Bujinkan

[deralte]

I ended up training with M. tonight something we both tend to avoid because a) we hurt each other (*L*) and b) we like to buck the whole, 'well, you're the only women so you should train together' mentality that many of the men have. We'd both kept ourselves free to train with the two newbies, but then J. announced the theme for the night was sword and took it upon himself to teach the basics to both the newbies. This left M. and I together, though we both were very nice to each other by unspoken agreement (both of us being rather stressed atm). First we practised the sword attack which was a side stroke from shizen. It wasn't like swinging a baseball bat but rather you let your left hand pull to the side, then when it reached the apex of its' arch swung it sideways, while using your right hand to pull the handle towards you (so you're moving the sword while moving it like a lever), then when the person jumped away you went to jodan (overhead attack). The defender would step back with your right foot to avoid being slashed. (Later Jack added a jump, though the real point was to avoid the slash with the least distance between you and the sword then jump back.) Then you would step in or lean in (depending on your distance) with knees bent, and catch/cushion the jodan attacker's arms (using your body to block it, not the arms themselves - earth!).

Near the middle of the class, we went to variations on this like stepping to the side and reaching one hand between the person's arms to grasp their wrist/end of the sword, you then went up, around and down the wrist which made them drop the sword. It sounds difficult, but was really quite easy. The one that gave us trouble was simple looking (as the difficult ones usually are). All Jack did was put his left hand where the person's arm/hand was as they attacked from jodan, punch the person's knuckles (they drop their sword then unless they've got armour - it really hurts), then kick the knee. The part we couldn't get was doing the left hand, then movement afterwards (before the punch). We could have faked it, but we wanted to get it right so we tried a million variations. None of which worked until Jack wandered over to show us how to reverse engineer it. First we let the sword come down and hit us (not actually hitting), noting where the attacker's hands ended up, then we put our left hand out where we'd seen the hands were. Then we did it by putting the hand out, then moving to the left by a few inches right after your hand touched theirs. It was very jerky and we need to practice it a million times, but we got it.

Meanwhile, it was a bad night for minor injuries in class. One of the uke's took a nasty hit. Jack managed, during the one time he demonstrated something to me, to rip off several layers of skin in a patch on my left ring finger (I think it caught on the shinai I was using somehow), which welled up with blood for long enough to soak through part of the bandaid I put on it. It really stung for about ten minutes. And Jack managed to get his own finger ripped open and had to go to the bandaids as well.

Anyway, I must go study for my exam and midterm. Ja ne!

Comments

[c0d3-w4rri0r.livejournal.com]

You guys clearly have more injures than my sensei would be happy with. I thought america was supposed to be supper health and safety conscious with post men having to wear support belts as a condition of health insurance etc.

[deralte.livejournal.com]

Never heard of that. Everyone at our class signs a waiver to avoid litigation, then we just get on with it. (There is insurance, but I'm not really sure what it covers.) It's mostly just bruises, scrapes and strains. It's been nearly a decade since we've had a serious injury. *knock on wood*

Bujinkan tends to be pretty hardcore. I've heard of other places where people have had fingers broken in black belt tests and stuff. Jack got beyond that hardcore stuff several years ago though so it actually seems pretty tame these days to me.