Training

[KhawMengLee]

Now theres probably a thread on this out there but...

What is your training schedule like?

Over here(in Perth) there are three dojos to train at. All training is about 2 hours long. My dojo schedule is split into 2 halves. In the first part we do kirikaeshi, kihon cuts, debana waza, tai atari hiki men, nuki waza and Gigeiko. In the second half (after a break) we have usually suriage waza/nuki waza, kakarigeiko then gigeiko and finishing off with kirikaeshi.

The other dojo I train at has a 2 hour session with a similar schedule except the kakarigeiko is done with a 2 man motodachi team so once you finish the first its straight into the second. This goes on for about 3 to 4 rounds so you are dead by the end.(The 2 motodachi are yondans and the Sensei can be heard shouting "Make it hard for them!") Then we have Gigeiko and finish with a team shiai. Note there is no break for this 2 hour session.

How does everyone else train? Do you have breaks? Please enlighten me.

THANKS
MENG

[CypherSushi]

Our schedule varies alot but the passes are always 2 hours. sometimes we do kata for two hours, sometimes we do kirikaeshi the whole pass and so on and so forth.
The breaks varies a lots too.... we are a small club so it depends on how many we are at the particular pass and how those people are feeling healthvise.
we also have one pass for the advanced people and two for the beginners each week.

[Confound]

With the girls at school, who will henceforth be known as the striplings, it is necessary to cajole them from comparing their purikura books or colouring pictures to get changed, then into bogu. That usually ends up wasting about 15 to 20 minutes of practice. Since i'm not officially a teacher, and I'm awkwardly in charge of the kendou club (stupidly enough), there are two students who just don't want to be there at all, and they're a pain in the butt.

We do suburi, kirikaeshi and kihon waza for 45 minutes to an hour, then kakarikeiko. Lately I've been forcing them to do suriashi and furikomi drills. Their footwork is awful, they just walk around normally. I could bore you for hours on how bad these kids are, but it's hardly edifying, and rather depressing.

At the other place where I train, the lesson starts after most of the participants have just done a regular practice session, so there's only a very short kihon waza practice, maybe about 10 minutes, then we're into kakarikeiko. Three or four motodachi plus the sensei, with lines of 2 or 3 people. You usually cycle through each of the motodachi twice, if there is no shiai. (about 30 - 40 minutes)

After that, if there is no shiai, there is free keiko for about 30 more minutes, you just pick a partner and go at it. if there will be shiai, we do that for 45 - 50 minutes. After that, it's a bit more kakarikeiko, only a few minutes, then kirikaeshi.

With the older people I practice with, they're all coming after a long day of work (keiko starts at 8 pm), so they're a little tired. We do kirikaeshi and maybe 20 minutes of kihon waza, then straight into rotating kakarikeiko, then jigekeiko. We usually wrap up around 9 30 or 10, it's quite flexible.

As for weekend practices with the elementary school students, those don't really count as practice do they? I just stand there and let the little runts whap me for what seems like ages. then the rest of us have kakarikeiko with the sensei.

c

[JSchmidt]

It varies alot , but the ideal practice looks something like this:

Kiri-kaeshi, around 8-10 sets.
Kihon:
Men from various distances
Kote
Kote-men
Oji-waza (Various)
Uchikomi
Kagarei-geiko
Ji-geiko
Kirikaeshi.

Jakob

[Kendoboy]

Um, confound,

if there are a couple people slacking off, why not make things really hard for them? they will either realize that you mean business and shape up, or will quickly tire of having to work for something and go their separate ways.

I think in my dojo if you slacked that bad you would get kicked out.

[Confound]

Kendoboy,

These are my junior high school students. Like heck they'll smarten up. I've already threatened to kick out one of the girls, because she acts like someone crowned her Queen of the Universe, and skips almost every practice. (She can't even do correct ashisabaiki, yet she'll be competing in a tournament t his weekend. Why? Because she's pretty and her parents are rich, and no one in the school is going to deny her a chance to lose miserably and demoralize her team mates.)

It isn't my job to make kendou miserable for these students, it's my job to help them along. The girls who are rotten don't even bother getting into bogu. I'll ask them and they'll look at m ein a way that says, "Who are you, you dirty foreigner? You're not Japanese, thus you are scum." They make me sick.

c

[Ares2907]

Ideally you should give up this gig. It's not good for you at your current level to be teaching. At this stage of your kendo, it takes your focus away from learning what you need to learn. (apologies if stating the obvious).
I'm assuming that the situation cannot be helped, which is a problem indeed. One might ordinarily be able to say 'pick out the ones that really want to learn and tell the others to amuse themselves during practice time', however the Japanese love of groupism is most likely going to make it difficult. However there should be nothing stopping you from separating the class into sub-groups. Take your most promising students and put them in one group, lead them. Divide the less adept but still dedicated student into another group, have the first interact with the second. Put all others into the third group, assign someone that you detest with a passion to lead them, give them a small amount of floor space to do with what they will, then get on with your training.
If feeling particularly vindictive, hold occasional mock team shiai with said third group. They will most likely be too apathetic to put bogu on, in which case they can endure the embarrassment of losing 5 - 0 (or whatever) through forfeit. The possibilities are endless.

-A

[kendokamax]

I think kendo is about genorisity of your time.
I always feel people should give a chance for everyone to develop and not try to make them quit.

I think if you are fair things will turn ok.
I think if you make practice harder for everyone it will be fair for everyone, the one that arent interested in kendo as much, well I think that's ok! There will always be people like that , just have to deal with it, ignoring them a little but i dont think making small groups in a dojo with using your own preferences in people is the best thing to do.

[Haowen]

Kendokamax, I think you're thinking of how teaching goes in a real dojo. In that case I would agree with what you're saying.

I think poor Confound is teaching kendo to a bunch of junior high children some of whom really aren't interested in learning -anything- at all, let alone the discipline of kendo! I've had a little experience teaching children in a classroom and it's quite a challenge simply keeping order in a class, let alone making sure anything gets into their heads :) I would say any means is justified in this case, there's no sense trying to be Super Sensei and trying to create interest where there is none.

[Ares2907]

Indeed. Outside Japan, people come to a kendojo because they want to be there. Oftentimes in Japan, especially in schools, some of them there because they are expected to be, or because they are forced to be.
Read Confound's post again carefully - she's talking about people that could not care less about kendo. No interest whatsoever. Understand?
In this case, I thing segregation of the class is probably the most beneficial thing you can do. A sloppy attitude is not only bad because of what it is, it is bad because it is contagious.
You are right in that these sort of people will always be around in these situations, however once it becomes painfully apparent that they are not willing to put in the effort, they no longer deserve the effort of the teacher.