The Toronto Kendo Club’s 45th Anniversary Tournament and Seminar was held this past weekend at the Markham Pan Am Centre. Kudos to the organizers for putting on such a well-run event.
One of our newer students wanted to participate in the seminar portion of the weekend. I think he thought kendo seminars were like more traditional seminars. A presenter, perhaps some PowerPoint slides, some demonstrations, etc. Perhaps he thought that. Somehow, I never thought to paint a full picture of what a kendo seminar looks like.
While there was a presenter (two of them, actually), and there were some demonstrations, that was where the similarities ended. Takeda Sensei took us through some high-school kendo warmups and full-body exercises. These included such things as spider crawls, forward crab, backwards crab, and horse stance but with sideways walking motion. A lot of nice (meaning – challenging) quad exercises, suriashi, and “can can” left leg exercises with and without fumikomi. We then moved onto kirikaeshi with proper taiatari (a somewhat lost skill these days in kendo), and different waza incorporating taiatari. We finished off with some osae waza for both men and kote.
My student was glad to be there and learned a lot of things, but in hindsight, I should have provided a better explanation about what a kendo seminar involves. Lesson learned. I’m always learning something new 😉
Thanks again to the Toronto Kendo Club for putting on this event, and to the Japanese sensei for sharing their time and expertise with us!