Kihon Shibu 07/25/2007

First class in a while started off with a viewing of the Kobudo no Kihon dvd. I haven't seen the video before last night and didn't know exactly what it was about. To my surprise it covered pretty much everything the Richmond Kihon Shibu is about. Actually, that material was advanced for what I've been teaching lately. We're still in the very beginning stages. Last night was the first official class for the group and this is the first official blog post about it.

So the video lasted about an hour although it seemed much longer. Maybe that was because the first 30 minutes was spent doing everything possible to not look like a threat to Simon, the vicious guard dog. Actually, he's not vicious, as long as he likes you.

Again it was Johnny and myself and we started the night by first going over how to wear the gi and tie the obi. Then me moved into practicing zenpo kaiten, koho kaiten and sokuho kaiten from shizen no kamae. Next we practiced fudoken tsuki from ichimonji no kamae followed by zenpo kaiten. Then we practiced sokuyakuken zenpo geri from ichimonji no kamae. The focus here was maintaining the integrity of ichimonji as the atemi is performed. I also spoke briefly on hicho no kamae being the transitory kamae between the starting and ending ichimonji no kamae. The rest of the night was spent on taisabaki. We practiced two ways of switching between hidari and migi ichimonji no kamae. One where you stay in place and another where you advance forward. Then we practiced two forms of moving sideways in ichimonji no kamae. This lead nicely into moving forward and backward while switching between hidari and migi ichimonji no kamae. After that we practiced moving forward and backward without switching between hidari and migi by using yoko aruki. We practiced two forms of koho yoko aruki, one form of zenpo yoko aruki, and one form of naname koho yoko aruki, all from ichimonji no kamae.

I think that was about it. We went through a lot in about 1.5 hours and it went quickly. I can't wait to get back into the swing of training.

Gambatte!