Slow slow slow

[KamuSan]

I'm not a really athletic kind of guy. This Saturday we practised fumikomi (?) the big step forward with the nice bang on the floor.
We did a fun excercise where we had to hit the other's hand and then step backwards, the other person had to avoid the hitting hand and try to touch the retreating guy in a nice lunge.

Well, hitting the guy's hand and going backwards went really well, but jumping forward doesn't go too well. I'm heavy and my right foot hurts (holiday hiking injury, see thread 'instep pain' for the symptoms, I now tape my foot, it helps!). So I just can't make this big, fast step forward. :-(

In other martial arts my heavy build (not only heavy weight, I know I'm too fat, but I'm also heavy built) can be used as an advantage. In karate I just move closer and use a lot of punches. In sports like jujutsu and judo I can make my strength and weight count. In aikido I just rotate around a lot, which is much faster than moving mass.
But in kendo you seem to have a big advantage when you're light and fast and I see little way to use strength or mass to an advantage (without KO-ing my partner 8-) ).

Any ideas about strategies to offset my disadvantage?

[kendokamax]

I think it may also be an advantage to be a bit "fat" for kendo. It can give heaviness to the hits which is very good.

Many very strong kendo player arent that light.

In my case im too light for kendo. haha

[Danny Boy]

This is a strong generalisation, but: big guys are better at keeping a strong straight centre (chudan), they can taitairi much more efficiently :evil: , it is more difficult to overcome their spirit.
Additionally techniques that are designed to kill the opponents sword are very often succesfully executed by the bigger/stronger kendoka.
Unless they lack focus/concentration, its a real pain in the backside to fight the big guys.

[Raiza]

Any ideas about strategies to offset my disadvantage?

Do.more.kendo.

Don't worry about the weight, just concentrate on recovering from your foot injury and training as best you can. I've seen "big" guys do extremely well doing good clean kendo. You may think you're slow now, but in a couple of years you'll be looking at an old kendo video of yourself and saying, "Was I really that slow? Wow, I'm so much faster now."
Your overall strategy will be a combination of what your Sensei teaches you, what your body is willing to do and what your mind wants you to do. You'll have to explore that for yourself and that takes time, so please be patient.

[mingshi]

Arrrrgh I want to put on more weight!!! I have been eating a lot of ice cream and drinking a lot of beer all summer, together with a lot of keiko and suburi. NONE OF THEM WORKS!!

Does anyone have any advice on training/diet on gaining weight as well???

[Neil Gendzwill]

Does anyone have any advice on training/diet on gaining weight as well???
http://www.trygve.com/mfw_faq.html#whattoeat

[Shazzanzzz]

From my personal obervation of doing kendo, not being fat, but, being strong in kendo gives you a lot of advantages. For example, when both person goes for a hit and collides, and both have good forms and both hit at the same time, the one who is weaker will usually be knocked backwards (more force, F=ma). Then, if you follow that with a hiki waza, you have a good chance of getting a point. I think having strength helps you in tsubazeriai and if you do wazas that attacks the shinai, being strong always helps if done right. Plus, it would be harder for your opponents to push you out of bounce if you're stronger/heavier/fatter in a tournament. Also, it would be easier for you to force your opponent out of bounce because of your strength if you're aggressive enough. I don't mean just pushing people out of bounce, but, attacking straight forward and forcing them to go backwards.

I would say, strategy would be to keep attacking and keep going straight forward. If you're really THAT big, I would think a lot of people will be pretty intimidated.

[hobbit]

I don't want to upset you Mingshi, but I've been drinking lots of beer & eating chips & chocolate & icecream for 30+(ish) years, and my weight hasn't varied by more than a couple of kilos. If your body won't let you, you won't put it on. :disapp: I'd love to be able to put a few pounds on my fighting weight.

[Atama]

[QUOTE=mingshi]Arrrrgh I want to put on more weight!!! I have been eating a lot of ice cream and drinking a lot of beer all summer, together with a lot of keiko and suburi. NONE OF THEM WORKS!!

Does anyone have any advice on training/diet on gaining weight as well???[/QUOTE

Hey Mingshi you can have some of my wieght if you want, I just have to walk past MacDonalds and I gain 10lb.

If you find hard to gain wieght try a high carb diet it could help.

Oh yeah and I hate you (joking) :silly:

[Tako-kun]

Mingshi: have you tried this (http://www.crab.rutgers.edu/~alroche/3beefcake.gif)?

[KamuSan]

Haha, thanks people, I feel a lot better now :-)
So I do have a future in kendo. I'll just swat those jumpy people around ;-)

Mingshi, I'd donate some of my body weight if I could ;-)

[Karaken]

Arrrrgh I want to put on more weight!!! I have been eating a lot of ice cream and drinking a lot of beer all summer, together with a lot of keiko and suburi. NONE OF THEM WORKS!!

Does anyone have any advice on training/diet on gaining weight as well???

3-4 Dunkin Donuts for breakfast ( Krispy Kreme is better ) gurantees weight gain. It'll be hard to take them off though..

Center.

[Yowai]

You're all disillusional.

1. Strikes with excessive power -> Slow + 1 point + chance of injuring opponent or partner. (aka friend)
Strikes without excessive power -> 1 point.
Which one do you want?
2. If your opponent tackles you when establishing tsubazeriai, let yourself be pushed back without any resistance and perform a hikiwaza. (Don't start the waza before the tsuba meet) Note these points:
-Your opponent is less psychologically concentrated than you, since you are simply staying put and the opponent is tackling.
-The speed of the hikiwaza is extremely fast because your opponent accelerated your body backwards for you. Any attempt by the opponent at uchiotoshi or suriage counter waza will not work. Since you are travelling backwards so quickly, the counter-waza will be too slow to reach you.
3. If your opponent pushes you in tsubazeriai, let yourself be pushed back without any resistance to your opponents hands. Note these points:
-Your opponent is off-balanced if he/she pushed with the hips
-Your opponent's hands are uselessly outstretched if he/she pushed with the hands.
-Either the above two points results in a sukidarake opponent, allowing hikiwaza to be performed with ease.
-Same situation with the lack of threat of a counter to a hikiwaza as with the tackling pointer, since your opponent has pushed your body backwards for you.

All in all, there is no advantage in being heavy, only disadvantages in regards to speed.

[KamuSan]

But if I do tsubazeriai, then I don't have to push with hands or hips? I just move into his space. When my partner is off-balance I can hit. I think if you push someone back with tsubazeriai and he is not off-balance, then your tsubazeriai is not right. I could be wrong, though.

[Shazzanzzz]

When I said strength is an advantage in tsubazeriai, i didn't mean pushing people off balance. Because, an experience kenshi will always use your strength to his advantage and strike you while you push, because when you push, you can't attack.
What I meant was, that, if your opponent pushes you, and if you are strong, you don't really have to push back to resist his push. Like, if you do hiki do, you would push the opponents hand down so when they try to push up, you hit the do. If you're strong, you won't have to push up to resist him. Then again, if you're strong and the opponent is weak, and he knows it, and you try to push his hand down, he'll probably try to push up since he's afraid you'll do a hiki men, then you can go for the do. Or if he doesn't push up, go for the men. The opponent is at your mercy if you're stronger, i think. I hope this makes sense... This is what I think, anyways, I'm always open to comments and criticism, since I'm still relatively new to kendo.

Then again, if an opponent pushes your hand down at tsubazeriai, you can always go down with him and back up and do a really big men. I've done that many times myself... Kendo is so complicated...

[KamuSan]

Cool, so much to learn, so much to try :-))
Can't wait for my next training!

[Yowai]

When I said strength is an advantage in tsubazeriai, i didn't mean pushing people off balance. Because, an experience kenshi will always use your strength to his advantage and strike you while you push, because when you push, you can't attack.
What I meant was, that, if your opponent pushes you, and if you are strong, you don't really have to push back to resist his push. Like, if you do hiki do, you would push the opponents hand down so when they try to push up, you hit the do. If you're strong, you won't have to push up to resist him. Then again, if you're strong and the opponent is weak, and he knows it, and you try to push his hand down, he'll probably try to push up since he's afraid you'll do a hiki men, then you can go for the do. Or if he doesn't push up, go for the men. The opponent is at your mercy if you're stronger, i think. I hope this makes sense... This is what I think, anyways, I'm always open to comments and criticism, since I'm still relatively new to kendo.

Then again, if an opponent pushes your hand down at tsubazeriai, you can always go down with him and back up and do a really big men. I've done that many times myself... Kendo is so complicated...

Pushing your opponent's hand up or down to get an advantage in tsubazariai is a foul. The two shinai should meet just above the tsuba and the angle between the shinai and the vertical should be equal to your opponent's angle. (creating an equal X)
If 'struggling' at tsubazariai is allowed, what is there to prevent 150kg Joe from putting his hands above 8th dan old man's hands at tsubazeriai and push down to rip his arms out of its sockets.

[Neil Gendzwill]

Pushing your opponent's hand up or down to get an advantage in tsubazariai is a foul.
Show me the rule on this one. Pushing your opponent's hands up, down or sideways is standard technique to create openings from tsuba-zeriai. I know there are some recent changes to do with how you make contact there, but from the standard tsuka-crossed position there is lots of room to move your opponent around.

As to size being an advantage: absolutely it is an advantage. Of course small and quick can defeat big and slow, but when you run into big and fast then you're in trouble. I can think of quite a few people that use their size to good advantage. Being tall makes it easier to hit men, being strong makes it easier to control your opponent from tsuba-zeriai, being heavy and strong makes your taiatari stronger. I agree with you that hitting harder isn't one of the benefits, it's rather a weakness that nearly every big guy has to overcome - the tendency to overmuscle the swing.

[Shazzanzzz]

I'm sure you are an experienced kenshi who knows a lot about kendo. But, I really don't know if pushing your opponent's hands up and down and to the sides is a foul. I mean, you're still allowed to move your hands around, aren't you? at tsubazariai? I guess it's not really pushing, but redirecting your opponent's hands if you rather me say that...

That technique which you push down then go for the do doesn't really work against people with a lot of experience, since they never push back. But, if you mix it up a little bit, could still work. It's all about the strategy.

I've seen people getting fouls for hooking people at tsubazariai, but not for what what I'm talking about. I'm pretty sure what I'm talking about is legal, maybe it's just hard to see what I'm talking about. I've read the thing I talked about on books...

Trust me, if a 150kg joe try to lock down a sensei's hand, the sensei will beat him up... I would think there would be like a million ways he can think of to deal with it. One of them I wrote in my previous post. Anyways, out of respect, no one should ever do that to a hachidan!

[Neil Gendzwill]

Anyways, out of respect, no one should ever do that to a hachidan!
If you're playing someone like that, they're not interested in tsuba-zeriai. Back out to normal distance and try again.

[alexpollijr]

There has been a recent change over tsubazeri-ai rules.
Willian Fujikura, a brazilian player on the last WKC, got 2 hansoku when fighting Ando (JPN) because of illegal tsubazeri. It seems that now you have to stand knuckle-to-knuckle, 'knuckle-over-knuckle' is not allowed.

So it seems that use of brute strenght when in tsubazeri-ai will give you a foul now.

Anyone can confirm this?

- Alexandre

[jmarsten]

This is not a new rule, it has been in affect for the last two WKC's. It just takes the world kendo community awhile to absorb it. Then of course there are those who don't listen or observe very well at the shimpan seminars. The gist of the rule is that tsuba-zeriai is defined as being tsuba to tsuba/fist to fist. This means you may not get on top of the other persons tsuba with your fist and hold them down. You may not reach in behind with the tsuka and hold, you may not use the blade portion of the shinai to hold down a persons wrists. You may still push and use waza of this type (spinning) to initiate a waza such as hiki-men, etc...
You may not lay the blade portion on the persons shoulder when at tsuba-zeriai. In all of this, incidental contact is allowed, blatant man-handling of the opponent will get you a hansoku. If you watch the 50th AJKF Championships or the 12 WKC you can see that the waza are allowed.
This is not to say that are not a few zealous shimpan out there, I have seen a few that over enforce the rule. There are also the ones that are oblivious to this rule and to obvious stalling which is a hansoku.

[Neil Gendzwill]

Thank-you, Marsten-sensei. That makes things much clearer.

[Shazzanzzz]

Neil, I do back away most of the times when I get to tsubazeriai with a hachidan sensei. It's not like I can do anything from there anyways against him. I do do some simple hiki wazas, like hiki men sometimes though, so he can tell me if I'm doing anything wrong.

[Shazzanzzz]

Yea, thank you Marsten sensei for clarifying everything.