One thing I've noticed during keiko is that it can suck when you fight someone so overwhelmingly better than you, especially when they are going at you full force as if you were an equal. I'm not overly good, so when I fight a high ranking sensei it would be nice of them not to just use me as their own personal target practice as I flail about trying to figure out what to do. I've been in situations where they would not give me any advice or chance, even when I try switching up my strikes and methods, and fight me as if I'm on par with them.
Ideally, I think it's best if you're really better than someone to fight just a bit better than them while giving them a chance to slowly realize what they need to do to get over that hump to get a good strike in. If kendo skill could be judge on a scale of (1-10) and you're a 9 fighting a 3 you do not need to be going at 9 pace, just bring it down to 4 or 5. This gives the person a better opportunity to learn and develop their abilities. If you just rape someone and give them no chance at all then that's going to mentally discourage them and they won't have learned anything from their mistakes. People have actually quit kendo after situations like that, feeling they haven't improved and they are just terrible, when in fact it may have just been the case of a merciless sempai wanting to show the world how great they were at beating up a 4-kyu. This is why it can suck to fight someone who is just way out of your league sometimes.
On the other hand, it's also no fun to fight someone who is so bad that you can't really fight them. An example of this would be people who have just started wearing bogu, especially those who sorta rushed into it. I've fought many people who don't have proper form/posture/timing/etc when it comes to keiko. When they do regular waza practice it's fine, yes, but as soon as they get into a match everything for them is thrown out the window because their targets are no longer standing still in one place but moving all about and fighting back. This is actually more of a rant because, yes, I know they are new, but at the same time it's hard to show them the 'flow' of a match when they just seem really scatter brained. The guy who moves forward to strike and then pauses or moves backwards after hitting, or the guy who just throws out kotes anywhere at anytime repeatedly without any ki-ken-tai-icchi, or the zanshinless silent ones. Ughh, drives me crazy. The type that makes it the hardest are the ones who still don't know how to move properly, the ones who have such an oddball method of coming at you it makes your own strikes impossible to land making your own kendo look ugly. It's all a part of the learning process, I know, but there are some folks out there who don't learn and have been doing the same things for a long time. THAT'S when it gets worrisome, when the bad keiko habits and forms become their norm.
Bad keiko/kendo can just really drive me nuts sometimes. Newbies are fine, but people like in this video wearing full bogu? NO!!!!
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