Re: The tail of the dragon. Was: WOTT - Transfering skills from weapon to weapon

On Thu, 13 Apr 2006 13:49:47 -0600, Neil Gendzwill
<ngendzwill@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rabid Weasel wrote:

As far as obscuring maai, I've been instructed, from both Western and
Easter traditions, that an effective way of doing that is to level the
point of the weapon directly into the sight-path of the opponent so that
the tip of your weapon lines up with the shaft/body all the way down;
removes his ability to use depth perception to judge.

That technique is used not so much to obscure maai as it is to hide
movement, or rather to delay perception of the beginning of movement.
You often see advanced kendoka with this variation on chudan, rather
than having the kensen perfectly centred they will aim it at the
opponent's left eye so that he only sees the tip. The theory is that
it's harder to judge the start of the movement.

I don't really buy that it works for several reasons. First, it's damn
hard to maintain that very precisely when both parties are moving, so
it's only really going to work in "old man" kendo when both are very
still. Second, no guarantee which eye is going to be dominant so I
don't see how it's any improvement on aiming between both eyes, which is
standard. And third, any decent kendoka isn't looking at your shinai,
he's either looking at your eyes or has his eyes aimed generally in that
direction without focussing on any one thing. He's going to observe
shinai movement more with peripheral vision, or a variant of that, than
being hyp-mo-tised by the kensen. So it's much more important that you
begin the movement straight in, so that there is not much
up/down/sideways to see - *that* makes the perception of the start
harder. It's one of the reasons we also practice smooth footwork, so
that you come in without any bobbing kind of telegraph that you are
coming in.

As a side point, either you or Shuurai said you have to look at the
target, and I disagree there - usually if they look at a target they're
trying to sucker you, the target is something else.

At any rate, the slightly off-centre chudan has a more practical purpose
- it guards kote slightly and allows you to take centre. If you step in
while moving the kensen back to centre, you generate a little pressure
that moves the opponents kensen offline.

Eschew obfuscation !!!!!!!


Hal


Neil

PS Hal, sorry to bring actual technical discussion to this thread.
Please, bluster on at your earliest convenience.
--
NewsGuy.Com 30Gb $9.95 Carry Forward and On Demand Bandwidth
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