A Note to the Readers

Hello to anyone that reads my blog:

I'm taking a short hiatus, to regain some focus, get back in a good mindset, and get some much needed rest! I'll probably be cutting down to twice a week postings at the most for a bit. If you'd like feel free to browse through my older entries (there's a lot to read!). Even though this is a personal blog, I do appreciate anyone that stops by to take a look, and I hope you can all learn even a little bit from my experiences.

Look forward to new posts starting next week!

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Sutemi

The Japanese-English Kendo dictionary, located at www.kendo-usa.org, defines sutemi as: " Sute-mi (n.) 1. Concentration and effort with all one’s might, even at the risk of death. 2. Concentration of all one’s effort into one strike, even at the risk of defeat." Ok, so risking everything at the risk of defeat or death. But how does that apply to our own training? Fighting to the death is a very foreign concept to many of us, but I believe that we can all understand fighting at the risk of defeat. This is a concept that we've started examining in more detail at our dojo lately, and one that I believe can be learned at any stage of practice that you're at. To put it simply, Sensei explained that sutemi is putting 100% effort into a strike. Holding nothing back and leaving all cares and worries behind so that you can give all of yourself over to that strike. it sounds like a complicated idea, and it is, but just like all things in kendo I believe that

Harai Waza

Photo courtesy of T. Patana, Kendo Photography Another month down, another new focus for training. This month we'll be focusing on harai waza. Here are some of my personal thoughts on it, from my own training and experience. I really had trouble figuring out how to start this entry. Normally I just open the page and go to work, letting whatever ideas and thoughts I have flow out onto the screen, but this one really had me stumped for a while, mainly because everything I started to write sounded really negative and I didn't mean it to, so I think I'll just go with it and try to get to the point that I was trying to make in the first place. When I first started learning harai waza it was part of kihon kata three. If you want to be fancy, that would be the Bokuto ni yoru kendo kihon waza keiko ho, kihon san - harai waza . The idea was simple: strike the motodachi's shinai out of center and deliver a men strike, all in one smooth movement. It was one of the

Palouse Kendo Club

This Sunday a few of my dojo mates and I traveled to Moscow, ID to visit the Palouse Kendo Club, a relatively new club to the area that was started by my friend Maina. The club has been active for a little over a year, if memory serves me right, and we'd always talked about having visitors to the club, but we were finally able to put it together and schedule it. Six of us traveled over, ranging from 3 kyu up to, well, me! We pulled up to the dojo about 20 minutes before training was scheduled to start, and after greeting my friend and getting a quick tour, we were suited up and ready to go. All in all, they had six people that showed up to train with us, and we trained for a good two and a half hours. We started with warmups and suburi, then moved straight into footwork drills. I have to make a confession: I don't particularly like footwork drills. I don't like running, either, but I do both because I know that they're both good for me and will improve my endu

Keiko: A Kenshi's Journey

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