This post is part of the First Year of Budo series

Very interesting today, I realised that never before have I taught someone who was more than a couple of years older than me. Today that changed. Also I got to practice in uniform for the first time which was awesome.

Jodo

We began as we always do with the warmups. I’m really enjoying Jodo. I seem to be able to remember all the techniques better than Iaido and the movements feel much more natural. My Kiai’s have also improved heaps recently. It was probably only 2 or 3 weeks ago that my Kiai’s were very weak (just generally weak as opposed to tentative). This is linked in with intent and concentration. I was quite good in both areas today. At the beginning of each technique I would take the ready position and focus on an imaginary point in front of me (I should be visualising an opponent but I’m not to that level yet). I could quite literally feel my pressure and intent hone in on that direction and somehow this enabled my Kiai’s to be much more focused. It is interesting how your level of intent and concentration feeds in to everything you do. Your body movements, your strikes, your Kai’s, everything can be so different with a determined and intent mind.

The only thing I really had to watch out for is to make sure in Kaeshi Zuki that I’m dropping the bottom hand far enough and taking the first vertical ready position before moving into the ’somewhat’ horizontal ready position.

After this I was about to work on some kata when Sensei commanded me to come over to where he was with the more junior students of the class (I’m really confused as to what level I’m at. I suppose to even segregate the students into levels is incorrect, as this is not what class feels like. You know where someone is at by how they perform their techniques and it is far more subtle than any assignment of rank. But I’ll leave that discussion for another day). So as I was saying, Sensei called me over. And then you’ll never guess what happened, he paid me a compliment (in an offhand way offcourse). Training is always very grueling, usually the closest thing you can get to a compliment is for sensei to look at your technique and walk away without correcting it (Unless it’s the case where they believe you are not putting in enough effort and so ignore you, which I hear is common among Japanese teachers, once again, a story for another day). Anyway after mentioning that I appeared to be quite competent at the early techniques he wanted me to instruct the 5 other (’junior’) students.

Initially I don’t think I could hide my surprise, I certainly didn’t expect it. So when I nodded in acknowledgment of his request he continued to look at me with that face that you know is trying to analyse what you are thinking/feeling. So I gave him a confident ‘Hai’ and he moved on. Now I was left with 5 students to manage and instruct in almost any manner I felt like. Two of them I know relatively well, the others I only see maybe once a month (from Shepperton) so I don’t know them that well. The other thing that I didn’t realise at the time was that atleast two of them are probably almost as old as my father (to their credit they are probably not that old). I never realised that I have never really seriously taught someone that was much older than myself in my life. The fact that the thought never even crossed my mind is a tribute to the quality of the people at the dojo and to the style in which Sensei teaches (and probably the art in general). Their is no discrimination between age, sex or ability. The only thing that matters is your willingness to contribute, learn and exert effort.

To avoid getting sidetracked once again, let me resume. So I got them to perform the first few basic techniques (tandoku) while I walked up and down the line checking angles and looking for things to jump out at me as wrong. I was surprised how confident I was shouting out the japanese commands for different techniques and maneuvers. In particular there are a series of commands that tell people to put away the jo and turn around. Namely after Yamae we have ‘Motowae, Mawari Migi’. Each of these commands relates to a particular part of finishing a technique (while it’s different to a strict japanese translation I’m sure). Personally I associate them with similar sounding english phrases.

‘Motowae’ - “Put it away”. Move the jo from the final position of the strike to the regular ready position awaiting further commands.

‘Mawari’ - “Get ready”. Turn the tip of the jo down so the rear comes up and rests behind your shoulder. This is the position just before you turn around. Hence it’s ‘getting ready’ for the turn

‘Migi’ - I don’t have anything that really rhymes with this one, but it’s always the last one so it’s easy to just remember to turn on that command.

I think I heard from a translation perspective, ‘Mawari Migi’ means ‘turn right’ but I digress.

It was surprising how many people would go through the whole turn after I had just said ‘Motowae’. So I tried to drill in each stage of the turn. There was some issues with the turn for some people but I thought I should focus on bigger issues so I let it slide for the time being.

For honte uchi and gyakute uchi there was one person who was doing the strike and it just looked wrong. I think it was that the back hand was sliding down the jo too early, but I couldn’t be 100% sure and couldn’t reproduce it in my own technique. Sensei confirmed though that the back hand should definitely lift first before coming down and forward(mostly forward).

Then we moved on to Hickiotoshi (once again the name just came to me without having to think about it). Here there was issues with strikes that weren’t coming through vertical and also lots of issues with the starting positions. People weren’t resting their lower hand on their thigh and there was all sorts of variations on where the top hand was. The top hand should be where it goes if you just naturally raise your hand bending from the elbow. It generally goes somewhere just slightly in front of the shoulder.

I was being a little generous on some of them because I wasn’t sure if they could physically make the position but Sensei intervened saying they should all be able to make the position. He then proceeded to use me as a presentation doll to illustrate some points. The cool thing was that he had me assume the ready position and then just point out all the things that I was doing right without me knowing what he was going to show. Like he had me take away the top hand totally to show that you should be supporting the jo totally with the bottom hand. Very interesting stuff.

After a little bit more of my attempt to instruct I was pulled away to do some practice on my katas while someone else took over. My katas were generally good with the exception of kata 3 which I still haven’t really got my body around.

Afterwards one of the 5 I was instructing came over to mention that he thought the way I was emphasizing a few points was very good (mostly the japanese commands) which was nice of him. I’ve spent way too long talking about Jodo so moving on.

Iaido

I’m really enjoying my Iaido, especially gliding across the floor and really trying to emphasize the jo-ha-kyu before strikes. My cutting technique still doesn’t feel good, it’s been over 6 months of training ( I just had massive dejavu on that line… anyway) and I still think my cuts suck. Mainly I just don’t have any smoothness to it, I must be tensing too much and at all the wrong places.

Today we went through warm-ups and then split up to work on katas. Specifically I was doing kata 1-4. My kata 4 had issues which is not surprising as it is rather intricate and I haven’t practiced it for quite a while. Always get confused as to when to move the legs in relation to the arms etc. There were some minor points on needing to do my O-chiburi closer to my head and things like that but that’s really all I’ll mention for now.

Before I forget though I must talk about being in uniform!

I’ve always been a fan of loose clothing, track pants over jeans that sort of thing. A Hakama would have to be the closest thing to a dress a man can wear. Incredibly loose and it flows everywhere around your legs when you are moving. Feels much better doing the techniques in a hakama and Gi compared to track pants and a t-shirt. Also looks much more traditional/professional and just more in the spirit of training. I think wearing the uniform just makes the whole occasion more unique and the group look more unified. I could go on and on but if you have made it this far through this long post I will spare you and thank you for reading.

Till next week.