Tag Archive: jissen

Opportunities and Liabilities

In every­thing we do, there are oppor­tu­ni­ties and lia­bil­i­ties. Recognizing them at the appro­pri­ate time can mean the dif­fer­ence between life in death in cer­tain cases; in other cases, it can mean get­ting a good park­ing space. Shukumine broke down some of the com­mon chances and cau­tions with regards to fight­ing. As with every­thing else in Taido,…

unshin

i recently spent five days talk­ing and train­ing with two of mem­bers of the han­shikai, and let me tell you this much  —  they are crazy excited about unshin. every­thing we prac­ticed came back to a very select num­ber of themes, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of mov­ing in full 3-space was one of them. i’ve had this arti­cle on…

Why Flexibility is Important in Taido

This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Flexibility for Taido

In my last arti­cle (You’re Probably Stretching Wrong), I wrote that the stan­dard 5 minute warm-up stretch is inad­e­quate for build­ing flex­i­bil­ity. That’s no big deal  —  we can just stretch for longer. How much stretch­ing are we talk­ing about here any­way? I’ll sug­gest 15 to 20 min­utes, at least three times a week. Why Spend Time Stretching?

The Broken Record Drill

This entry is part 10 of 11 in the series Drilling for Jissen

Maybe I’ve gone kobo-crazy, but I believe intel­li­gent and cre­ative use of kobo-derived drills can have incred­i­ble poten­tial for improv­ing stu­dents’ Taido skills. This isn’t nec­es­sar­ily a new devel­op­ment, but it’s some­thing that I have used suc­cess­fully with stu­dents in a num­ber dojo now, so I am con­vinced that it works. In this arti­cle, I’ll describe a method for mak­ing kobo progressions…

Kobo Jissen

This entry is part 9 of 11 in the series Drilling for Jissen

This drill set strad­dles the line between kobo and jis­sen, and I would sug­gest you prac­tice them with both atti­tudes. In kobo, you are try­ing help your part­ner improve his skills; in jis­sen, you want to defeat your partner’s attempts to use his skills. Both are valu­able prac­tices, so decide with your part­ner before­hand whether you…