Do you practice semeru before doing kihon ..?

[skilled]

What do you think is better ...


Practicing Kihon ( Kote Men Do ) with semeru ?

Or just hitting and going forward?

Just asking to resolve a doubt I'm currently having.

Thanks


=]

[atgm]

At my dojo, we're told to use seme before each hit.

[Oroshi]

Why wouldn't you?

[rfoxmich]

seme like a semi then strike.

[ender84567]

depends on level of person doing the practice. there are positives and negatives for practicing it either way.

[JByrd]

It kind of depends on what you mean by seme. The most common physical manifestation of pressure before hitting is simply to move from outside distance into hitting distance. Sometimes we move continuously from the "seme step" to the attacking step, sometimes not. I practice it both ways, but favor entering from shokujin no ma and hitting without pause because I want to make my opponent feel pressure from me before I even get into hitting distance. If I can accomplish that, I think it gives me a psychological advantage, since my opponent intuitively knows he is still too far away to hit me, but he feels like I can hit him.

[atgm]

We're told to manifest seme through stepping in, use of kakegoe, eye contact, maintenance of the center line, a slight "push" toward the throat as we begin to strike, and making the beginning of every hit go straight back up in such a fashion that they look like men-uchi. The last one especially, in kihon practice.

[nodachi]

In my dojo we do both. As we do a variety of drills, the first few times we do something, it is basic hitting. Then as we progress through things, we start to do them with seme. There is a purpose to working on hitting without seme so you can fix basic things. Once you've had a chance to fix the basic things, you can work on adding in seme. It is a natural progression in terms of working on things in stages and building up to the more complicated.

When it comes to jigeiko, you do what you are capable of. Beginners may still be working on simple hitting and the timing/opportunity of when they hit. More advanced people will work with seme all the time. I think it all depends on what your capabilities are and also what you are trying to fix at that time.

[Roberto]

You can practice seme without steping forwards from toumaai to isokku ittou no maai.
IMHO I think that has to be told to beginers that going forwards is not necesarilly seme, though it can be a way for applying it.

We do practice both ways, from tou maai and isokku, but I like to emphatize with my kouhai what I said before, and so trying to do that during keiko.

[JByrd]

I asked my sensei about how to instruct students on proper uchikomi seme. He suggested this: Tell them to enter, hold for one second, then go. After a few rounds of that, try to enter, hold three seconds then go. The idea, as I understand it, is to get out of a habit of entering and attacking with a fixed timing. It also introduces the idea of letting the tension build in the interval between moving into striking distance, and actually striking. He did point out that the details of how we practice basic striking will change as we get more experience.

[JByrd]

One additional thought on this topic, again from a discussion with my sensei: Watch people when they perform the, "enter, wait a few beats, then go" style of uchikomigeiko. You'll see that some people are just standing there for three beats.

So what's the difference between standing there, and holding pressure for three beats without hitting? To the untrained eye, they look the same.

Imagine you're a race car driver at the starting line of a quarter-mile drag race. Do you let your engine idle until the flag drops? Of course not. Once you're staged at the starting line, you rev your engine so that when the flag drops, you can pop the clutch and take off. Seme is like keeping your engine revved at the starting line. Tame (or gamman? I need to research that term...) is like holding in the clutch until the instant the flag drops.

[Roberto]

Jonathan, think that the difference of teh differences when doing the stepping in excercise is that not eevryone enters with t he idea of "pressure" in mind. Is what I get of your comments with the talk with your sensei.

I'm not saying that is wrong to do the stepping in and then hitting the motodachi, but personally I prefeer to apply the pressure (seme) from uchi maai. It's possible to try different hitting timing form there too.

I guess most of the posters here have seen the videos of the dvd of Chiba sensei, from the series of books of "Perfect Master". Chiba sensei applies his seme from uchi maai in, at least, most of the techniques shown.

[atgm]

Tame (or gamman? I need to research that term...) is like holding in the clutch until the instant the flag drops.

I don't think it's either of those terms. Not sure what "tame" would be since I've never heard it used in that context, but "gaman" simply means bearing with something.

[guchido]

I think that doing seme before kihon depends on the kenshi's development. A beginner would not feel the correct seme and doing a superficial physical movement that tries to emulate seme without even knowing how an acceptable strike should be, would create difficult things to correct later. This varies, of course, depending on what type of seme you are trying to copy.
Something also worth saying is that sometimes you may believe you are doing a strong pressure on the opponent when you really are not, specially against more advance people. So one must be careful with that.
One good question would be then, when a student is advanced enough to learn seme? Which brings something else, how can you learn seme systematically? In my opinion, seme is something very difficult to explain in a practical way and you usually learn it with time and practice against advanced people.

Jorge

[Roberto]

Well, if you explain that "seme" means pressure, then it will be easier to understand. How to do it depends in the student, because for telling, explaning and hitting him, they just have to learn to feel it and to demonsrtate that they can apply it.

In kendou, seme is a physical AND psycological pressure done against the oponent/aite.

For applying seme, it is needed to develop the ability for looking/creating openings against the aite. By developing them, you're learning how to pressure them and you'll do what you want... If you make a kote suriage men, is because you made aite to atatck your kote, not because you just stood there, in front of him. If you hit his men or dou, is because you made him to open those places for the attack.

Everything is gonna be gradually learnt; but is good to tell everyone that is not the same just attaking for attacking, and if they want to attack, they have to commit and study the posibilities for doing so. I don't think that is about "copying" it from a higher grade because it involves more than just standing, stepping, wrists movements and timing.

And I'd add that also it's learnt while practicing against lower ranks too