and indeed in most of the styles of iaido practiced today, the fundamental cutting action is a straight up-and-down action often referred to as kirioroshi , cutting through or cutting down. In Tatsumi Ryu, the characteristic action where the sword first goes through a circular backswing before cutting downwards is called kowauchi , or 'power
Read more