Reaching a plateau (kinda long)

[tango]

I have a real, real problem.

My instructor (Harry Dach, for anyone Stateside that may have heard of him) has been playing and teaching kendo for about 20 years. His teaching is very good and I have ZERO complaints. (He studied in Japan for 10+ years and has a very good knowledge... but that was many, many years ago). Our class size has varied anywhere from 4 to 12 students over the past 7 years, with only about 4 who are real 'regulars'.

The regular senior students in the class are sandan, sandan, nidan(that's me), and an ikkyu.
We have a few beginners that are just now getting into bogu.

One of our sandans is Japanese, but he was out of kendo for a long while and didn't pick it back up until he moved to our fair city for work. (He received his nidan and sandan here in the States).

Anyway -- and I'm hoping to sound as humble as I can right now -- my proficiency has basically reached the same level as that of the other senior students. My sensei has really been teaching so long and has not had the opportunity to study under Japanese instructors for many, many years. I don't want to say that I think my sensei has nothing more to offer me, but I think I've reached a plateau that I can't seem to get off. This has been going on for a couple years now.

Of course, the easy solution would be to visit other dojos, but the problem with that is that the closest dojo to my city is about 400+ miles away.

Additionally, I have a very strange work schedule that doesn't mesh well with our once-a-week practice. I can go to class 4 weeks in a row, but then I have to miss class for 4 weeks in a row. Unfortunately, we can't seem to get more than one night a week to practice (and it's been this way for several years now). The minimal practice and on-4-week/off-4-week schedule is obviously not helping me get off my plateau.

It's very disheartening to go to class and get in front of the same (4 or 5) people. We have all gotten to know each others' styles/strengths/weaknesses over the years and I don't feel as if I'm really progressing. This has also added to my anxiety of testing for sandan (at some point.. I'm about 2 years overdue for that).
Although the rank doesn't really matter to me, the kind of kendo that I should be doing (and WANT to be doing) is not even close to sandan level (IMO).

Does anybody have any kind of advice?

Thanks for listening,
t.

[tango]

I should probably add that this situation is not really motivating me well. Often I feel like I'm too much in "teacher" mode since we have so many beginners.

And I find it difficult to work on more advanced techniques/concepts/waza when I'm front of a beginner. I find it difficult to work on much of anything when I'm getting.... "sub-par" attacks thrown at me. I don't know.. this might just a problem with me. I just don't want to develop bad waza by using it against improper attacks. (Hope that makes sense). Additionally, I find myself holding back a little bit because I'm deathly afraid that doing various waza on them will discourage them and cause them to stop coming to class.

Two problems are that (1) there are not enough experienced people in the class that allow me (or them) to practice with quality players.. i.e., I don't get enough good, quality keiko against quality players, and (2) many people don't seem to have the desire to stay with kendo. I think this might be a cultural thing with most Americans.. not really sure. They want to jump into keiko as soon as possible without putting forth the effort to learn proper footwork and suburi. It's frustrating to get new people and have them not stick around for longer than 3 or 4 months.

Anyway, sorry to ramble..
Here's some more questions:

What's the best way to work on MY kendo when faced with the situation I'm in?
With beginners, every once in a while, I'll throw in some kind of waza on em to keep em honest (but sometimes, it starts getting them into a defensive mode.. not good) .. Would it help me to concentrate more on visualizing movement and attack against them?

working with so many beginners also slows me down tremendously. My footwork goes almost right out the window and this affects me in a negative way when I get in front of a more experienced player.

Gosh, the more I think about it, the more depressed I get!

Help!

[JSchmidt]

I think the trick is to get inspiration from the outside. It helped me tremendously after moving down here to NZ (Where, AFAIK, I'm the only jodan player). I managed to take some huge steps backwards, but got pointed in the right direction after a taikai in Australia and are (partly) for the same reason going on 'vacation' (hah!) in Japan in 10 days time (yay!).
I realised that if I wanted to stick with jodan (and I do), I was going to need outside help.
So..even if you can arrange going away for a weekend to a seminar, or taking a week in an area with lots of kendo (Southern California or NYC by the sounds of it), it might give you inspiration and ideas of how to improve and what to work on.
I've also found books & videos a great source for inspiration, something I barely looked at while I was living in London, as I got all the variation I could wish for :).

Jakob

[Shazzanzzz]

Tango-san,
I think if you practice with a lot of beginners, you should practice your basics with them. For me, i help instruct in my school club, and teaching the beginners help me a lot because then when I tell them to do certain things, I pay attention to those thing a lot more myself. So, if your footwork goes out of the window sometimes, maybe you can work on how it won't do that, just a suggestion :).


I don't think you should stop practicing wazas on the beginners because you're afraid they'll be discouraged. I mean, you need to practice, too, so be a little selfish. And, if that beginner have the right mind set, he would want to learn how to do the waza instead of get discouraged.

[PhilMcLaughlin]

Hi Tango

Its a common problem - youre not alone

when you are in sempai mode - concentrate hard on making your own technique perfect (Well you know what i mean) If youre fencing the beginners do it with impeccable technique

You also need to travel - theres no option about that one

good luck

[Neil Gendzwill]

when you are in sempai mode - concentrate hard on making your own technique perfect (Well you know what i mean) If youre fencing the beginners do it with impeccable technique


Just to expand on Phil's point - you don't need to beat up your beginners. Look for an opportunity for a really good point, and execute it completely. Hit sharply, good kiai, and most important finish it completely - go through, turn around, zanshin, the whole bit. It's very easy to get lazy playing beginners, tap them and just spin while they go sailing by. So just take a few really nice points, and execute them as well as you can. The rest of the time, think about your posture, how centred you are, all that stuff.

Edited to add that you really need to find a way to practice more. Once a week, month on month off, it's almost impossible to improve.

[Catherine]

Hi - it sounds like a difficult situation.

I agree with the other comments in relation to practising against junior grades - use that as a time to make sure that your basics are spot on and then only make cuts that would score as ippon against them.

In Australia we also have distance problems. The tradition of the 'sandan tour' has grown up. This is that when someone wants to challenge sandan, they declare their intention to their club to work towards sandan and then go on a tour visiting other dojos for the express purpose of gaining kendo experience for challenging sandan. This also garners you some support outside your club for a difficult task and helps you get to know other kendoka (always a good thing!)

Maybe you could set yourself the goal of challenging sandan and then ask the help of the people in your dojo to work towards that goal.

Also, you didn't say what training you were doing for kendo outside the dojo. Training outside of the dojo is very important, especially if you can only do dojo training 4 times every 8 weeks.

In Australia one kendoka was the sensei of a small club. This kendoka did suburi every day at home and this was what helped him acheive his godan.

Another sensei of mine suggested that it would be beneficial for me to feel comfortable holding my shinai - he suggested that when I watch TV in the evenings I could hold my shinai and make small cuts. This is to get the feel of the shinai (rather than doing suburi).

Lots of things are coming to mind - but I won't overload my post.

Just one final thing - kata is important for sandan - you only need 2 people for kata. Maybe another kendoka in your dojo might agree to do kata practice with you. This could be another way that you could increase your regular kendo practice.

Good luck.

Catherine

[tango]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I really think the biggest problems lie within myself. I think instead of being appreciative of even having people to practice kendo with, I've gotten kind of selfish -- for lack of a better term.. perhaps "a loss of humility" is a better way of putting it.

And I think this has been building for about a year now. Things were really, really going well with my training until right after our regional tournament two years ago. We had a problem where we lost our venue for practice and we went from 2 or 3 times a week to ZERO practice for about 8 or 9 months. It was very disheartening and we've just now started things up again.

Still, even after the long, long break from kendo, I'm feel like I'm not getting the good challenge that I need to progress. After writing all this stuff last night, I read the article on the front page of this website ("Hanshi says..") which has already started to put things back into perspective, and I think instead of finding problems with training and our class, I need to work on my personal problems and mental obstacles.

I think finding this website is really going to help me get that spark back.




Maybe you could set yourself the goal of challenging sandan and then ask the help of the people in your dojo to work towards that goal.

I don't know why I didn't think of this last night, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. I work at FedEx and we're supposed to be getting our jumpseat privledges back after the first of the year. Hopefully, I can motivate myself to get on one of our planes on my days off and fly to some different dojos. This will arguably be the best situation I can throw myself into. ... and it's certainly cheaper for me to fly on a FedEx plane than drive anywhere... faster, too ;) just so long as I can borrow a shinai once I get there, since FedEx probably won't let me ride in the cockpit with a shinai anymore. haha..


Also, you didn't say what training you were doing for kendo outside the dojo. Training outside of the dojo is very important, especially if you can only do dojo training 4 times every 8 weeks.

True. Working on that. Suburi and some light weight lifting are going on. Not as much suburi as I should be doing, though.


Just one final thing - kata is important for sandan - you only need 2 people for kata. Maybe another kendoka in your dojo might agree to do kata practice with you. This could be another way that you could increase your regular kendo practice.

Thanks for your thoughts, Catherine and everybody else.
Fortunately, the kata here in Memphis is very, very good. In the past, we would always do kata at the beginning of class, but we kinda got away from it after a couple of us made nidan. We're starting to get back into it now, which is good.

Typing all this stuff out has been really good for me, so I'm thankful that kendo-world has set up this message board. A lot of the problem does lie with me -- not my instructor or anyone else. In retrospect, I think I've just been going through the motions at practice.. my mind just hasn't been in the right place for a while.

Who says getting off a plateau is only physical? Maybe it's been a mental plateau for me and maybe this is the start of getting off of that and moving up.

Thanks to everyone for helping me to think.

-Rogers

[Paul Kerr]

Tango,
Somewhat tangenitally, a very nice little book you might try reading is Mastery, by George Leonard. He's a writer and aikidoka and writes very well in this book about the learning curve and its associated plateaus. Although he uses aikido as his primary anecdotal source, the lessons are applicable to any art.

Rgds

[tango]

cool.. thanks for the tip.

i'll keep an eye out for it. ;)

[tango]

I think the trick is to get inspiration from the outside.[...]
I've also found books & videos a great source for inspiration, something I barely looked at while I was living in London, as I got all the variation I could wish for :).

Jakob

Thanks for that.. Several years ago, I had an old tape of the All-Japan Police Tournament and I used to watch it religiously.. It was pretty inspiring and this is something I probably need to get back to doing.

Watching good kendo can be very, very good.
Thanks for the reminder!

[KendoShiai]

Yo Rodgers ol buddy... You also know that there is Kendo in Little Rock now right? From what I hear its suppose to be pretty good. May be worth a vist over to there with Dach Sensei or some of the other guys.... Remember "ROAD TRIPPPPPP" hahaha thouse were the days huh.
Also come on down here when you get a chance.

Eddie Miller
Orlando Kendo Kai

[tango]

Yo Rodgers ol buddy... You also know that there is Kendo in Little Rock now right? From what I hear its suppose to be pretty good. May be worth a vist over to there with Dach Sensei or some of the other guys.... Remember "ROAD TRIPPPPPP" hahaha thouse were the days huh.
Also come on down here when you get a chance.

Eddie Miller
Orlando Kendo Kai

Dood.. thanks! I forgot about that.. that's about as close as we can get..
next is probably Arai-sensei in Atlanta and then Maeda-sensei outside Chattanooga..

Yeah, I'd LOVE to come down and see you guys in Orlando.. and like I said.. should be really easy once we get our jumpseats back with FedEx.. just so long as one of you guys could pick me up?
(It'll be next year before I can jumpseat though, so we need to stay in touch!)

Thanks!

[KendoShiai]

Your more than welcome to come on down. I can prob. pick you up. My job alows me to get out of work early most of the time. Also I am hoping to have Arai Sensei to have a Godo Keiko like we use to have back in the old days. Maybe even a testing. I know the SEUSKF is wanting one sometime in Jan. or Feb. You guys really should come down for that then.
Also send me an e-mail at kendoshiai@aol.com so I can get your e-mail.
Eddie Miller
Orlando Kenod Kai

[kanyil]

Hi Eddie. Sorry for taking a guess but is that you Pat-san? I think I remember seeing that All-Japan Police Tournament tape in Dach Imports with you guys.

I trained with Dach-sensei for a very brief period years time ago. If you remember a Taiwanese kid who was at the dojo oh..about 10 years ago then that was me. I had a BIG holiday from kendo after leaving Memphis but after moving back to Asia, have picked up kendo again and will (hopefully) go for my shodan exam later this year.

How's everything back at the Memphis Dojo? How's Dach-sensei and Michelle doing?

[Charlie]

Keep coming around, Tango. I second what's been said here but I would like to add that many of the folks in my neck of the woods have very similar hectic lives. I train at a university club where most of the members are working students - WORKING students - and in some cases parents, too! One thing we did recently that has helped me is what one of us calls "Dawn Patriol." For those of us having a hard time making it to more than one practice a week, we've been meeting every Thursday morning at 6:30 am for a good hour's practice before work. Usually it's only a handful of us but you can get a lot of practice in with just a few people and 45 minutes! Try to find other people in your dojo in a similar situation as you, do a Saturday morning there or something equally obscene.

Also, we have held kata practices from time to time outside regular dojo hours. Used to be more regular. And the nice thing is about kata practice, you can grab a corner of a park or something, you don't need a nice floor. There is a wealth of skill-building in the kata. Part of my home-training has involved doing both sides of the kata by myself. Lots of stuff embeded in these, great practice.

I know what you mean about the skill level of your peers, it helps to get the snot beat out of you by a superior. But like these guys said, when going with a beginner, raise the bar for yourself. Tell yourself you're only going to do clean, text-book kendo, no shiai shortcuts - suddenly, it's not so easy!

[hyuna]

There has been lots of good advice already given in this thread. I wanted to say that I know how you feel.

At our club, we worked our way up from kyu without regular sensei in both our kendo and iaido practice. Our iaido instructor made it up to 4-dan (iaido) and he has been the high ranked person at our club ever since making 1-dan, if I remember correctly. Fortunately for us, we can drive 3 hours to NYC to practice. Still, I find I cannot get much improvement from practicing with sensei even as much as once a month (and I rarely even get to go that frequently). It keeps me on track, but any real progress has to happen at regular practice at home.

We do not have as many regulars as you. Many of our members are local college students, and they leave during the summer and graduate after a few short years. For several years, summer practice has been only myself and one other student, every week for three months. This year has been good to us, fortunately, and we have been able to sustain 4-6 beginners, even if our exposure to sensei is still quite limited. So, I know just what you mean when you say you feel like you are stuck, knowing everyone else's style much, much too well. It is so easy to fall into a pattern and react to the person and not to their kendo.

For myself, I try to maintain a strict attitude of "always learning" and to do that, I focus on two things: Basics and Ubiquity.

That is, I try to make everything a lesson to myself. Any lesson I give, I try to apply to myself and any fault I see in a student, I use as a way to examine my own faults.

Even high ranking sensei practice kihon; maybe even more than beginners. At the AUSKF camp this year, even though it was supposed to be focused on 4-dan and higher and there were something like 16 or 18 or whatever 7-dan sensei, we still started out practicing how to bow in. Basics are key: if you cannot do kihon, you cannot do waza. So, what I tell myself is that even if I am not spending time practicing much waza, practicing basics with beginners is still an investiment that will improve my waza.

I also do my best to practice all the time. When practice is always the same people, or always just beginners, going to practice is frustrating and feels pointless. But the kendo attitude is never to give up, so you have to go. It is not just a matter of going to practice, but if you feel like quitting kendo because practice is not fun, that is giving up. So, I think of working past a plateau as a kind of test: just going to practice when you don't want to is exercising the kendo spirit and is part of practice, separate from the actual keiko. In the same way, if we learn from our partners in the dojo, we should also learn from the people we work with outside of the dojo. You can also practice mechanics outside of the dojo. When I walk to lunch, I practice tenouchi, enzan no metsuke, and moving from the hip. Sometimes, I practice keeping my left hand centered, but that looks a little weird and I don't want people to think I am trying to make an obscene gesture at them, though. That is not even counting doing suburi or whatever at home.

These are things I do to keep me going through the dry spells. Obviously I cannot progress as quickly as someone who practices 5 times a week in a big dojo with many high ranking sensei. But, you know, many sensei have told me that to improve my kendo I should work on this or work on that or just practice. No sensei has told me that to improve my kendo I should strive to beat this person or that person. Indeed, I've been told not to worry about what other people are doing and to focus on improving myself. So, trying to stay focused on my own improvement independent of how quickly other people are going is also kendo practice.

[KendoShiai]

Hey kanyil. Yes I remember you. Cant remember the real name though. Glad to hear from you. Actually I was with Harry on Sat. night. I asked him if he ever heard from you. lol ears must have been burning. Long time no see. Glad to hear from you, as I remember you were headed out west to get into trouble. I remember Harry said he tried to talk to you to try to get you to stay. I think this is you. lol. Anywho thats not Pat thats writting, don't know if you remember Rodgers or not. He may have been in Germany when you were there in Memphis. So how you been? I am now in Orlando Florida and have a kendo club here. Come on over sometime and visit. Our doors are always open to anyone.


Eddie Miller
www.orlandokendo.com

[nalogg]

wow.. Although i dont have nearly as much proficiency in kendo as you, I think i understand the problem because it's universal for any hobby really.

you're in a kind of melting pot, stewing in your own juices and those around you.
you know these few people so well that you're accustomed to their styles, and though you may love them as friends you're not progressing in the "world of kendo" because it's stifling your versatility... am i right?

well it's time for you to make a decision, neither of which are really "unfortunate".

A) get out there into the world and devote more of your time resources to kendo, facing new opponents, and studying under new teachers so you can progress (if that's what you want)

B) take on that teacher role, enjoying your time playing kendo with those you know well and teaching it to those beginners. in this case it's a pure passtime, for the physical release/fun.

i guess you gotta decide what you want kendo to do for you.

[kanyil]

Hi Eddie,

lol, I did manage to get myself into some trouble back then. but after that I changed my mind and did 4 years of college+law school+grad school (skipping a few years) to get myself back out again. I'm now working a boring job in Taiwan/Hong Kong/China.

Great to hear that everything's going alright. The memphis dojo has always been a place very close to my heart. In fact, I got back into kendo here because of remembering the good times with you guys. Unfortunately the locals are not too keen on having beers after practices...they just go at it until the grounds keepers turn off the lights and kick us out.

Do you visit Memphis often? Aren't you suppose to be in Mississipi? If I ever go down your way I will definitely visit the Orlando dojo.

[tango]

Hi Eddie. Sorry for taking a guess but is that you Pat-san? I think I remember seeing that All-Japan Police Tournament tape in Dach Imports with you guys.

I trained with Dach-sensei for a very brief period years time ago. If you remember a Taiwanese kid who was at the dojo oh..about 10 years ago then that was me. I had a BIG holiday from kendo after leaving Memphis but after moving back to Asia, have picked up kendo again and will (hopefully) go for my shodan exam later this year.

How's everything back at the Memphis Dojo? How's Dach-sensei and Michelle doing?

Sorry, no, this is not Pat-san... although he's still with the group. His job as a musician means he misses a lot of practice.
You must have left Memphis before I got to the class.. I was there briefly in 94 and started again (and still there obviously) in the Fall of 1995 (i think that's about right).
Dach-sensei is great.. recently, he's fallen back into some old kendo stuff that we did several years ago --- it's a pretty good change.
Our class is now out in Bartlett (do you remember where that is?) and we've had a surge of new students that incredibly have stuck with us for a few months.. We now have about 8 to 10 guys *regularly* in bogu and some nights, we have as many as 15 people in class. If you were in Memphis 10 years ago, then you understand how MASSIVE that number of students is to us.

Best regards...

[kanyil]

Hi Rodgers,

I am not sure if I've ever ran into you, but your name does sound awfully familiar. I was there in 94 I think.

10 regular bogu guys? wow, the Memphis dojo is really growing. Wouldn't that make the bogu situation pretty tight? I remember Michelle telling me a few years back that some of the guys got pressed into doing some deer-skin sewing (kote-repair).

[KendoShiai]

kanyil, yes I was in Southaven MS but moved to Orlando FL about 7 years ago. I started up the Orlando Kendo Kai about 2 years ago. Good to hear that you went the correct way. I remember your mother was very worried about you when you left thouse many years ago. I wish the best for you and hope to see you again some day.


Eddie Miller
www.orlandokendo.com
Orlando Kendo Kai

[kanyil]

ahh yes, my good (bad) old teenager days. it gives me a headache whenever I think about how I will have to deal with kids of my own eventually.

thanks for the kind words Eddie. hope to see you guys around someday too.

[kanyil]

oh, and sorry for causing all that trouble for everyone back then.