Yesterday I posted in The Kendo Show - EARLY ACCESS group, asking for questions for today's KENDO RANT video. As I am at the British Kendo Association's summer seminar, I had the opportunity to meet up with one of my closest Kendo friends - Max Davies.
I thought it would be fun to get him involved so that we could go through the questions together. I hope you enjoy. Please let me know what else you would like to talk about next time :
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Because #kendoislife
I believe that it is ok to start learning Jodan or Nito after Sho Dan, after all it is your Kendo and you should be doing what you enjoy, but you better have thick skin, because you will come in for a lot of criticism, and advice from high grades that think they know about Jodan. When i decided to take up Jodan, there was nobody really in this country to teach me, i watched videos Of Chiba Sensai over and over again, trying to work out what he was doing and tried to practice this in the dojo, be prepared to get tsuki a lot and not necessarily on target, but dont give up, be self critical and if you can find a teacher ask them to show you a few techniques. As for suburi, i dont believe that you have to do this one handed, in fact i hardly ever practice 1 handed, i find that it puts to much strain on your elbow and you run the risk of getting tennis elbow. If you have good suburi from Chudan, then you are 90% of the way there. As for Nito, again when i started i did not have anyone to teach me, i learnt from Dvd’s and trying the techniques out over and over, luckily there is one sensai in the UK that i could go to for advice and when ever i see him, i get his advice . Dont forget, this is YOUR KENDO and you should do what you ENJOY, listen to advice, where ever it comes from, be polite, thank them and then go away and assess the advise, if it is good, take it on board, if you dont agree with it then discard it, just be prepared in the future to re examine what you thought was bad advise, maybe it just the case that you were not ready to learn what they were advising. Dont forget that Kendo is a never ending learning process. Have fun and enjoy playing Jodan and Nito.
Another great ‘rant’ episode. Thanks, guys!