Good bokken training!!

Good training yesterday.. and today I felt a bit of stiffness in my legs.. good sign!

It is partly some of my personal masochism since as often, Bob, the main instructor, let me the pleasure of taking the warming up.

First, in seiza, we took a bit more than 200 cuts with bokken, basic cut, frontal with everybody counting to 10 (twice), in order to practice the japanese counting, and a few extra 10’s.. just for fun.. 😉

Next, I almost always practice a hard but quite relevant exercise, for which I don’t have yet a name (maybe the people at practice could think about something!) but it could be referred to as “the legs nightmare“:

• the exercise starts standing with the feet almost close together and the bokken kept at basic start position, in front of the center, 2 fists from the belly, in seigan position (kissaki pointing to the throat of an imaginary opponent in front of you)
• raise the sword over the head in a fluid movement, without tensing the shoulder
• bend the knees and crouch down keeping balance on the toes
• when the lowest position is reached, the frontal cut is performed, keeping an upright posture of the upper body, without tensing the shoulder or bending forward and stopping the cut in the same starting position (sword never lower than the horizontal)
• at the end of the cut, raise the sword again over the head in a fluid movement, without tensing the shoulder
• stand up, without bending forward with the upper body but using only the leg power: raise the whole body following a straight vertical path
• when the upright standing position is reached, the frontal cut is performed, keeping an upright posture of the upper body, without tensing the shoulder or bending forward and stopping the cut in the same starting position (sword never lower than the horizontal)

Yes, quite hard exercise, especially the first time that is practiced, but it requires a lot of focus in the cut and it is very good for training the legs and the balance. I will take some pics.. 😀

After this warming up (we took 100 cuts in “the legs nightmare“), Bob went through 5 interesting bokken kata from Koryu-Dai-San Tachi-Tai-Tachi, ie. sword against sword techniques: at the end of the page in that link there are the sword exercises movie.. uhm, not so technically great (I don’t want to see people at practice so tensed in the shoulders) but a good reference! Note that Bob does things slightly different!