Iaido Taikai
This past Sunday we went to watch a Iaido Taikai here in Lisbon. As what is usual in class, watching our sempai perform the katas, their posture, and overall behaviour during the tournament was a learning experience.
One thing I realized during the Taikai, was that I’ve grown more conscious of errors made, despite knowing that we noticed very little mistakes when compared to the actual full number. I’m a Mudan – so naturally I miss out on a lot of details in sempai’s performances – the most noticeable mistakes were those in our fellow Mudan’s performances.
I think being mindful of mistakes is a good indicator; It means that I am aware of mistakes which I also make, or used to make, and that am conscious that I need to correct them.
I hope to be able to participate in the next Taikai. I’m curious to know how I’ll react under the stress inherent to a public performance and evaluation. We are watched, and criticized in class, obviously, but this is very different.
We took some photos and made some videos before and during the event. The video below is of the final round of the tournament (for the rest of the videos, go to«link removed by request» ) – the loud background noise is intense pouring rain.
« video removed by request »
The katas were, in sequence: the first kata (Mae), the fourth kata (Tsuka Ate), the sixth kata (Morote Zuki), the ninth kata (Soete Zuki), and the eleventh kata (Sou Giri).
For the photos, check out João’s «link removed by request ».
Martial Arts: Iaido and Tai Chi
Iaido. We’ve had our first class this Saturday, and we liked it. I think the instructor who was teaching us beginners was thinking that we might get bored of the class because it mostly consisted of repeating the same exercise (two variations of it) for the whole class. But it wasn’t boring, and we were already expecting to have to repeat the same things over and over, since it’s usually what happens in martial arts training.
In fact, Tai Chi was the one which was a bit of a surprise for us, since the teaching method, despite including some repetition, does not work the same way as other martial arts. While in Iaido we will be repeating the exact same thing until we do it right, and it’s natural to us, in Tai Chi, we repeat a small sequence of moves a few times, and then add it to another sequence we learned earlier and repeat that a few times also, and work on the ‘right form’ of doing it later.
We already got our bokkens, and kneepads. Hakamas an Gis will be harder to get, and I’ll have to investigate where we can buy them, since hakamas are always sold out at Decathlon.
Have a nice weekend.
