 Hello, and welcome to Learn The Sword at TGN-TV. My name is Dana Abbott, and this is Kerry. This is a new student who really hasn't practiced the sword before. Today, in 0 to 60, we're going to show him how to work a sword, cut with a sword, and all the aspects dealing with the sword on this first cutting process. Tell us about yourself. Hi. My name is Kerry Kaikendall. I love the martial arts, training the martial arts the majority of my life. I grew up wrestling Dana, and I trained in Taekwondo, Shuru Karate, a little bit of Judo, some Tai Chi, several years in Muay Thai, and a little bit in Kendo, and very excited about today and enjoying training with you as well. Well, good, good. What isn't that hard? Remember, working with a sword is not that difficult, but what I do want you to learn, as far as our audience too, is to make sure that everything is consistent and focused. Don't want any cut fingers. Yeah, that's a good idea. No cut fingers. Okay. So you've never cut before, have you? I have not. No cutting. Okay. Have you ever swung a sword that much outside of Kendo? No, I have not. So basically, you're pretty new to this, aren't you? I'm very new. Very new to Kendo and Kenjitsu. What we're going to work on today is your basic cutting keyhole. We're going to attempt to work on the six basic cuts, but I know at the very beginning, six basic cuts are more difficult than it really is. So what I want you to think about is your basic V and three downward diagonal cuts. Let's work on that to begin with. And the reason why is, why should you learn something that is not practical at this time? Got it. So what I want us to work on is wood. Wood is probably the best object to work with because you don't have to worry about cutting your fingers. And I can teach you the basic footprint, such as gripping the sword. So let me put the sword down here. And let's start off with the basic hold. See where your thumb is right there? I do. The thumb shouldn't be there. Bring it over there on the side. You might break your hand. Moreover, if I take your sword here and I want you to learn how to be able to grip it a little better, it's not that difficult. Since we're doing basic bones instruction today, I want you to look at this as for example, a carpenter. If you're a carpenter and you're pounding navel nails, if you're working with a saw or anything like that, you have to keep it basic because if you don't, you're going to hit something or cut something off, correct? Yeah. Therefore, let's hold the sword more like a hammer. Treat it more like a tool of the trade instead of something that I don't know and has too much mystery behind it. So here's how we're going to hold the sword. I want you to shake my hand. I want you to squeeze it really hard. Good. Now let me pull my hand out and keep that mold. And now I'm going to put my hand into this mold right here like this. Put your hand in there and squeeze. Now give me your left hand and let's do the exact same thing and pull that out. Bring it in there. And now your hands are basically set up for the basic grip. Since this is wood and the handle is really small, don't worry about where the blade is and the handle starts or the blade ends. So just bring your hand up a little bit more where you have almost a fist between your hands here. Okay. Now sometimes when you cut sideways, your hands are closer together. We're not going to be doing that as much now. We're going to be cutting more at a downward diagonal called the Hidari Keisagiri. Hidari Mugi Keisagiri are the basic foundation of test cutting for most all Japanese. And the reason why is hundreds of years ago you couldn't say, well I want to cut at a 45 degree angle. I want to cut at a 80 degree angle. Basically you followed the monk's robe and the monk's robe came down to the neck so you could cast out a lot nicer, be able to hit those pertinent areas makes it easy that way. Later down the road when you come in for test cutting, you bring it over at a wider angle. It's a stronger cut. Aesthetically leaves better topography on the tatami mats, but as far as fighting you're coming off your shoulders and your heads open all the time. So take that in consideration. But since the thing you are going to be cutting today isn't going to fight back, we don't have to worry about that as much. So now since you have the basic grip down, I want you to lift the sword above your head. Just like that. Now a lot of times you're going to lift it back this way. It's a good exercise, but for right at this time, see how it opens up your hand right here? I do. See that? If you open up your hand, you're going to telegraph a mile away and remember, if you're going to do chin-ups, are you going to do chin-ups with your fingers moving? Are you going to grasp tight grip and then do your chin-ups or your pull-ups? I want you to look at the same way because you're holding a razor sharp object. Just like you're shooting a firearm. If I have a .22 rifle, I can shoot it. But if I'm shooting like a .300 Winchester Magnum or a double-edged shotgun, I need to make sure it's in my shoulder really tight or I'll injure myself, correct? Same thing holding the sword. If you hold it loose, something's going to give and it will be your hands as a general rule. So when you lift this above your head and you get ready to cut, even though when you bring this back down, it feels like you have more presence and more pressure you can cut with. Still like a firearm. You don't yank the trigger. You squeeze the trigger with a sword. It's a three-foot-long razor blade. You don't need to beat someone up like it's a baseball bat. You just need to let it drop correctly onto the target so it cuts automatically. Sort of like fishing. You know, at the beginning of fishing, they throw it out like that and they keep losing the bait. But if they learn how to take it and throw it out smoothly, you'll get farther. Same thing with the sword. Same thing with golf. So now, from here, I want you to make sure there's about a fist above your head like that, and now I want you to take and just throw the sword out, 12 to 6. Not easy? Go ahead and lift it back around and throw it out again, 12 to 6. Good. Do it again, 12 to 6, and lift it up again. Stop. You notice how the sword's coming back behind you? That's really important. So what I want you to do is just bring it like that and swing off towards that corner. Good. Again. Swing down. Good. Now, instead of swinging it back up straight through it, I want you to bring it over to the side and bring it back around. Because if you ever cut through an object or you cut through something, you can't lift it back up through the object. Something will give. So your minds will cut through, set up again, and bring it down at this time in your training. Okay. Now go ahead and swing down. Good. Bring it back up again. Good. Swing up, bring up. Now you're bringing the sword way back behind your back, aren't you? That is a problem everybody has. They want to bring it back down. So our viewers, too, remember that if you bring the sword back, it's a good stretch. But if you bring the sword back and throw it out, it will feel stronger, it will actually feel better. But again, it's like shooting a firearm. Can you hit the broad side of a barn jerking the trigger instead of squeezing it? So bring the sword back up, okay, and throw it down. Bring the sword back up and make sure it's parallel to the ground. So this part right here is squeezing it and you keep it just like that. So now you're only going to be cutting about maybe 130 degrees. So all you need to cut. So go ahead from there, cut all the way down. Good. Good, good. Bring it up, cut down, and bring it up. Now in this lesson plan, zero to 60. It isn't about me speaking as much. It's about you practicing this over and over again. So now what we need to do is a little bit of lenshoe, which means practice. Take it up here and throw it down. Good. Bring it back up and throw it down. Good. Now you notice your body is starting to drop a little bit like this. You want to think like you're a wrestler. You did wrestling, didn't you? So you want to take the sword and you want to go like this, don't you? The hard part about coming down here like this is, the cuts are going to be turned. You're going to drop your shoulder on, the topography of the cut will be poor. Moreover, you won't be able to reach out and cast as far as you could. For example, if I'm right here like this and I have a really wide stance and my shoulder rolls, I can hardly hit you and when I can, I'll drop in. But if I stand tall, cast this out correctly, look at how much more room I have. So you remember, it's the stance that takes you to the target correctly. Take that in consideration. Now what I want you to do is adjust your stance. Now you can see your stance, looking at the stance here. I want you to take your feet and sort of turn them in a little bit, almost like your pigeon toe to tad. The reason why I want this is it allows you to just adjust your muscles a little bit and then after you get used to that, now just jump up and down a little bit and your toes are more straight. A lot of times people have their heels inwards and it drops them down into a real defensive mode, which is very, very good. But this defensive mode just doesn't compete with an offensive stance like this. From that, with the stance, your feet are a little bit more sitting, like riding a skateboard, surfboard, like a police in riot gear, they slowly move forward, they never move back, do they? Because their back leg is a little bit straighter and allows them to move forward a little bit more. So with that thought, even though the tummy mat or your goza mat is not going to fight back, I want you to have more of an aggressive feeling to this, so you cut a little bit more, what would we say, thoroughly, a little bit stronger, a better stronger demeanor. So from here now, we have our stance, it's looking pretty good. We took our sword from about right like this and we threw it down about 130 degrees. Now look at your stature compared to mine. My shoulders are back and you're hunkering down like this. So lift the sword back up again, good. And now take this, instead of looking straight at the target, see what's been happening and this is going to happen to a lot of people in this series, they're going to be looking down. I'm up here and I'm looking down at a midget. That's why everybody fights midgets all the time. What I want you to do is find your focal point across that area there, pick the corner there and then find something that's eye level. Usually you'd want to use a post-it or a piece of tape or anything, paint a little smudge on the wall. Doesn't matter to me. Look at that and now looking at your focal point, you found your focal point, correct? Now also leave the target and throw it up there. That's a little bit better, isn't it? Well you are still coming down a little bit. So bring it around the side. Now what I want you to do is, since you're still leaning down like this, is you're not leading the target correctly and you're going, well how do I lead the target? It's this simple. If I was teaching you how to hunt with a firearm and we were going to go hunt deer, you'd look off into the ridge and you'd see a deer maybe 200 meters away and you go, I'm going to have to lead them by about this much with a 30-30 for example. So by the time I hit them, it'll hit them in the correct area. So we know how to lead it horizontally. The difference with the sword is you don't lead the person horizontally because you can't. But since you're coming down on the target most of the time, you lead them vertical diagonally. What's going to happen is if I look straight at the target and I don't lead the target and I hit straight at the target, I'm going to drop my shoulder and look at it this way. Now there are a couple of movie people like Highlander and all that that looked really, really nice and strong. But as a general rule, it really doesn't work well unless you're invincible in how that is. For the rest of the people, they're going to lead the target up in the air like you're leading an animal and they're going to throw it up like this. So now your shibodu here is at its strength. So now when it comes on the target, it's almost pulling back and cutting this way. So instead of coming down like this, looking down this way, no focal point, dropping my shoulder forward. Now I have my focal point, I throw the sword up, lead the target and now if I do make a mistake or I don't finish or I zig when they zag, I'm set up again to make another shot. Does it make any sense? Good. So what I want you to do is stand up a little taller, turn your heels out a little bit. Good. Look at your focal point and swing down. Good. 12 to 6 right at this time. Bring it around, hold it up there just like that. It doesn't feel strong, does it? It feels a little bit funny. It feels a little funny and you know why it feels a little funny because you're using new muscles and these new muscles aren't strong yet. So bring it up around and cut. Good. Bring it up around and cut and bring it up around and cut and keep practicing that for a couple of minutes. Hey. Hey. Stop right there. It's starting to look pretty good. If you listen to your key eye, instead of going eep, eep, but after your 10th one, eep, eep, you have to be consistent. Your key eye is like your metronome for your sword. So if I have a strong key eye, eep, and it's slow, my sword's going to go slow. If I have a strong key eye and my key eye is hardened fast, eep, so is my cut. So follow that a little bit. So everybody that is beginning to learn the sword here, especially before test cutting, is take your time, make the cut true, and go eep, and keep it nice and strong because you can always speed it up a little bit later. Okay. Go ahead and throw it out a couple more times. Eep. Stop. Don't move. Now, look at your hands here. They look pretty good, but I want you to shibodu them a little bit more. So we're going to reverse engineer this. I want you to bring the sword, make it parallel to the floor, bringing your hand here, squeezing, bringing this hand here, squeezing this way, almost like you're holding a hammer or holding a kitchen knife or anything like that. There's nothing fancy to this. Now from here, I want you to bring your right hand and turn it counterclockwise and your left hand turn it clockwise a little bit so it's like this. See where that is. Keep your back straight. Don't look down as much. Okay. Now, with that process, squeeze here and slowly bring your hands back over your head. About right there, it starts feeling a lot tighter here, doesn't it? Lift it up a little bit higher. Now, since it's like that, it feels real tight. Almost feels like your hands are bound here, aren't they? That's good because if your hands feel constricted here, you're using better muscles that will make the tip of the blade more true. Remember, if I take the sword and I bring my hands on top, I feel better. I can do lots of stances and feels real good, but the cuts aren't going to be consistent. If I bring this down here, shabody it really tight, bring it up. My elbows are really close together, but when I throw it out, it's going to be consistent all the time and that's what we need. If it's not consistent, your shoulder's going to drop, the front's going to waver. Now, with this reverse engineering, take it back down, lift it back up in the air, like this, and now throw it out. Feels a little different, doesn't it? Yes. Now, I don't want you dropping down this way. There's no meaning. I know if you're doing doodon, cutting a lot of objects, you might drop your body, but if you learn to bring that back foot up and cut like this, see how tall I am? That's what I want you to work on a little bit. Bring it around. Make sure that's not... Now, see your fingers pointing here? That's another mistake a lot of people are going to make and the reason why is, is because it helps you relax. If you were doing 100 pull-ups, would you let your fingers relax like that? If you were holding a hammer and pounding nails all day long, would you let your fingers go like that? Then when you're swinging a three-foot razor blade that if you drop it on your foot, it's 300 stitches, hold it a little bit stronger. Now reverse-engineer it, make sure it's shibodied in, lift it up in the air, and cut down 12 to 6. Good. It's looking better. Good. Stand up tall, throw your chest out. Good. Shibodied the blade a lot more. Good. Keep your fingers on the blade. Remember, the handle here, you want to hold it a little softer, a little firmer. This is a little bit where they go, I might know lonely. Which means it's a little ambiguous. But if you're learning how to drive a car, remember you're holding it at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock, you're like squeezing it really hard, but after six months drinking a beer, eating a taco, driving that way, that's what I want you to think about a little bit. So loosen it up, but keep your fingertips on the handle so your hands can move up and down easily and adjust for the next cut. Like playing a flute. Your fingertips are on, because if they aren't, this is going to happen, and you know what happens then is you telegraph a mile away. Okay, got it. Okay. So lift the sword up, good, and cut down, good. Focal point, shibodied the blade, good, good. Okay, from there, now what I want you to do is bring your right foot forward just a little bit more. Just like that. Turn your heels out just a little bit, good, and lift the sword up. Put your stomach out now, good, now cut. Nice. Now spend about 50 or 60 cuts practicing that. Stop, make sure your hands are around that a little bit more. Go ahead and throw it on down, good, it's looking better. Put your chest out a little bit more, good, it's looking smoother. Okay, now what I want you to do is I want you to straddle this line for another focal point. So come on over, straddle the line, straddle the line straight down the middle, good. Now what I want you to work on is your focal point as far as your vertical and diagonal cuts. We're going to work on three cuts now, your basic V. So when you look at any target, I want you to look at it as it starts up here on the side, basically at 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock or 2 o'clock to 10 o'clock, depending how you're looking at the clock, and you can swing down from that and work into the target area, almost like a funnel a little bit. If you keep it that consistent, what's going to happen is your focus will be a lot stronger. To get this going, I want you to cut down from 12 to 6, bring it back around, then cut from 1 to 7, bring it back around this side, and then cut from 11 to 5. At this time, don't worry about moving your feet. Sometimes when you cut from 11 to 5, or in the case of Gitti, your left foot comes forward, and a lot of times your right foot comes forward when you're cutting off the right side. In cutting objects, it's not going to fight back, and if you move forward or anything, you're going to run into the target. So keep it really consistent, and keep your right foot forward, lift the sword straight up, follow your focal point right down the middle with a 12 to 6 cut. Begin. Good. Now bring it around, and now cut from 1 o'clock to 7 o'clock. Good. Bring it around. 11 to 5. Good. Bring it around, 12 to 6. Good. Bring it around. 1 to 7. Good. Bring it around. Good. Now, I want you to come back over on this side too, so you always, always come on your left side. Come around this side, and this side too. 12 to 6 doesn't really matter. I want you to get used to it a little bit. Got it. Okay. And continue. Good. Stop right there. See where your hands are right here? Look how weak that is. What's happened is, is that you've gone back away from holding the hammer, and you're holding a kitchen fork maybe. So what I want you to remember is, if your hands on the side like this, you're going to lose the sword. But if your hands on top, now it's a lot harder for me to adjust, isn't it? Moreover, your focal point for the tip of the sword, depending on the style, is ambiguous. Sometimes it's parallel to the floor, parallel to the floor. Sometimes it comes down to 130 degrees. Sometimes it comes into different angles. Where I want you to figure your focal point is, is if you had an opponent in front of you, you'd probably stop right where his knee is, around that general area. So if you go down, and I come over here for example, and I cut down, and I can be this far away, I can be pretty close. But if it stops around where your general knee area is, you can see that the sword is still strong. If I take it down any lower, you can start seeing the back of the blade, can't you? Correct. If you see the back of the blade, you've got your window of opportunity. Now you might get beat up chins, because it hits the back of the blade, but you've got a blade too, so you'll probably do more damage. Does that make any sense? So a lot of times when people test cut, they put in more pressure than they need. They make it a lot stronger than they should. So they cut all the way down, and they don't stop there. They follow all the way through, and they cut something here. That's where you get a lot of the injuries, with bent swords, chip swords, the tip hitting the ground, all that. So lead the target a little bit higher, throw it out, and it automatically stops here. If I don't lead the target and I shoot it down, it's going to hit like that, because it does. You have to have a nice stance, grip, shibodhu, and now casting. So now cast 1, 12, 11. Basically, continue, and bring it off of both sides, so you get used to it. Head up, look at your focal point, watch your left hand, good. Bring it around, good, good. Now remember, you turn your hand like this too much. All the strength is in the back hand. If I hold it with one hand, I'm not going to squeeze it 100%. My shoulders would come up. I squeeze it about 80%. I squeeze it a little bit, not like a crayon, but like a quill where I can write a little bit better, like this. So with less squeezing, I want you to bring it in that way. Moreover, I want you to remember, if the right hand just holding the sword holds 80%, or if I put it in the left hand, holds 80%, to keep your shoulders from dropping, or keeping them from going up. Then if you put two hands together, everything defaults to the rear hand. So the rear hand holds 80%, and the right hand brings up about 20%. That's mostly with fighting. It keeps a stick. It keeps it out there a little bit more. The back hand is like a drivetrain, your transmission, engine, rear end, where your front hand is just a steering wheel off of like a 1967 Cadillac with a lot of play in the wheel. So play around with that a little bit. When we get into test cutting, you'll find out it'll be a little bit more 50-50. But right at this time, if you know the back hand is your lead hand, I want you to keep that consistent, because if not, your front hand is going to be turning down like this, and you might injure yourself when you zig in the mat zags. All right? So let's see you do a couple more swings down, 12 to 6. Make sure your left hand is shibody down. Good. Bring it around. Good. One to seven. Go ahead. Good. Bring it around again. Good. Now, we're almost done dealing with wood on your basic footprint. What we've done so far is we've worked on the grip. We've worked on your stance. We've worked on a few strikes, haven't we? A few areas and your focal point. Now what I want us to do is I want us to go to an Eaito. This is a real thin Eaito. It's about 800 grams. One of the smallest, thinnest ones around. Real tinny. But what this Eaito is going to do now is simple. It's going to start creating a tone for you. So when you swing it, it's going to start making a noise. So let me pull this out this way, hold this sword, hold this saya this way. And now, if I bring the sword up like this, and I'll look over here at this corner, and I bring the sword down, see where it is here, and see that there? What I want you to take into consideration, anybody can make this sing-sing. If we get a heavier sword, you'll have a deeper tone, it'll go a little bit slower. If I use a different sword with what they call a bohe, they call it a blood groove, actually it's made for like a metronome that allows you to swing on down. Because what's going to happen now is, being consistent after about maybe 10 or 15, 20 swings, it's not going to make noise because your arms are going to get tired. Remember you should bully it so much. But here's what I want you to look at. If I take the blade down, and I throw it down a few times like this, see that? Then all of a sudden, it doesn't make a noise. It's telling me that to tell you that your hand's off a little bit. See my hand? It's off a little bit. But if I bring it back here on top, it does it again. If I take it off, it'll still make a little noise, but it's shaky. So remember, you should bully it, and you wring it out, and you throw it down that way. So now, with tone, grab that in your left hand, I'll grab this one here, right hand forward, adjust your hands, a little farther apart here, there. That's pretty good. And do the exact same thing now, chest out, good. Lift the sword up, and swing down 12 to 6, good. Bring it around, 1 to 7, good. Bring it around, 11 to 5. Now I want you to be consistent. Now when you worked with wood, you went fairly fast working that basic footprint. Now we're working more on subtleties, we're working on tone, because I'd rather have you make one really good cut instead of 5,000 bad ones. Now you're dealing with, you're starting to deal with metal, because it goes from synthetics, it goes to wood, bamboo, metal, and then steel as a general rule. And by the time you get up to steel, yeah, you should be pretty strong at it. So continue making those strikes. Now don't worry about key eyeing right now, let's hear how it tones better. Chest out, good, nice long tones. Now you notice you're not making tone too much anymore. The reason why is, it's normal, you're fatiguing, and that's what happens. Yeah, you're starting to feel it in your hands. Wood you didn't feel in your hands that much did you? Not as fast. No, no, and the reason why is subtleties are very, very difficult. So let me come right back here to the center again, and let's adjust it. My feet are situated here, my heels are out a little bit, my stomach's sticking out a tad, my shoulders are back, I'm up like this, I'll go over here to this corner so you can see it at a side view, and see how that is? Now I feel myself coming forward a little bit more, then take it and leave the target a little bit more, and bend your front leg a little bit like this. See where it makes my back straighter? So the heavier the sword is, the more it's going to throw me forward, and you might want a little bit wider stance, but then again, a wider stance makes you more positioned this way, a less of a wide stance pushes you forward, which keeps you in attack mode a lot of the time, but with regular test cutting, you can work more of a classical stance where I'm up here like this, and now look at the difference here. If I bring the sword around, you're going like this, a little bit like that, which is fine, I want you to make the line between stance and cut, so I'm up here like this and a little bit more like that, so I'm set up almost like you're playing tennis, you always want to win on the serve, right? You don't want to volley, since you want to win on the serve all the time, let's make it a point where, like in tennis, you've got to hit the ball, you've got to set up for everything setting up, same thing with the sword. If I set up correctly with the sword, I'm done. If I don't set up correctly and do something like this, I'm open for a volley. See how that is? So come on back here, practice on your hand again, make sure it makes more tone now, so lift it above your head and adjust. Now, bring it around, adjust, set it all up, adjust your hands, and again, bring it around, adjust, cut from one to seven, bring it around, adjust it again, look at your focal point, and cut. Nice, didn't sound good, did it? I want you to be consistent with that most all the time, because you can see what tone it can give you, you just got to feel for it now. Go ahead, do another 100 cuts. Good, good, good. Now you're starting to see with your getting tone, it's starting to feel a little better. So now your cuts are going to be a little bit more true. When you don't have tone, your cuts will be a little bit over on the side, and that's same as golf. If you want to hit the ball at anything, just imagine if we were playing golf or tennis or whatever, you're off on your stance, you're positioning or your hand grip, you're not going to hit it back correctly, are you? Same thing with the sword, this just goes back in millennia. Now, what we want to do now is, I'm going to take away this little tinny one that makes a lot of noise, and I'm going to trade it in with this one here. This is 1180 grams, and this is about 780 to 800 grams, a big difference. You'll feel a big difference, like a little K car or a little smart car compared to a Yukon almost, just on the difference. Now, hold this for one second, and swing it down, and hear the tone on yours. Hear the tone on that one? Hear the tone on this one? Feel the difference on it? So if I take this one here, hold this one here, and I cut out, and then I take this one here, way different sound, isn't it? The tone of that sword tells me that this is a much heavier sword, this is the one they'll use more for test cutting, this is a traditional Japanese line style here, because I got this back in Tokyo back in 1985, around like that, and it's a real strong sword. Before we go into test cutting, if we try to cut with that one, like a Deaton Soup of the Desert spoon. So what I want us to do is, I want you to go from this sword now over to this one. So give me that one. Work in your hands, shibodium in, bring it back around, and get into your stance a little bit stronger, a little bit more pronounced now, because it's going to throw you forward, and cut. Good, bring it around, cut. Tone sounds bigger, doesn't it? It feels much heavier. It is heavier. That's the weight of your real sword. Now you notice, when you're holding this one, it was a little hard for you to shibody. This one falls in more naturally, doesn't it? Because it's heavier? It is. It's like shooting a .45. You put a real gun in your hand, a real firearm, you shoot a real firearm, it does what it's supposed to do, and something instead of a tinny one. So same thing, I want you to take your time, and this allows you to take more time, doesn't it? Before the short one, you're like this one all the time, but this one, you can't do that, can you? So now you've got to take time, which is really good for your body, because it isn't balanced yet. So let's do about 200 strokes of this, begin. 12 to 6, 1 to 7, 11 to 5. Just like that, throw it up a little higher. Starting to notice that it's starting to be fatiguing, isn't it? And wears you out, doesn't it? Yes, well it does give you good forearm arms. Does give you really good forearm arms. So now what I want us to do is, we've been cutting down into the basic V. We've been going with gravity, go with gravity, my son. And it's worked out really well. Most people who do test cutting, usually cut at all different angles, vertical and go down. A lot of them are your leftward and downward diagonal cuts. A lot of times they do horizontal cuts, which are a lot more difficult, just because you got to put a little bit more oomph into it. And of course, the cuts that work their way upward, gyaku johogittis. So with that thought process, you'll be thinking, well, I can cut down, it's making tone. How about cutting upwards? Well, that's a completely different set of rules because now we're going to work about test cutting, but in real fighting, if I keep my sword down to like a walking okamai over here, or if I'm over here like this, and I'm working and I want to cut upwards, you can see that anytime I fight, my head's going to be open. It's going to be open right now. So in battle, as a general rule, you're working down. But with the test cutting, you work down too to get the dynamics of it. But cutting up is also difficult because it's hard to get the blade lined up with the target. But there's usually one side, either the right side or the left side, that most everybody likes, where they can cut up and they're pretty consistent on the cut, which produces a nice cut. That's why you see the samurai guys in all those samurai movies. They make a cut upwards like this, and they hold it there like that because it's a real aesthetically pleasing cut and it's easy to accomplish for actors. What I want you to do is bring it over to the side, face off on your focal point a little bit like that, bring it down to the side this way. Yes. And now what I want you to do is cut up. Go ahead and do it a couple of times. Now did you notice, you notice how you're sort of tilted over here on the side? All right, you see that tilt? Why are you getting in the tilt? And the reason why you're getting in that tilt is because you see where the blade is, you wanna follow that blade all the way up and make sure it's straight. The hard part about that is you need a correct stance to take it there. You can't stand behind the blade. Here you can watch the blade go down. Down here you can, can you? So here's what you need to do. Take and put your heels out a little bit because that's very important. Drop the blade down here a little bit farther. Remember, if you're cutting down at this angle, you have to cut up at that angle just to get used to it. Now, remember when I talked about leading the target? Remember, you're only cutting a little area here. You're not cutting this whole area. You're just cutting a little bit of section. So now what I want you to do is cut downwards so it comes up this way. Sort of lead the target downwards. Yes. Now, here's something else I want you to make in consideration. Since this is two hands and you're going, well, I can't cut up that well because this hand doesn't know what to do. At the very beginning, don't use this hand. Take your right hand and follow your elbow up. See how you can follow it up? Makes a little tone, doesn't it? Yes. See how that is? Now, after you've adjusted that, cutting upward, bring your other hand in. Good. And now cut up. That's a little bit better. Now, you notice your shoulder's dropping a lot, isn't it? Yeah. Adjust your heels and make sure your shoulder is straight. Good. That's a little bit better. Good. Now what I want you to do is bring it over here to the other side and switch your legs around. Switch your leg around. Walk, you know, come on, require that sometimes. Okay. And from about right there, you're leaning way over, straighten out your back, turn out that heel. Ah, that's a lot better. And remember, it isn't about you. It isn't about your hands. It's about the tip of the sword getting to the target. Okay, ready? Cut up. Okay, again. Good, again. Good, again. It's making tone, isn't it? Lift your arms up a little bit higher. There it is. What side is easier? The right side. Okay, the right side's easier for you, depending on who you are and where you work it in. Now, what I want you to do is spend about 200 strikes and cut up 100 on this side, 100 on that side, but alternate back and forth. Begin. Take your time. Stand up straight. Good, bring it back around. Good. Now what we want to do, the sixth shot isn't too bad. One to seven is fine. 11 to five, on my 11 to five looks pretty good. And now we're starting to come up and we're starting to make cuts that aren't too bad. They starting to feel a little better. It's still a little off because it does take years to master the upward cuts. Let's try some horizontal cuts from nine o'clock to three o'clock and back. So I'm going to take this leg, I'm gonna bring it back like this and cut this way and then bring it around and cut this way. Now watch what I'm doing. And then if you wanna do, since we're gonna be in front of a mat, just a stride stance here and, which is okay, but if you do bring your foot forward a little bit and the other one back, you have better to pull on and it feels a lot better. So straddle your line, look at your focal point, not a midget, bring it down a little bit farther. Good, make sure it's flat parallel to the ground. Bring it over here. And if you have a clock on the ground, the sword's tip is facing at two o'clock. You're two o'clock, isn't it? Swing it all the way over to it's 10 o'clock. There it is. Now, turn it and bring that foot back and cut. Bring this foot back as you cut. Good, now turn it again and bring that one forward as you cut. Good, and back. Don't step as far, just a little bit, a few inches. It's hard to make tone with this one, isn't it? So go back to the smaller one here and make tone with that one for a second so you can get the feeling. Stop, see your hand on top of the blade? Bring it around on the side, now cut. See what's happening is, is you're coming in with a blade, you're holding it here, and you're letting this come in like this. You're holding it like that, what you can do. Right at this time, I want you to make sure that your backhand holds everything. You bring it on the side like that. You cut it. Then you bring it around here. That's all I'm doing. See where my hand is? Now go ahead and cut. See how that is? Bring it around here like that. See how that is? You don't really have to move your hands, do you? Just put your hands a little closer together. The horizontal cuts is a little bit more like a baseball bat, just a little bit compared to your downward vertical cuts. It's a little bit closer together like that. Go ahead and go back and forth on that. Nice. Most people have a problem doing tone on one side compared to the other. It's just the way life is, because your body's off a little bit on one side, left side, throw a rock with your right hand, then throw with your left, same thing. Just a little bit of practice will give you a tone. But you already know that. I want you to go to the heavy one and go back and forth. Okay, ready? And continue. Okay, now what I'd like you to do is we've done vertical cuts downward and upward diagonal cuts and we've done horizontal cuts. Let's put it together. See what happens? So now what I want us to do is let's stay away from the vertical cut and just make this sort of interesting. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna lift the sword up and I'm gonna cut from one to seven. And I'm gonna bring it down here. I'm gonna cut back up, seven to one. I'm gonna switch my left leg forward. I'm gonna cut from 11 to five. Turn it around and from five to 11. Good. I bring it over on the side and I cut from nine to three. Turn it around and bring your back leg back. Cut from three to nine. Now lift it back up. And you're already, with your right foot, you're already set. So one, bring it down, seven to one. Switch your feet over. Good, lift it above your head. 11 to five. Good, bring it around. And five to 11. Nine to three. And three to nine. And you're set up again to go. So begin that. Ready? And one to seven. Seven to one. Good, lift up, left foot forward. Good, 11 to five. 11 to five. Five to 11. Good, nine to three. Three to nine. And again. You're backwards now. Watch your feet. Yeah, you have to watch your feet. Take your time. Keep working it in. Good. 11 to five. Don't hit me in the head. Good. Side. And let's do 300 strokes of this. Continue. That foot is not forward, it's in your reverse. Yeah. This is where this stance starts working in with everything. It makes it difficult, doesn't it? So what's happening is I'm giving you a couple more stances than you really need and it's screwing up the whole thing, doesn't it? Keep it simple. If you're learning how to shoot a firearm today, should I take you to the NRA thing and have you shoot a machine gun in full combat or should you just stay with a 22 long rifle? Simple. That's the thing. Everybody wants to jump into this really hard and master it in 20 minutes. Hard part is they're usually this age when they start them off by the time they're this age, they've been holding it for maybe a few million strokes. That's the difference. All right? So as you're learning now, you don't have to do everything. Keep it simple and work at it until you become proficient in that. Continue. One to seven. Okay, stop right there. Looks like you're getting a pretty good sweat. Yeah, I started to feel some. It's amazing how much you're sweating in the winter here. So you notice that it really starts opening a lot of the muscles and it follows everything smoothly, doesn't it? Well, let's make this more smooth. This is called a shin ken. If you drop this on your hand, it will take it off. See that blade? It's a little bit different looking, isn't it? Now, if you make a mistake with this one, consequences are astronomical compared to this one here. So now what I want you to do is I want you to take this one in your hands, right hand forward, don't move because I want to get out of the way on this. Before I stand next to you. No, I'm not going to do that now. But I want you to do is I want you to go back to your basic V, 12 to six, one to seven, 11 to five. I want you to go into your focal point over at the corner there, like I am right now. Go into that focal point and spend some time putting some good and working it in. Ready? Begin. Take your time. Okay, stop right there. Don't move the thing around too much. And don't grab with your hands either. So let me grab this. What we're going to do now is we're going to cut this tatami mat. This is basically like Japanese carpeting that goes over the tatami mats in Japan. And then every couple of few years, depending on how much money you have, you have them replaced. And they work in really, really well because see how it's rolled off? This was basically one meter by two meters, about a yard by two. And you rolled up this fashion and then when you cut it with a sword, it gives you almost the same consistency as a person's throat or their neck. So when you cut this off, it's pretty close to cutting off someone's head. Wow. Now if I wanted to make this just a little bit more realistic, I'd put bamboo inside to represent a little bit more bone. So what it'll do is, if you have a good shibodu, if you really can wring out the handle well, it works in nicely. Otherwise you'll have curves and everything into it. So let's take this onto the next stage. Take the sword back and let's set up the stand. Now since we put a stand underneath this, I want you to start looking at your focal points now. You got your rubber bands. Usually they have five rubber bands or a tied string, depending on what generation you're from. Right now rubber bands have a tendency to work the easiest for most people. This was soaked for about two days. Takes about 12 to 36 hours, depending on how old the mat is and how that works in. Now what I want you to do is, I want you to go into the target area. So if I come over here at an angle, I'm going to put my sword about this far into the target. You'll notice you're standing really close, almost arms distance from the target. When you fight, you're pretty far away because you have two swords, you're a sword and they're a sword. But when you're test cutting, you're really, really close. And this is really difficult for some people because they figure they got to be far away and run in and come back and attack. Since this isn't going to cut back, I don't have to be defensive as much because we are working on our test cutting. I want you to work it into this area here. See here? This is called the Mono Uchi. It's basically like a sweet spot, like a baseball glove where you can catch it all the time. And you can cut in here fairly well. And if you can cut out here, it's okay. But right here at the Mono Uchi, if you just lift up the sword and you cut down on that, you'll be surprised at how easy it will cut and how much consistent cut, how many consistent cuts you'll receive. So what I want you to do is you stand here, you put the sword out, you measure yourself in relation to the map because it's always different depending on what terrain you're in. Lift the sword up to one to seven and we'll cut from a one to seven to cut first, right where the first rubber band is. After you finish there, I want you to make another cut and a couple of the same cuts to get used to it. We could say I want this cut, that cut, this cut, that cut, but at this time it makes a little bit difficult. But you never know, we'll play it by ear. So I want you to make a couple of straight cuts from one o'clock to seven o'clock, straight down from one to seven and have it in there. So take this, okay. Don't lift it up over your head too much because you don't really need to and it isn't a baseball bat. So put your hands a little bit up there, this one a little bit closer, this is a little bit tighter now. Move into the target area, a little bit more, a little bit more, about right there. Does your stance feel good? It does, yeah. Your chin's going forward too much, like you're gonna put your nose on it. I want you to stand away from it like this a little bit. Now since you're standing away from it, look at the Mono Uchi. It's farther away now, isn't it? Step forward a little bit closer. Can you see the difference between standing up straight and leaning forward? It makes a big difference on that. And if you lean forward and you try to cut with it, if they zig when you zag, you might not get the cut you want. Okay, so now I'm gonna go over here from a distance and talk you through this. Okay, move into the target a little bit more. Like that, lift it above your head into a Jodan position. Look at the target, look at that rubber band. Don't take your eyes off that rubber band and assume the blade's gonna cut through from one o'clock to seven o'clock. Can you visualize it? Don't take your eyes off and cut. Good, good, good, good, good, good. Keep your eyes on it. Now you cut off more than you wanted, but that's fine, that's fine. Don't move a bit. If I look into the target area right here, this is a real nice cut. For your first cut, it looks nice. You can be impressed by your own cut. It's sort of like you shot for the first time. Bullseye are close to it. Nothing to snivel at. So what I want you to do is I want you to do the exact same thing, but cut two inches down a little bit. Don't move, set up. Look at the rubber band now. Focus on it. Cut. Good, good, good, good. Lift it up. Focus. Not too bad, not too bad. Now what I want you to do is see your other rubber band. I want you to go over there on the left side with your left foot forward. This is gonna be different. See where the rubber band is? I want you to cut from 11 o'clock to five. It's called a meagy case of giddy. First, measure your target. That's fine. And, execute. Okay, that's called yamanokoshi. Left over mountaintop. $50. Or you're disqualified. If you ever do any test cutting. Any little mistake over in Japan, it's gonna cost you a case of beer. It's gonna cost you 50 bucks. Or you're gonna have to buy everybody drinks. Just because it's a drinking club sometimes. So go ahead, try it again. And try to make a cut that doesn't cut into the other. Nice cut. Not too bad. Don't move, bring the sword down. Don't cut anymore, just drop the sword to your side. Don't move. Now, if you look at this right here. See your first cut? Was this your first cut? See how nice it is? And then when you started getting down a little bit farther, it started scooping it out and dropping this off and everything. That tells me that the first cut was nice. The second cut is you're starting to get your bad habits in. You were on your best behavior with this. By the time you got down to that one, you're going, I know how it went. Your body's going, I know what to do. Your right hand took over. And that's why you had the scoop there. So remember, your first cut or your 20th cut. Shoulder, and that's what you were doing. You were rolling your shoulder. And you started rolling your shoulder the farther you went down. Because instead of standing back and cutting it like this, you went down closer and you're following it down like that. See how that is? You wanna try another mat? Yeah. Okay. All right. So what I want you to do is go on in, measure to the target. Let me stand out of the way here. Focus on the first rubber band up on top. Don't take your eyes off the mat whatsoever. Make sure your fingers are shibody a little bit more. And reverse engineer it. Now, bring it back down this way and work it in. So it's really tight on your forearms, okay? All right. Now, hold it there. Now, bring it back up to the rubber band. Good. Lift it above your head. And make your cut. Nice cut. Nice angle. Don't move. Don't move. That's okay. Turn your sword back around that way. Adjust it in. Take your time. Try to cut about two or three inches below that next cut. Okay. Wasn't too bad. Don't move. Don't move. You can see the cut. Look at the cut there. Don't move a bit. You can see the cut here. It's way different from the other one. And the reason why is you're coming down in a real high angle this way. But when you're coming up, your sword went up on the side and you almost cut horizontal, didn't you? See where your sword is right now? Is that vertical or horizontal? You can see where that's gonna happen. So take that in consideration. Now what I want you to do is go back down to where you were and do that one more time. But instead of using your hands to cut, use the tip of the sword. So measure it, measure it first. Okay, now bring it back down on your side. Drop it down. Yeah, there it is. Drop it down. Now cut up. There. Much better cut, isn't it? You can see the difference just by adjusting your feet. Now what I want you to do is do the exact same thing. Cut down and cut up again. Take your time and make two good cuts. One down, one up, two inches apart. Begin. Nice. Looks okay, bring it back down. Do it one more time. Take your time. Nice. Now what I want you to do, same thing, cut down. Reverse it and cut up. Nice. You can stop there, there's no more. Good. Here, give me the sword. Well, you can, come on. You can see here that even your last cut looks pretty damn good, doesn't it? Now, if we are really test cutting, this is a nice test cut. This is about 50 degrees. They'd be really aesthetically pleasing. You'd probably want it at about 45 degrees. But then again, it depends on the beauty and the eye of the beholder. So here, test cutting looks real good. You're starting to understand it. In zero to 60, can you learn how to test cut in 60 minutes or less? Yeah. It's not that difficult, is it? Oh, pretty amazing. It is. Yeah. Good. You have anything to say? You know what, this was so much fun and enjoyable and very introspective too. During the process, there were a lot of things that I was thinking and then working out myself that just weren't about the sword and about handling things. Just going from A to B and doing it very quickly and getting rid of a bunch of other stuff. I really start to understand how training with the sword has a lot of application in your personal life and in everything you do, business and a relationship like that. So this was, Dana, thank you. This was really, really cool. It is real fun, isn't it? It's really interesting how you can take something and just focus it and then apply it to everyday life. Yeah. Focus. And that's what it all is. It's all about focus. Well, that concludes our lesson three to 60 or from zero to 60 today. And I want everybody out there at TGN to follow along in practice. Now I know perfectly well that you don't have a shink in your hand half the time and you can't go out and find tatami mats but there's different ways of test cutting. We can work on newspaper with a piece of wood. We can work on noodles for pools and everything like that and cut things that way. So there's lots of different interesting things you can work with. Therefore, work with them. Work with them. And that concludes our lesson. Everybody have a great day and be well.