Aikido Technique Videos and Self Defense Training

I just found the image above over at SFI, and wanted to share it here as well. There are many forms in aikido and ken-jutsu that use a tsuki attack. But, it is very rare to see it used so effectively in contact. Were that blade steel or even a wooden bokken, an attack like that could have been deadly.

Last night I was unexpectedly promoted in my Ken-jutsu class. Sensei taught a great class, Aaron (my kohai) and I had a good workout with some very good lessons learned. Now that our ken-jutsu class has changed to Fridays at 5:00 I am very hopeful for paired practice and larger classes.

At the end of class sensei lit some incense and called me to the front of the dojo with him. At that point sensei signed my sensu with my new rank and appologized for the burden (I now have another rock to carry). All in all it was a great day!

On one of the forums I regularly visit there is a bit of controversy about the practicality of a reverse grip sword cut (not that swords are very practical in this day & age anyhow). Quite a few of the forumites claim that reversing your grip on a sword is only appropriate for knives or Zatoichi :)

And along comes Renfield Kuroda, a JSA practitioner from Japan to prove that if you think a reverse grip sword cut doesn't work you're totally wrong. Check out that set and feel free to share your thoughts.

Sorry for the extremely long delay in my posting schedule everyone, I recently started studying kenjutsu as well as aikido and have been extremely busy. I do hope to get some images of the kenjutsu class up on the blog this week, so stay tuned for some great pictures soon.

Here's a quick teaser, we have been working on traditional iai kata as well as paired bokken kata as well. For anyone in the Brattleboro, Vermont area we are currently accepting new students if anyone is interested in joining our kenjutsu class.

You can visit sensei's site for more details.