Myself and a few other Bujinkan teachers in Ireland have gotten together to announce a tai kai, or large gathering, to take place at the end of this year. Every teacher of judan rank and above in Ireland has been invited to take part, and the majority have agreed. It should be a smashing day’s training, and the proceeds will go to a fantastic cause – kids orphaned by Aids in sub-saharan Africa.
You can find out more about the event by visiting www.bujinkan.ie
Class: Thursday June 28th
Ukemi was done with speed and over heights to get a nice warm-up in.
Henka of “Kubiwa” from Kukishinden Ryu – empty-handed and with a tanto. We then had fun doing some no-striking movement against uke’s attack just to isolate out the angling, footwork and timing.
Battojutsu involved us doing some versions of Ryusei no kamae -> Seigan no kamae against thrusting attacks.
(Some of us filed down our iaito so as to make any possible accidental stabbings as dull as possible!)
We got a little lesson being a good uke – attacking with accurate intent and how to not automaticaly take ukemi.
Thought provoker: Should you assume you’re the “uke” in the first place?
After class everyone helped with the mat-rolling for the upcoming tamishigeri session at the upcoming Bikenjutsu workshop.
– Ali Martinez
I’m back from holidays and so Saturday classes are back to normal – for this weekend 30th June at least. On the following weekend there is a sword workshop and I’m away the weekend after that. When we’re back on track, mid July, I’ve decided on a change in times of 3pm-5pm including open mat so you can all have your Saturday lie-ins.
– Ali Martinez
Class: Monday June 25th
Firstly before class there was a large degree of “open mattness” going on which was great to see. There were people stretching, doing ukemi, bo work, pad work and iai. This should be the case all the time – grab some one to train with, hassle the seniors, open your syallabus, use the bag/pads, make a nuisance of yourself but just do something. I’m nearly always there 1 hour before class and when Alex come in, tap him for tips and drills, ask him to check your basics – he loves it!
Class proper started with some interesting ukemi using jumping techniques sideways and backwards. Alex then went into some ideas on angling found in Kukishinden Ryu and used them to create some nice openings for locks and strikes. After break we grapped our iaito for some battojutsu from natural walking positions with counters. This was really about examining distance and i think it is essentially the same thing as the very first strike you do in Ichimonji no kata only applied with a a sword in this case. Think about it.
Alex also mentioned that while it is healthy and normal to ask questions about particular weapons and the like, it’s maybe prudent to think about what the answer could be yourself before expecting an automatic response. That “thinking” part is probably way more fruitfull than just getting the answer. The question asked was whether the stuff we did with iaito could be done with larger tachi style swords. It’s a good question, but what do you think?
– Ali Martinez
Class: Thursday, June 21st
A small class this evening – the torrential rain seems to have kept people away. The recently repaired dojo roof seemed to hold up and there were no leaks! The class consisted of ukemi (falling and rolling) drills before moving onto some basic taijutsu, using the kukishin ryu waza fubuki and iso arashi as starting points. The second half of the class was devoted purely to sword basics and iai in particular. Because the class was small, we had time to really put our drawing methods under the microscope and everyone made measurable progress by the end.
Some more visitors came to watch training in advance of starting the beginner’s course on July 2nd. They seemed very interested and asked some well researched questions about training, which is promising.
– Alex Meehan
Monday 18th June
Just a short recap on Monday’s class this week – we looked at lots of various forms of ukemi, challenging the people present to find a weakness to work on in the class. We next moved on to look at some waza from the Kukishin Ryu and the Koto Ryu before finishing up with some more sword work. In this section of the class, most of the training was geared towards refreshing the sword basics taught in the dojo, including grip and cutting.
– Alex Meehan
As Ali Martinez is currently travelling, there will be no training this coming saturday, June 23rd. The schedule returns to normal next week.
– Alex Meehan
On Saturday July 7th, there will be a one day workshop in Rathmines focusing on bikenjutsu, or the Japanese sword. The bulk of the training will look at the basic exercises used to learn swordsmanship, including cutting, blocking, redirecting, thrusting and more. In addition, we will look at the basic sword kata of Kukishin Ryu and Togakure Ryu.
There will also be an opportunity to try tameshigiri, or test cutting. This will be limited strictly to people who can demonstrate appropriate control and skill in the basics of sword control, but is not limited by grade. There will be an extra charge for targets of around €4 or €5.
This workshop is open to all Bujinkan members and will be of particular interest to people who attended previous kenjutsu sessions with me, as time will be set aside to correct mistakes that may have appeared in each participant’s training since the last session. However, the kihon waza will also be covered for the benefit of anyone new to the study of this weapon. There will be personal, hands on instruction for each participant at every level.
This workshop is open to all Bujinkan students, subject to prebooking a place via e-mail. The workshop will cost €35. All students should endeavour to bring with them, in ascending order of importance – a bokken/bokuto (wooden sword), padded sword and/or Iaito (safe, blunt training sword). Anyone who owns hakama and wants to can bring them.
It’s been a while since we ran regular monthly workshops, so I expect this workshop to be full well in advance of the day itself. If you would like to attend, please make sure to reservce a place by mailing me first. This course is open to any Bujinkan member that would like to attend, not just my students. First come first served.
EDIT – There was one place left on this course, but it’s now gone and this course is now full.
– Alex Meehan
Monday 11th June
I was asked to kick off with a technique so I remembered an aspect of Japan training in March that poppped into my head, the way these things do, and that was to step deep into uke’s space to knock them over with the entire body as opposed to a simple, footsweep which is very easy to see coming and to avoid. Alex took this idea and appplied various aspects of Choshi Dori – or capturing rhytmn – to take balance with the entire body in a different way. This led to some nice gyaku waza and some people were able to use the ukemi from basics class to move out of unbalanced position with ways other than automatically rolling. Hon Gyaku was played with a little bit too another example of suing the entire body.
Tea time saw Alex pull out an interestimg Japanese Artifact – an early 20th century makimono from an ikebana ryuha – a flower arranging school. This scroll was between 20 – 30ft long and contained the shoden level “kata” of this school. It was an example of the sort of thing used to transmit information in other type of schools, such as Martial Arts schools, to licence holders and it was facinating to see.
After tea we did some more iaijutsu with various different sorts of cuts – do giri (cut to hara or navel), kesa giri (diagonal draw to deflect), men uchi ( vertical cut to head). We could see how we often don’t need to cut uke if we’re reacting to a fast draw attack, but rather we just need to cut the space uke needs to finsh their attack.
Another good example of why Hatsumi Sensei used to preface his video’s with the subtitle “Bujinkan – the martial arts of distance”.
– Ali Martinez
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