Porres.com – Eric's Humble Place in Cyberspace

Good day. We worked with swords this evening. The specific techinique involves an attacker drawing a sword; the defense is as follows:

1) If you have the stones, come in to stop the sword from being drawn.
2) If you step in, but your opponent can pull the sword out into seigan, obviously you don’t want to be at the tip. This leaves you with several options:
a) Don’t be in no man’s land (like tennis!). This is a sure way to get cut.
b) Slap the sword with the flat of your hand while moving in. Yes, it is possible to have your hand parallel to the sword without being cut.
c) “Hold your opponent 1″ There is a mid-way point between you and your opponent such that he must raise his sword into daijodan in order to reach out and strike you. As he lifts into daijodan, move in and strike as his hands are above his head.
d) “Hold your opponent 2″ Same mid-way point…opponent moves into daijodan and strikes; step out of the way and disarm.

I noticed in this technique that the first movement is VERY important (like setting a trap, you are already one step ahead of the next move); if your movement brings your opponent into an ‘elongated seigan,’ he is more likely to come up into daijodan and strike right away; if your first move is slightly further away, you can hold him in seigan, then hold him in daijodan, and then have the option of fight or flight as he brings the sword down.

Try these techniques with real swords (or swords with practice blades). You will find that the weight of the sword feels much different; you should also find that you will probably not brandish the sword as quickly as you would with a bokken, shinai, or leather-wrapped daisho. The sword must first travel out of the scabbard, and it is highly unlikely that your left hand will be immediately at the ready when the sword is out; you use your left hand to balance the scabbard as you draw.

Anyway, there are subtle timing interactions that are very interesting.