Stratford, Taranaki, New Zealand
Schedule:-
Dakentaijutsu (punching & kicking)
Jutaijutsu (grappling, locks & holds)
Blindfolded Techniques
Kenjutsu (sword techniques)
Bojutsu (Staff fighting)
Kusari-Fundo (weighted chain)
When
the students were asked to bring a tennis ball and some string there
was a look of "whats this all about?" but they soon found out.The tennis ball was threaded with the string and then held by two students while a third practiced punching and kicking. The harder you hit the ball the faster it came back so you had to practice defensive techniques as well. Sounds easy? It's not. Try hitting the ball very hard 3 times in a row.
The Jutaijutsu techniques today mainly centred around grappling and ground techniques as well as ways of taking an opponent down. We also looked at ways of removing a person who was sitting on top of you and pinning you down and reversing the situation.
How the Book Of Five Rings relates to life as well as sword fighting. We also related the techniques to the Ninjutsu Sanshin No Kata.
Binding a sword without the use of glue is not too hard.
 Start from the tsuba and work upwards, Allow about 2" of cord to be tucked under the binding and wrap the binding around the handle trapping this in place |
 Make sure the cord is tightly wrapped around the handle to ensure the "tucked under" piece cannot come loose and continue winding to the end of the handle. |
 When you reach the top leave 2" spare and cut off the remainder of the cord. Unwrap the top 2" of the handle and tuck the spare 2" of cord down as you did when you started |
 When you get to the top you should have a loop that will just stretch over the handle and finish the job. |
 Sometimes you need a good pair of hands or even two good pairs Don't let go of that cord. |
Starting off with a bit of free sparing or as I call it "sword waving" just to get the feel of the Bokken and Bo we quickly moved on to real techniques. We practiced "The Five Approaches" as laid out in the "Book Of Five Rings" and the students soon found out that footwork is very important.
For training you can't really use a real Kusari-Fundo but a dressing gown cord with knots in the ends works quite well. This is my favorite weapon next to the Sword so we had lots of fun with this one.
