Keiko: A Kenshi's Journey

Photo courtesy of W. Sinclair I love training.  It's obvious if you know me in person.  I love working on my kendo and making both big and small improvements.  I regularly check in with people around me to assess where I'm at and what I can work on, on top of reading articles, blogs (like this one), forums, and watching videos.  I'm always looking at new ways to improve and grow my kendo, but sometimes I think it's beneficial, and even healthy, to put that aside for a while. What does this mean?  to me, this means I let myself stop worrying about all the details and let my body do what it does without thought...or perhaps, with little thought.  I think of it as a supervised auto-pilot;  I'm still in control of what and when I'm doing something, but instead of thinking about all the small points of hitting a kote, for example, I just think, "here comes my kote," and let my body do the rest.  This allows me to not only get comfortable with w...

In the Bokuto Ni Yoru Kendo Kihon Waza Keiko Ho (Kihon Kata, for short), kote-men is the second kata performed, and is used to illustrate renzoku waza (continuous attacks).  I believe there is a very good reason that kote-men was chosen to exemplify this.  I may be wrong.  It wouldn't be the first time, nor will it be the last.  In my experience, though, kote-men is not only a useful technique in and of itself, but it's a very versatile technique and can be used in a whole range of different situations.  Obviously in order to use it effectively you have to have a solid grasp of the individual attacks of kote and men, but with that part under your belt you can begin to use it to learn about continuous attacks, multiple strikes, and stringing together other attacks into useful techniques.  Kote-men does a lot to teach us about the rhythm and flow between attacks necessary to combine other attacks.  Want to strike men a few times in a row to catch y...

I've joined an online club.  Many of you, if you are reading, may have seen it or are even members yourselves.  It's called the Hundred Suburi Club 2018 , on Facebook.  Check it out if you'd like!  This may be a shameless plug for it, but that's ok, it's my blog.  It's been fun joining in with other like-minded people around the world to share this experience.  I didn't necessarily join for the suburi itself; I've already been doing that consistently on my own time anyway.  For me it's more the community aspect of it, and being able to cheer on and motivate others, as they do the same for me, and share our stories back and forth.  Kendo really is a friendly group, and this gives me another way to meet and greet new people.  With that being said, though, it does make me think of my own suburi and practice and small tidbits of info that I've collected or realized throughout the years.  I want to present some of that, BUT please please ...

It's been a while.  At first it was because I was just busy with work and life and training (always training!) but then I let this blog slip away from me and it kept slipping and slipping...and here we are, a full year has passed without any new entries.  It's time to change that!  I have always loved not only reading blogs myself, looking for little pieces of info or advice or a new take on something to give me another perspective, and I've also enjoyed sharing the information that I have, as well as the experiences and the ups and downs of kendo life.  I'm not perfect, it's definitely not high-level stuff, but I have a passion for it.  And hopefully I can keep that going for many years to come. So today it's time to get back to it!  I'll do my very best to keep this updated regularly with new entries.  This is also a perfect chance to reflect back on the last year. 2017 was a HUGE year for me, kendo-wise.  So much happened that I'm actual...