Quality Over Quantity

Photo courtesy of A. Melton

Over the last few weeks we've had a few fun events at our dojo.  We hosted a shinpan seminar a few weeks ago, headed by Yotsuuye Sensei of Bellevue, and shared our dojo with a lot of visitors and kendo friends from the Seattle area.  It was a wonderful event and we all learned a lot, plus it's always good to cross swords with my friends that I don't get to see that often.  We've also welcome a couple of new members that came to us from Hawaii and Pennsylvania/Maryland/California, and each of them bring their own unique spirit and take on kendo, which is always appreciated.  This week we are hosting a visitor from Northern Virginia Kendokai and had a great practice with him last night, and are looking forward to another practice on Wednesday before he heads home.  That's one of the joys of kendo for me: making new friends and seeing new connections being made between our dojo and the rest of the kendo world.  Even while watching the world kendo championships this weekend I saw a lot of people competing that I've trained with, competed against, and made friendships with.  Kendo is worldwide, but it still has a small town feel to it, in some ways.

This month we've been going over hiki waza again.  Not only how to create openings and use them to our advantage, but breaking down the movements to isolate them and better understand them before building them back up into a usable technique.  I always equate this in my mind to someone taking apart building blocks and then putting them together, one at a time, until they have a rocket ship or a skyscraper of whatever strikes their fancy to create.  Each of those blocks represent a piece of the technique, whether it be footwork or shinai position or tsubazeriai or the mechanics of the strike itself, and each one is useful not only as a whole but also individually.  I feel like between last time and this time my hiki waza has improved, even though I would say I'm still not that good at it. I do have my moments, though.

We also started focusing on distancing a bit more, and being more mindful of not only our distance relative to our opponents when we strike, but also of where on the shinai we're striking.  Everyone knows that they're supposed to strike using the monouchi, or the space between the tip leather and the leather binding about a quarter of the way down (nakayui), but beyond that we sometimes don't pay much more attention.  Being more mindful of these details not only help us to improve our strikes by using all of the shinai that we can to our advantage, but it can also lead to more mindfulness in other areas and can help us start to notice more details elsewhere, such as what are opponents do when they're about to strike or when they're trying to bait us into their trap.  I believe this is all very useful information when you're sparring or competing with others, and also for improving our kendo.

What does all of this have to do with quality over quantity?  Well, everything.  I've always been a big believer in this idea, not only in kendo.  I'd rather take a few more minutes making something perfect than churning through something at breakneck speed just to get it done or to hit some quota.  Not saying there's not a time and place to just go all out and see how much you can do, but overall I think, personally, most of my improvement comes from taking my time and practicing in a way that I can make good quality strikes, or movements, or counters, or whatever else the drill is that we are doing.  Following this, sometimes I will cut back on the amount of strikes that I do in a drill so that I can really work on the setup, the attack and the finish and make them the best I can.  After I become more consistent and things are acceptable for me, I can start bumping up the amount I'm doing while still keeping that level of quality. 

Again, this isn't something I do all the time, but when I really want to take some extra time and focus on the pieces of a technique, or the whole technique, this is a good way for me to do it while still working within the drill itself.  My sensei told us once, long ago, and it's become something that comes up every once in a while - I've even used it myself when teaching - and that is, to paraphrase, "Don't do five strikes in a row in the drill.  Do one strike, five times."  This means don't clump the strikes together and just do what's required to get it done.  Instead, take each strike in its own container, and polish that strike with each repetition, until you are doing the best you can.  Or, do the best strike you can, and then work to do it better still, and better after that.  There's multiple ways to translate his words, but all of them encompass giving each repetition its due thought and care.

Quality over quantity.  Kendo isn't a sprint to the finish.  I believe it's a journey to be enjoyed, and while it can be challenging and difficult sometimes, you should always take the time to enjoy the journey, enjoy your surroundings and put ample effort into each and every drill, strike and repetition.