Porres.com – Eric's Humble Place in Cyberspace

Tonight’s class was uncommonly acrobatic (the warmer it gets, the easier the limbs move). Lots of rolling in the beginning:

- rolling over metal sword
- rolling over three people crouched
- flipping over two stationary people (think of diving through)
- handstand flip (aided by extra belts!)

We then went into some randoori (randoori basically means that one person gets in the front of a line and the rest of the students attack that person; at the end of the line, the person up front switches, etc.), and essentially practiced basic gyakus but in an elaborate manner:
- Accelerate the pace of the oncoming attackers during the session, thereby eliminating time to ‘think’ about a technique
- Defend yourself using with one hand (literally) tied behind your back; watch the dynamics change, and how your footwork needs to be even better when one of your upper limbs is immobilized. It very much comes down to having your feet ahead of your opponent’s techique. When a gyaku is applied for example, you body position should be where your opponent is about to fall into, and not catching up to the fall.
- If you are going to the ground to bring your opponent to the ground, don’t move unnecessarily as you go to the ground; doing so can very easily unwork the technique quickly. Put another way, only do what you have to when you have to do it.

Practically speaking, for all the techniques that you can memorize, memorization is not the essence of a living art. The art lives if it moves and adapts; otherwise, techniques just become a historical reference.

Moving onto sword technique:
1) We worked on the ‘balance’ or ‘inflection’ point between where you attacker wants to attack you, where he doesn’t, where you purposely try to ‘bait’ your attacker into attacking you, and where you purposely do not want your attacker to attack. I also discovered in these techniques that with a wakizashi, if your general footwork and posture is correct from the beginning, the oncoming katana is surprisingly easy to defeat; simply outstretching your wakizashi will tag your opponent’s center line every time and you will not be cut (…reminder to check the angles of the blades in relation to time and distance at some point!).

2) The idea of stepping CCW 90 degrees (or so) and throwing the wakizashi over your shoulder; it basically is on its broadside and aligned with your opponent’s ginju.

Overall, understanding how to manipulate the sword in your hand/s (up to down, down to up, inside and out, cuts) is very important. And a real blade adds a certain precision and precise understanding of where and what your technique should evolve into!