 Hello, and welcome to Learn the Sword on TGN TV. I'm Dana Abbott, and I'll be your guide in this episode on dealing with a short sword. Today, we have Steve and Essen Jason working with each other, and we're going to be working back and forth on short sword. And with that, let's begin. So what I want you to do is come on back over this way, and I want you to put it in your hand. Now, you know how to handle the sword. Your son doesn't know as well. So let's sort of rehash it just a little bit. Give me your sword. All right. Shake my hand. Squeeze it really hard. Good. Now loosen it up, and let me put the sword right in there. That's your basic grip. Try to stay with that, okay? Now yourself, I want you to do the same thing. Get the feeling in with it. Okay. Let me pull my hand out. Bring that sword in, just like that. Now when you shake the hand, don't like you have to squeeze it. Just hold it nicely, and now loosen up just enough so you can live it back like this and act like you're writing something. See how that works? Now throw it back and bring it back. Now this is going to show you how to grasp it correctly with just enough pressure to press the sword into the target, but not enough for your shoulders rise or anything like that. So what I want us to do is come stand back here with myself, coming back this way, and let's face north. At the very beginning, let's work on the five basic strikes of keyhole and put the weapon out, lift the sword up above your head, move forward just a little bit as you come down like I'm going to strike someone in the head, like this. Men. See that? Just like that. Lift it up, and now bring it down to this area here called the cote. Cote. Good. Now keep your hand on your waist. Good. Now lift the sword up again, and move forward and cut at an angle. Dole. Bring it back. Now lift up the sword. Now we're going to cut at an opposite angle from about 11 o'clock to 5 o'clock on our own clock. Remember, it's always your own clock when we talk about this. And ashi. Yeah, if you want to go down a little bit farther, it helps you stretch your back legs, gets it ready. Now take your hip and bring it straight back up this way. And the next is a thrust and ski. Now from here, pull it back out, and let's move backwards. And sword away. And let's try this again. Sword out, and sword up, and men. Men. Up. Cote. Cote. Up. Dole. Up. Ashi. Up. And ski. Ski. And pull out. And go on back. Okay, put the sword away. Come in together a little bit, a little bit closer, and go back a little bit farther. And ready. Man, sword out, hands at your side, and keep it up your side. Don't have your eyes wandered like everybody's looking at you on the video. And men. Men. Bring it down for Cote. Cote. Cote. Dole. Dole. Ashi. Ashi. Ski. Ski. Back. Cote. Dole. Good. Stop here. Now, with just a little bit of practice, it's starting to feel pretty good. What I want you to do is move back this way a little bit. I want you to reach out, get a better stance, and I want you to go out with threes on men. Go. Men. Men. Men. Bring it back. Men. Men. Men. Good. Now I want you to work on a Cote on an angle. Begin. Cote. Cote. Cote. And back. Cote. Cote. Now I want you to turn into a Do. And work out three Does. Begin. Dole. Work your way out for an Ashi. And begin. Ashi. Ashi. Ashi. Ashi. And back. Ashi. Ashi. Ashi. Ashi. Center in for a ski. Begin. Ski. And back. Ski. Dole. Stop here for one second. Let's adjust this a little bit. So far we have the patterns down. Our muscle memory is set in, and we can go through the basic five strikes, can't we? Feels pretty good? Yep. Now what I want to do is I want to make our, what will we say, our stance, our poise, our demeanor look a lot stronger. Now I want you to take some time and work independently. And you don't have to go forward as backward as much, but like this. For emphasis in on it. And begin. Take your time. Work it in. Dole. Stop. Are you guys starting to feel a little stronger now on your cuts? Yeah. A little bit more confident. Now what I want us to do is let's put this together so you can start sparring between each other and have it fairly controlled at this time. Yes, face each other like this. Measure out your sword and bring it to handle the hand. Basically like that so you know where you are. Just right as an adjustment and a focal point. Drop your hands. So it brings it in like this. Now what I'd like you to do is you might as well start on your side and go this way is lift up the sword. You lift up and you move forward. You step, take a step backwards and cut. Good. Now hit this together. You can hit down here, but if you might start hitting your fingers. So try to keep everything up about right here if you can. Now lift up again and go this way. Good. And if you don't hit it's okay. After a while you get the timing and rhythm down. Now go back again. You're coming in this way. Hey stop right here. Starting to look pretty good. You know it's really hard to get the balance and timing down. It happens to me all the time. Don't worry about it. It's the way life is. Just remember one thing. If you zig when he's eggs, don't hit your fingers. It hurts a lot. So remember, if you're going to do anything, make sure all the strikes, all the cuts, all the blocking is where they do it called the Mono Uchi. From here let's work our way down to a Kote. So same pattern as a men, but this time bring it down this way for a Kote. Kote like that. Let's try that. Go this way. Lift up the swords and go backwards one Kote. Go. Kote. Good. Now you know you got really close in on the hand. You have to really watch this very close. Stop. Good. I'll tell you what. This stuff is getting hard. You're starting to get a good sweat going here. Start to get that rope memory set in. You're looking smoother. Your feet are out a little bit more. Here, hand me this. What I want us to work on now is same, same, but coming off this way. You went that way. Now let's go into the dough. Bring it up here like this. Dough. Bring this up. Bring it on the side and just come in at a nice angle and stop it there with dough. Now remember, move in three times. Dough. What you guys have been doing is fine, but you're going like this. Let's just use dough. Dough. Dough. Dough. Which is fine. But I want you to get stronger. I want you to have stronger demeanor. So this time bring it in. Dough. Dough. See how that looks? So therefore you won't have hit fingers. You'll be more focused and the consistency will be a lot stronger. Okay, now set in again. Find your area up above your head. Going that way. Begin with doughs. Dough. Stop right here. See where this is? This is a common problem with a lot of students. It's nice. Just one strike on the hand is going to create an injury. They'll probably say I'm not going to use a sword for at least a couple of weeks. So what I want you to do is bring it back out here. Remember, you're not fighting with your hands. You're fighting with the tip of the sword. And that's one of the most difficult aspects of wielding the sword is using the sword's tip instead of anything else. Alright, so move back just a little bit more. See where your step is. And work in that way. Be consistent. And going this way. Continue. Dough. Stop right here. Now the doughs are looking pretty good. Let's take this down to the fourth cut. Now remember, the dough is basically cutting Hidari Keisage-ni from your upper right to your bottom left. Now what you're doing is you're cutting from your upper left to your bottom right. And that's basically from 11 o'clock to 5 o'clock. Remember, your clock, 11 o'clock to 5 o'clock. Set up again. Good. Lift the sword above your head. Going this way and begin. And up and back. Take your time. The ashi is usually twice as long as the regular ones. It just takes longer to get up. So take your time. Slow it down a little bit. Continue. Yeah, it's starting to look pretty well balanced. Let's adjust it. Let's go to the thrust now. Going this way. Now this one requires you to be a little farther apart. Because I want you only thrusting on the mono uchi right here. And begin. Ski. Ski. Ski. Ski. Ski. Ski. Ski. Ski. Good. Let's stop right here. Let's take all the strikes and the thrust and put them all together. What I'd like you to do is come back over here. Weapons out. And I want you to do five this way. And five back. And start rotating back and forth. So you can work on your distance between each other. Ready? And let this sort out. And begin. Good. It's looking pretty good. All right. Now the muscle memory is set in. You have those five basic strikes. Within a short amount of time we went over the key hone. And now you're pretty much ready to go to do some sparring. Ready to spar? Okay. Now what we'll do is we'll work on helmets and these five basic shots that you have. Now start using that as your arsenal to spar each other. What about blocking? Don't worry about blocking because if your shot is that smooth you might neutralize each other. So don't look as your block as a block. But your attack that might be a little late. But if you adjust it right it will get into the target area. Okay. So let's come over here and pick up some helmets. Well good. Now I see that you've got the equipment and you're sort of warming up a little bit. The soft equipment really helps doesn't it? It keeps the pain and injury off your hands. This is going to be used more for your consistency, your focus. Now of course when we used wood you had to stop just short of the target. Now you can follow through. So it really doesn't matter what you do. So enjoy it a little bit and get in there and try to go for the point, the shot or the kill and hit them fairly hard. If your hand does hurt that means you hit your hands together or a handle on the hand. So what I want you to do is stay short of length apart there. Adjust yourself. And let's spend some time just sparring the warm up. Right hand, left hand. It doesn't matter. And begin. Stop. Okay. It's looking smooth. It's looking really smooth. What I want you to work on now is don't overextend your shots. A lot of times you're really getting out there which is really good but you're overextending opening yourself up. So if you're going to throw everything out there take your whole body and reach out. So when you do miss because you will miss at times you'll be able to recover a lot better and smoother. So swords out. Make this a little bit more focused, a little bit stronger. Begin. Better. Yeah that's better. Good. Now we're pretty much warmed up aren't we? I want us to do a little sparring. And the sparring is one point elimination. Swords out. One shot. You can put in a combination but I want you to if you're going to hit the coquet call it hit it. If you're going to hit the dough call it hit it. And then break apart after you make the first initial hit. Set up again and let's turn this more into a technical fight. Begin. Good. Set up again. Go. Right to the head. Set up again. Begin. No. Point to the stomach. Now did you notice it started getting a little like a quagmire there. It's really hard. The reason why is you're not key eyeing loud enough. You're starting to fatigue. I want you to stand a little taller. I want you to look each other in the eye and scream a couple of times to get more oxygen. Go ahead. Again. A more. Get in there. Good. Both shots. Ready. Begin. Good. Now you notice you're both are getting hit. The reason why is you're both in each other's circle of influence. Come back out where the swords are about right like this. Now if you want to get out you will get hit. Continue. Both got shot. Ready. Again. Good. Point. Begin. Okay. It's looking pretty smooth. Not too bad. Take off your helmets. Well over this last lesson what we have is we've worked on our strikes. We've worked on working back and forth with each other called kumitachi basically. And we did a little bit of sparring. You put in a nice sweat. You're starting to warm up and I betcha hey you're working that turkey dinner off aren't you. That makes it easy. So what do you think about this? I think it's great. It's really good to get this sparring and try to apply the techniques from their state where you're just learning it. Get it into actual application. Well good. We built on the techniques. We worked on one. Did it a couple different ways. Combined them and then actually sparred with it. It felt really good. It makes it easy that way. So from now on you can always work out. You can use a broomstick if you need to. You can use most anything and just go back and forth. To keep your bodies going good. Smooth and keep the accuracy going. And since you're in college you need to do something to keep you awake at night. Especially for tests and yourself. Hey an extra couple of pounds melts off pretty easy when you're working the sword. Well great. Anything else you need to say? Just it's a great program and thank you very much. Alright thank you. Well that concludes this lesson at TGN TV. I hope you've enjoyed this. I'd like you to follow along and practice. It's that simple. And with that be well.