Kendo In The Park
Jun 17th, 2006 by mark
This morning’s workout was exceptional for me. About ten or twelve students from Lawrence came over and joined us, making the group around twenty for the day. The Lawrence dojo is Korean, and while they call it kumdo to our kendo, the two arts are the same. Remembering the fun of large group work outs from my karate experience I had been looking forward to today’s workout since Wednesday when Sensei informed us it would take place.
More and more of the nuances are clicking into place for me now. Towards the end of the practice I suddenly “got” the rhythm of hiya suburi and could feel the flow of my movement forwards and back in sync with the men strikes. It brought back memories of getting to the same mental/physical space in karate. Good memories.
I have been holding off on buying a keiko-gi and hakama as I didn’t want to spend money on equipment if I wasn’t going to use it. After today’s workout I am convinced that I’ll be doing this for a long time to come. Time to get out the tape measure and order an exercise jacket (kieko-gi) and split-skirt pants (hakama). Time also to start saving for a complete set of bogu (armor).
For those of you who are interested in seeing what kendo looks like, I’ve uploaded some pictures to Flickr: Kendo-Kumdo Workout Pictures. (Kumdo is the Korean form of kendo.)
