My approach to shiai has been a very unrewarding one (but I wouldn’t trade it).

Belgium having a pretty decent level internationally and the community (and country) being small, a “hobby-kendo” guy like myself always ends up being the cannon-fodder of the bigger fish.

But I saw it as an opportunity to stand straight rather than electing to engage into “touch-kendo” as Hirikawa-sensei would call it. Rather than doing head dodges, I elected to try to take it (the hits, aite’s ippons) and use it as motivation to come up with a proper kendo response.

Better losing while doing tadashii-kendo than winning with moves that will ultimately make my progress in kendo stagnate further down the road.

It took me a decade, but now I’m starting to feel less of a headless chicken in shiai. Poise. Presence. Menace. If you’re not intimidated by any of mine and can read through my intentions, then you deserve to win and I’ll take it gracefully, and I’ll most probably still manage to learn something from it too!

Despite us being usually between 2 and 4 (at best) per training session, morale is holding. The training sessions have become less formal as a result though : we come in, decide on which aspect we want to work individually and as a group, I propose a menu on which we agree and then we simply get to it.

There were a few times when we were just two in the dojo. This is when we’d go for a little more experimentation. I remember us doing a count-down kihon-men drill (10 strikes each, then 9 strikes each, then 8, etc.. all the way down to 1) we did this drill a few times in a row, it kept us occupied almost 40 minutes. We were focusing on relaxing, cutting correctly and also we were trying to get in a certain mental place.

Anyway, I’d like next season to bring in more people of course, as it creates the necessary group dynamics but I’m surprised at how motivated we manage to remain despite our very small numbers.

 

Sometimes weird things happen in jigeiko. Beside all the machiken (people waiting for you to launch something in the hopes of doing ojiwaza but who are not pressuring nor have the intention of instigating anything) and the ones that are simply doing their jigeiko in a vacuum (people who are just gonna attack instead of trying to practice with someone and react/adapt to them).

But then there is this weird breed of practitioners who completely misjudge your skill level (and probably their own), because you are not practicing in a way they find impressive, I guess, while to you it is clear they are at best a few years behind. But then somehow, their ego allows them to comment what you do mid-jigeiko and open targets and give you compliments.

That one guy I remember from a seminar a few months back must’ve been thinking something like “you don’t cut small and nervous, you must be a kyu. Now is my chance to give you some 2nd dan coaching. Here. During this seminar. Full of nanadan japanese sensei and two hachidan sensei.”

My eyebrows just raise while I realise that this is happening and I just roll with it but… No my dude, I’m working on my kihon and want to hit you with big techniques before you land your attack and see if I can “punish” you with tadashii form for going into that bullshit sanpo-mamori. I mean we are at a seminar and the whole session has been about practicing correct kendo. Lighten up.

But I also had very pleasant jigeiko during that event.

The pleasant encounters are the ones where I try stuff and end up not being able to do anything because a proactive 5th/6th dan is baiting me and I still take it even though I realise traps are being set up for me.

Another type of pleasant jigeiko is simply when I feel both of us earnestly tried to work with each other and when we both manage to land good techniques that had an interesting build-up.

This being said, I want to go back to rambling a bit : I don’t know if it’s the late-third dan vibe but I’m like shaking my head a lot more at some of what I see during jigeiko in general.

During the jigeiko sessions I’ve done lately I went against two different breeds of 5th dan (just a reminder, I’m third-year 3rd dan) : There’s the “hikitate but still going in earnest so you don’t feel like you are being offered anything” type and the “no jigeiko, I’ll destroy you like this is shiai” type.

I’ve reached a point in my kendo where I don’t mind the latter, though I still consider it rude. I clearly very much prefer the former. Feeling that both participants has had a chance to take part to a conversation in a satisfactory manner is what jigeiko should be.

Last time sensei visited us, he said right before jigeiko, referring to people who block and dodge and are more concerned about not getting hit than actually training :

“Jigeiko is like playing chess, but sometimes you play chess against a pigeon : they knock over the pieces and shit all over the board… don’t be a pigeon”

He added :

“Yes, they might score a lot and they might think they’re good at kendo but they’re wrong. Even a broken watch is certain to be right twice a day.”