This is why we train the basics and in old days kendo practitioners did a lot of kirikaeshi and uchikomi.
At Budo Vocational College or Busen, the first year students did only kirikaeshi. Kirikaeshi is
the King of the Basics. Many dojo still do it at the beginning and end of training.
The Real Basic Training
The basic training, especially kirikaeshi, has all the goodies for us to improve our kendo but it doesn't explain why the Busen students did
only kirikaeshi.
Kirikaeshi now.... We strike the shomen first and strike 9 times of the sayu-men and strike the shomen, and another 9 sayu-men then at the very end we strike the shomen again.
In old days, kirikaeshi was not that systematic. They did kirikaeshi until
their receivers or motodachi stopped them. It could be 3 minutes, 10 minutes or 30 minutes until motodachi would stop!
Benefits
Of course, there are benefits. You can be physically strong. You can also be mentally strong. The other
things is that your ego will be gone.
Most of us think we are doing the basics correctly. But your motodachi don't agree with what we think. For example, you think you are performing kirikaeshi with big strikes. But most of the time your kirikaeshi is not as big as you think it is.
If you don't make your strikes as big as your motodachi tell you to do, they won't finish. And you think you are doing it right but they don't agree.
Finally you lift your hands up as your motodachi have been wanting you to do, and your motodachi smiles and stops your kirikaeshi.
This makes you realize that you have not lifted as big as you are supposed to do. You think you know yourself better than anyone else but in this case you are wrong.
At the beginning of your study, any kind of study, you must listen to your teachers. And of course, your teachers and senior students are there to put you on the right track.
This phase is a listening phase. In other words, you will remove what YOU think you should be doing but do what your teacher tells you to do.
We have a saying in Japanese; We have at least 7 bad habits (even when we think there is
none).
Of course, we do have bad habits. If we don't we must be so perfect that we don't need to learn anything.
Learning the basics is to improve your kendo and to keep yourself humble. That is why we never stop learning the basics.
