This post is part of the First Year of Budo series

Today’s session was really fun. There were little jokes everywhere and it was all kept very light-hearted. I don’t mean to say that people weren’t focused or weren’t taking things seriously. Rather they laughed when appropriate and focused when training/listening to serious points.

Jodo

This week was very interesting, not having equipment to practice with has really been hampering my ability to remember exactly how each strike goes so I have been practicing with a old broom handle I found lying around. Problem is that it is about 20cm too short which makes a huge difference to how a technique feels. While going through the techniques at the beginning I found my front hand was raising up far too high as I drew the back hand down the jo.

Something that seems like it will always help in developing technique is to consider the opponent. When using the jo, as much as possible you want to keep the pressure on the opponent and not display any openings that you don’t want to display. So with the first technique (I think it’s called Honte :D) your front hand should be out in front of your eyes, which is the opponents eye level as well in the imaginary case. This keeps a sense of pressure on the enemy. If you can imagine yourself in the position of the opponent you can feel what feels like the most dangerous position. If your hand is too high it appears like there is an open/safe area to strike low. If it is too low then not only is this position much less threatening but it also much harder to put any strength into the strike that comes over.

So far I have only really learnt strikes. But today I was taught 2 techniques that were more like kind of traps/throws to push back the swordsmen. These feel really awkward in the sense that it is hard to imagine how it feels without really doing it to someone. After catching the bokken handle with the jo, it is hard to figure how to move your hands around the other end of the jo in order to control the swordsmen and direct them in the desired direction. With one of the techniques it is necessary to push them back while you are in close to them. What took me awhile to get after lightly punching people in the face etc. (most light, sorry…) is that the pushing back motion comes from the ‘hara’ which seems to be a reference to an area somewhere around the abdomen. This is a very different feel as it keeps you very centered and your strength doesn’t wane. This idea of moving with the hara seems very prominent throughout jodo and iaido. It also reminds me a lot of how the draw and sheathing of the sword is done almost entirely with the left hand which I’ll touch on in the Iaido section.

Something that I sucked even more at in this session was not having and maintaining a deep enough stance, which reminds me of really getting into it. I really enjoy getting in a deep stance and being able to put power into moves but I forget to a lot.

Iaido

I made an error at the beginning of the session in that after the ritual I put the bokken in the outer loop of the obi. This, after doing some serious sayabiki loosened the obi quite a bit. I managed to adjust it a little and place the bokken in the correct inner loop but it wasn’t as good as I’ve done it in past weeks.

After some cutting drills up and down the hall (which can be a bit of a workout at times) we went on to doing some paired kata. By this I mean everyone was using bokken and one person would do the kata while the other acted as the aggressor. This was done to help people get the right feel when doing the kata. Offcourse I only did kata 1 to begin with, but when we went to kata 3 I was shown how this works. They don’t look hard but it is difficult to get every part of the body to do what needs to be done.

Then we went on to free practice in which I choose to practice kata 1 as I still had heaps of points to work on from last week. Unfortunately not having been able to do much serious practice at home my moves were all over the place as I couldn’t properly remember it. For example, after the vertical cut but before doing chiburi I would turn the backside of the sword to my left like you would when going from the horizontal cut to the vertical. This offcourse threw me totally off and I couldn’t do chiburi at all haha. As soon as I was told to turn it the opposite direction it felt much more comfortable and chiburi muscle memory kicked back in.

The other area that I received a lot of guidance on was my noto (sword sheathing). It cannot be emphasised enough that the left hand does all (it’s actually most but just over-emphasising) the work. It’s the same with drawing the sword. Even the turning of the sword to a different angle is done with the left hand. This actually makes it so much easier to draw as you don’t need to muscle it with your right hand which often over-balances you. Doing good sayabiki essentially makes the sword seem smaller because all of a sudden it is so much easier to use.

After training I mentioned to sensei about equipment, his preferred supplier is receiving a shipment hopefully in 2-3 weeks. In the meantime though he has lent me a bokken(and saya) which is awesome cause I can now practice so much better (at least it will feel much better and more than likely be more effective).

Overall I really enjoyed today’s training.

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