Kobo 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 are work­ing with or against each other.

Ready for Spaghetti

Canned pasta sauce is con­ve­nient because it can move from shelf to plate in as lit­tle time as it takes to heat. It may be good enough for nights when you don’t have time to really cook, but every­one knows that real spaghetti sauce is made from fresh ingre­di­ents and takes a few hours to sim­mer the fla­vors together. Would you give a date canned sauce? Don’t cheat your per­for­mance by tak­ing short­cuts — you won’t be impress­ing any­one but yourself.

These can get com­pli­cated. Take your time and remem­ber to start off slowly and build steadily towards “real” speed.

Repeat Kobo Drill Progressions with Alternating Roles

Starting with a sin­gle attack and sin­gle defense option, move back through selected drills from the Basic and Advanced Kobo Drills pages. Allow each part­ner to be offense and defense. Then, add speed and options as grad­ual mul­ti­pli­ers of drill complexity.

There are two basic ways to alter­nate roles. In the com­mon method, one part­ner is on offense for the first arbi­trary time period, then the roles switch at the timekeeper’s com­mand. In the ver­sion I pre­fer, the switch takes place after each exchange, such that after ini­ti­at­ing one attack, the part­ner is now on defense. This method is usu­ally faster-paced and allows both part­ners to work both roles before fatigue sets in.

Another option that can be applied in sev­eral cre­ative ways is to have the role switch called by an observer at var­i­ous inter­vals. For exam­ple, every five sec­onds, at ran­dom inter­vals, when the defender looks like he’s about to get cor­nered (this is an espe­cially good drill for train­ing to “come back” from los­ing a point and turn­ing the tables on a dom­i­nat­ing opponent).

Remember that this is not yet jis­sen. You will be work­ing on the same option-multiplying pro­gres­sion as before. Add one vari­able at a time and keep the pro­gres­sion grad­ual. The dif­fer­ence is that, this time through, the roles are chang­ing more dynamically.

Repeat Previous Progressions with Open Roles

And they are even more dynamic now. In fact, the roles are gone here. This pro­gres­sion too begins very slowly, and with very few options. For exam­ple, both part­ners move freely and either one can decide to attack with sen­tai at any time. Then later, with sen­tai or ebigeri. The other part­ner has to defend based on the prior kobo practice.

This may look a lot like jis­sen to an observer, but the goal is to train appro­pri­ate defenses. In jis­sen, stu­dents often for­get the defenses they’ve prac­ticed before­hand. In this drill, the goal is to respond to attacks in the same man­ner you prac­ticed in kobo.

Keep in mind, even though I’m not spelling out each step any­more, to only add one vari­able at a time, and add them gradually.

Bridging the Gap

That’s the focus here. A lot of peo­ple think prac­tic­ing kamae is dif­fi­cult and bor­ing. Most of these peo­ple have shitty kamae. Still, they’re right about the first part. However it’s only bor­ing if you’re not cre­ative or intel­li­gent enough to think about it. Good kamae makes your unsoku and tech­niques bet­ter. It’s worth the investment.

Incremental kobo and jis­sen drills are also worth the invest­ment. Most peo­ple don’t prac­tice kobo because the gap between kobo and jis­sen is too wide. This arti­cle gave you a few ways to make the tran­si­tion as seam­less as pos­si­ble. It takes a while to do it well, but that’s the way this Taido thing works, and the results are worth it.