Kendo Tuesday July 30th

kendo in UBC has been more and more relaxing these days. We only had 1.5 hours of practice on tuesday. I was trying to push myself to hit faster, but resulted in using my shoulders again, so i have to slow down.. a bit.

afterwards, Harding sensei, Zack and me had an interesting conversation regarding kendo recruitment. Zack was saying that beginners need to mingle more with the seniors in order to keep them in the sport, and also break the ice between themselves, and he insist on joined practice during thursday i-house practice.

every kendo club in Vancouver is suffering from the lack of regular people, and most people quit after a while. often we start with 20-30 people, by mid-semester, there is only 10-15, and by the end of 8 month, only 1-2 left. Harding says that it's because most people can't stand the initial training, and because western culture tend to focus on the coolness of kendo/kenjutsu too much, nobody realizes that it requires significant endurance before reaching the cool part, and a lot of people eventually become disgruntled and left. most often people needs a one full year of beginner training before getting the bogu. some people who are more athletic and have exposed to other martial arts are easier to adopt, but some just don't. and if the initial beginner training time is decreased, people will end up lousy when they wear bogu. Harding was also saying that if he gives beginners a really tough practices, more people tend to stay longer, instead, other dojos have tried to do less, and not many people stays. By the end of the conversion, we are still confused between where to cut between the compromise in beginners and the traditions and culture of kendo. to be too lenient, then we lose the spirit of kendo and the spirit of the martial art, to be too tough and we may result in the martial art die out.