time to move

[Alicia]

Please excuse the rambly introduction to my question...

Last night I was having an argument with a friend of mine about what makes some people faster than others. The sort of person I am talking about is the one where you are both in chudan, theirs is quite low, and you know they are going to come under your shinai and hit your kote, because they do it quite often. So you stand there knowing they will hit kote, and thinking maybe you will do suriage men, or nuki, whatever, completely ready to move when they do. Then you don't even have time to blink and miss it, because he has already hit you. It is not my reaction time being too slow that I am wondering about here, it is the way that this guy can move on an instant with no warning at all. Putting myself in their situation, say someones has a low chudan, so their men is open, I just have to decide when to move. For me, If i know I am going to hit men, their is still a time from when I decide to move until I am physically doing the strike, I can't just not be moving, and then am hitting without consciously deciding to move then. I think that maybe the super amazing person I mentioned first maybe has less time to do this, or doesn't do it at all, it is not so much that they are physically faster, because kote is such a short distance that being a bit faster won't make that much more difference. I figured that the time between deciding to move and actually moving is what lets little wrinkly eighth dans read our minds so effectively.

Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree here, and don't get me wrong, I am not meaning that I think "I am going to hit kote now......KOTE" it is more like "when should I go....nowKOTE", but standing practising in my lounge now, it still takes time for me to actually mobilise. My friend didn't seem to grasp this concept, (even after an hour of trying to put it different ways) he reckons that he can just move without having to decide to, kind of as you can do in reaction to someone else moving first, (or like catching a ball someone throws at you, when you don't have to think about it, it is just automatic.)

Anyway my questions are, is this what may make a difference to the 'speed'/unpredictability of an attack, are there other people that feel they can just initiate the first move, from a standstill without having to think about it, and can this trait be learned/developed more, how to do this??
Any thoughts would be very much appreciated.

Thanlyou very much

[Kagerou]

Anyway my questions are, is this what may make a difference to the 'speed'/unpredictability of an attack, are there other people that feel they can just initiate the first move, from a standstill without having to think about it, and can this trait be learned/developed more, how to do this??
Any thoughts would be very much appreciated.

Thanlyou very much

Well first, the only way to get 'faster' is time. You have to know what to look for in a persons form and be able to pick up on it unconsciously. Think how long those wrinkly old hachidan have been doing kendo. They've seen it all and tried it all.

Second, if you know someone is going to hit you kote because of where their shinai is, why are you waiting for them? Just hit them. They've left themselves open in some other way by making it easy for them to hit kote. If you're not fast enough to beat them after they set up, shift back and make them reset then hit them. Don't walk into their setup. Or better yet, before they even set up in their favourite position hit them.

I can't do it in kendo yet, but in karate I don't really think about what I'm going to do before I do it unless it's something new I want to try. It took me about 15 years before I was able to do that so don't get discouraged. Basically just practice as often as you can with as many different people as you can otherwise you can predict their movements not because you understand kendo in general but because you know that particular person.

[Ignatz]

. . .It is not my reaction time being too slow that I am wondering about here, it is the way that this guy can move on an instant with no warning at all. . .

It's probably not so much that there is no warning but that you can't see the warning.
Also, I agree that you should not be "waiting" but attacking when your opponent give the opening is not necessarily the answer either. You should try to make him move rather than waiting for it. You need to be in control not being reactive.

[Alicia]

Thanks for the quick answers guys. I do know that I shouldn't put myself in the position of waiting for him to attack first, although with a most people, if you know what is coming then it is actually a pretty good way to score points, it just doesn't work here. So I don't actually just wait, because I know that he moves too quick for that, but in the past when I have... and sometimes it is almost a challenge, maybe this time I will be quicker.

What I am getting at is more what is the thought process going through his head that allows him to move on an instant (at least, significantly faster between not moving and cutting, than most people can, if not an instant.) whereas for me (and I assumed, most people) I have to make a conscious decision to move first at a certain time, and i can't strike at the same time as making that decision. I am just suggesting maybe this time, between deciding and full blown attack, is what contributes towards his speed versus most people.

Aargh this is not very clear at all, sorry...

[Kagerou]

Unfortunately I don't think anyone can say what's going on in their head just before they attack. It's not a long lasting thought...at least for me.

Try this. Next time you get into that situation and you get hit, STOP and ask yourself why you just got hit. Were you breathing out at the time? Did your eyes fix on a certain part of him? Did you get 'comfortable' in your stance and settle into place? Might help you understand the situation better.

[shred_lord]

Two points (one of which doesn't answer the question you asked)

1) I've been considering a theory I call Progressive Mushin.
When we start kendo, in order to cut our thought processes go something like this.

I want to cut
I will cut now
I will push the right foot and left foot forward
I will lift the shinai and kick off
I will snap the cut, kiai and stamp my foot
I will continue though and turn

Then it becomes
I want to cut
I will cut now

The cut occurs automatically (some mushin)

I will continue though and turn

Then it becomes
There is an opportunity to cut (created or otherwise)
I will cut now

The cut occurs automatically and you go through (more mushin)

Then it becomes
There is an opportunity to cut (created or otherwise)

The cut occurs automatically and you go through (even more mushin)

Then it becomes
An opportunity to cut appears (created or otherwise) and the cut occurs automatically and you go through (mushin)
So, as you progress, more and more of the active thought processes are replaced with autonomous action.

The only way to get to the end of this scale is step by step and the method is through lots of keiko.

Of course, I just made this up, so it might be balls.
2) Good oji waza is not about waiting for them to cut even if you know what they will cut. You need to when they will cut. The way to do this is either being an excellent judge of their mental state, or by telling them to cut at a time of you choice. Preferably both.

[Alicia]

Thank you gareth, that is what I was getting at, I think that seems to describe it quite nicely. I think i am currently at step number 3, that is nice, it is halfway. I think sometimes the last step can happen, especially in shiai or jigeiko, when responding to the opponents unexpected move, but what about at for example the start of a fight, when the opponent may have a weak centre/low kamae, so men is open, but you don't take it as soon as the opening is there (ie before hajime). Is it still possible to cut this automatically, at some arbitrary time, without consciously deciding to?




Good oji waza is not about waiting for them to cut even if you know what they will cut. You need to when they will cut. The way to do this is either being an excellent judge of their mental state, or by telling them to cut at a time of you choice. Preferably both.

And thank you very much for this reminder about oji waza, of course, you are very correct, I know this, this is a very timely reminder, thankyou!!!

[ZtefaNNN[K]]

my personal take on this is, very similar to above, you´re thinking too much, receive that kote once, but watch him carefully, then just don´t get hit again by it. recognize it.

[Stephen]

In kendo one of my first teachers told me not to try and be quick as speed is something that comes with time - like other have already mentioned. However, physically speaking, some people can naturally react quicker than others. I hope I'm not mixing my terms up, but I believe these people have white instead of red twitch fibres in their muscles (I really think I've confused one or more of those terms, but you get the gist). Although this is the case, speed can be developed outside of the dojo (often in a gym) - for example, not every sprinter has white twitch fibres, however at the top level almost all have good reaction times to the gun. Thus, speed isn't always just due to the thought process (although this is a big part), but also due to natural physical make up and conditioning.

With this said however, unless your really really eager it probably wouldn't be worth the effort, and with time, patience and practice the speed will come.

[skilled]

Do you know how Eiga beat Miyazaki? , he didn't lost time thinking he was going for men, he just did his attacks by reaction , I think that is what makes fast people, if you think too much you're dead.

^^



Please excuse the rambly introduction to my question...

Last night I was having an argument with a friend of mine about what makes some people faster than others. The sort of person I am talking about is the one where you are both in chudan, theirs is quite low, and you know they are going to come under your shinai and hit your kote, because they do it quite often. So you stand there knowing they will hit kote, and thinking maybe you will do suriage men, or nuki, whatever, completely ready to move when they do. Then you don't even have time to blink and miss it, because he has already hit you. It is not my reaction time being too slow that I am wondering about here, it is the way that this guy can move on an instant with no warning at all. Putting myself in their situation, say someones has a low chudan, so their men is open, I just have to decide when to move. For me, If i know I am going to hit men, their is still a time from when I decide to move until I am physically doing the strike, I can't just not be moving, and then am hitting without consciously deciding to move then. I think that maybe the super amazing person I mentioned first maybe has less time to do this, or doesn't do it at all, it is not so much that they are physically faster, because kote is such a short distance that being a bit faster won't make that much more difference. I figured that the time between deciding to move and actually moving is what lets little wrinkly eighth dans read our minds so effectively.

Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree here, and don't get me wrong, I am not meaning that I think "I am going to hit kote now......KOTE" it is more like "when should I go....nowKOTE", but standing practising in my lounge now, it still takes time for me to actually mobilise. My friend didn't seem to grasp this concept, (even after an hour of trying to put it different ways) he reckons that he can just move without having to decide to, kind of as you can do in reaction to someone else moving first, (or like catching a ball someone throws at you, when you don't have to think about it, it is just automatic.)

Anyway my questions are, is this what may make a difference to the 'speed'/unpredictability of an attack, are there other people that feel they can just initiate the first move, from a standstill without having to think about it, and can this trait be learned/developed more, how to do this??
Any thoughts would be very much appreciated.

Thanlyou very much

[Moose]

Think about when you learned to ride a bike...... You had to think about every movement. It was the same when you learned to drive a car. Everything was difficult and it seemed there was not enough time to change gear etc. Now you do these things without thinking. If a child runs out in front of you do you think before you hit the brakes? No! you just do it. How many times when driving do you just know that the idiot in front is going to do something stupid?

How do you get this to happen in Kendo? ...... Do more kendo!

[Charlie]

If it helps, this was a good thread on a similar subject:

http://www.kendo-world.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15976

It addressed the type of player who is fast, favors often a low kamae and a close maai.

[enkorat]

Hello,

I also had a similar situation, and perhaps I can provide another perspective. For a while I thought "wow he/she's 'faster', I cannot possibly win against a 'faster' person"

What it really was describing wasn't faster, but the opponent was able to hit from chudan no kamae from a complete standstill. Operationally, this meant being able to hit with more opportunities because they didn't need to adjust their weight distribution with 'tsugiashi' or a 'stutter-step' before actually hitting, and less telegraphing.

On the other hand, since my weight distribution was off between my feet, and the mechanics of my cut were slightly off, I would often do a 'tsugiashi' or start from toma and disguise my adjustment steps as a stepping in from toma as a form of seme. This either forced me to fight from only one maai, or left me in a situation where every hit I tried was preceeded by a telegraphing move. This made me 'slower' not because I was physically a slower person, but because I didn't have an economy of movement in my kendo, and my opponents who did had more opportunities to hit me while I would only have one.

When I was at this stage about a half a year ago I thought it was mostly a mental thing, that I was hesitating just like you, and in a sense I was, but a large component of it also was a technical/physical thing.

Its hard to guess without seeing your kendo, but your story about standing in chudan and being picked off sounds very familiar to me. When these things happened to me I was essentially losing to a degote because they could hit from a standstill, and I could not.

Hope that helps

[Rob W.]

If you don't mind talking about it, can you describe how you changed your weight distribution? Or maybe what you changed your weight distribution to? I've been thinking about similar things in regards to wasted movement lately.

[enkorat]

Well, to a certain extent the instruction I received was tailored to my particular flaws so I don't quite know how well it will be translatable to others. Bare in mind also that I was training to take my nidan shinsa, so a lot of instruction I was receiving was prefaced with "yes this was okay when you were a <nikkyu, ikkyu, shodan> but now...". So in a lot of ways this was specific to my own flaws at a specific point in my training, and what I was working on might not apply to others yet.

The "symptom" of one of the mistakes I was doing was a tsugiashi or "stutter step" immediately preceeding an attempted strike, so that all of my strike were essentially two step wazas. The tsugiashi was fairly small, so for some it wasn't too noticible, but for others who knew what to look for it was a fairly obvious weakness.

The root cause of this was that I had too much weight on my front right foot in my normal stance, so that in order to move my weight to the back left foot I either had to rock back on my rear foot (which looked like I was "standing taller" for a brief second) or by pulling the rear left foot foward slightly to redistribute my weight to the back foot and then push off. Often times both "solutions" would also cause the heel of my left foot to touch the ground.

To solve this problem, I first was taught to conceptualize the feeling that I was about to walk on a frozen lake, so the feeling was "testing" out the surface with my right foot. The goal was to shift almost all of my weight to my rear foot (90%), and keep the left heel off the ground while doing so (also there was an adjustment on where my upper body was centered over my legs as well). Although this isn't "correct" in terms of kendo stances, it was one to teach my body to learn how it feels like to have my weight off my right foot, second to strengthen my rear left leg muscles so that it could maintain the heel off the floor. I had about 2 months of one weekly practice where I did all of my suburi warmup and motodachi receiving with that weight distribution. I also when doing waza practice was restricted to practicing men from only one step, with the key of only hitting with one step, and never letting my heel touch the floor.

As I got more accustomed to feeling my weight that way, and as my leg got stronger, I was told to redistribute my weight closer to 50/50, but to still keep that feeling from 90/10.

As the weight distribution changed and the stutter step went away, I was told (and this is what I'm still working on now), is to make my fumikomi more "lateral" and parallel to the floor, and to make it longer.

I don't know if I would attempt doing this alone, as I had very close supervision and a lot of feedback while I was correcting the initial problem...

[cesarekim]

Alicia,
On the point about your problems with someone who is quicker/stronger than you and can hit you at will, there is one comment that comes to mind: don't allow them to get to their uchi-ma... If you give up the safety zone represented by the "one step to attack distance" (Issokuittō-no-maai) and are in their "just attack distance" (uchi-ma) you are giving up any and all safety margins and transforming the match into a speed draw where your opponent has the advantage. Sounds obvious but I have a heck of a time maintaining this distance without backing up continuously.

As far as developing immediate attacks is concerned, you probably will need to do a LOT of uchikomigeiko and kagarigeiko if you want your body to be able to attack as soon as it sees an opening. Being able to blast away at 100 mph from stand still is something that you can develop as well but I think there is a limit which is dictated by your body... You can train endurance but there is a limit to how much speed/rapidity you can gain through training. Some people are just quicker... Neil Sensei and more experienced people please correct me on this as I may be making a totally silly remark....

HTH

[Rob W.]

Well, to a certain extent...

Thanks for the reply. Even when it's not directly applicable to my kendo it's always informative and interesting to hear how other people are working through their personal kendo problems and solutions.

[Shazzanzzz]

It's more about techniques and confidence instead of reaction time or thought process in my opinion.
With anything, not just kendo, if you know what you're doing, you don't really think about it, you just do it.
Of course there also seme. You have to always be proactive in kendo to keep up your readiness. This is even more true if you like to counter a lot. To be able to do counters, you have to be more ready than the other person.
Weight distribution is important, as is correct technique to push off, like not raising your right foot, what muscles to loosen & tighten to keep up your readiness, posture, hip facing forward, feet and arms timing, how to use your wrist & fingers for the strike.
What worked for me is that I just try to correct myself in ji-geiko of all those things. Sometimes I start forgetting about them, so then i have to work on the same things again... It's like a cycle for me, I work on this then a work on something else, but I have to come back to the same thing eventually... But usually I come back with a better perspective of things.

My sensei told me before to learn first how to hit, then learn when to hit, then learn when NOT to hit. It's a progression, don't worry about your timing so much at first. Just try to get all the techniques down first. But one thing to pay attention to also is if you are leaning in and moving your shinai before your feet moves. If you do that, then people can snipe your kote very easily.

[KendoMom]

Morning,

I can really relate to this discussion - time and time again I'm told, I'm thinking too much (and hence, getting pummeled).

I've come to the conclusion my reactions will speed up after time (and time, and time, and ....)....

KendoMom

[1stdan]

Hey Alicia, I am not t that point yet with my Kendo, but i have sparred manytimes in other fighting arts, so heres my humble 2 cents. I notice from what you stated that it seems your standing still. Hope i did not read that wrong, but I think you should be moving all the time so as to hide your technique with the motion of your body. That didnt come out so good but I think you will get my drift. Also Try setting your opponent up for something. I am not an expert, but there is a concept called the OODA loop. This speaks to what someone sais earlier. The OODA loop is the process your mind goes thru with Every action you take. The is this, Observe...Orient...Decide...Act. I don't think you can be that in control of your own loop, without lots of practice, but you can disrupt your opponents loop. I think the idea is to keep your opponent in ht OO part of the loop long enough to get an opening for your attack. Also i agree with the previous posters, you need to attack first and not be reacting. Hope some of this helps, and sorry about the long post.