Keiko: A Kenshi's Journey

Photo by G. Hoover  These past couple weeks have been pretty rough.  Not in a bad way, but in a very good way.  I've been pushing myself hard at practice and I think it's starting to show.  I'm still dealing with my sore hips, but I'm working with Sinclair Sensei to resolve that issue.  As far as technique goes, I feel like all of the little improvements I've been working on are starting to come together pretty nicely.  I'm feeling things start to "click" for me.  I'm pushing through to that next level and it's an awesome feeling, if somewhat difficult.  We've been working a lot on footwork lately.  Building speed, starting with an explosive movement that happens all at once, and making that movement continue through with our follow-through.  I, personally, have also been working on some more aggressive footwork and being to able to set my left foot when I move and launch immediately, so putting all that together has put more stress o

This past week our dojo has been focused on shiai-geiko.  Not for the sake of getting practice in the matches, which was fun, but so that our yudansha could learn about and get some experience being shinpan.  For anyone that doesn't know, a shinpan is a court judge in a kendo match.  There are three of them on the court.  Two judges (fukushin) and one head judge (shushin).  Together they call points and penalties and generally ensure that everything goes well and smoothly during each match.  We focused on this aspect of kendo this whole week, leading up to the PNKF shinpan seminar that took place in Seattle, WA this past weekend. Last week Sinclair Sensei took some time at the end of a couple classes to go over the basics of being a shinpan.  We learned the commands, how to use the flags to signal each one, and some other information about how to stand, how to move with the flags, etc.  Monday and Wednesday we were able to put these ideas into practice by judging matches betwee