 Good afternoon and welcome to Learn the Sword on TGN. My name is Dana Abbott and I will be your guide in this weekly program with a new episode every Friday. This interactive series allows you to practice along with the teacher. Today's lesson plan is test cutting. You are going to execute a downward diagonal cut, a horizontal cut followed with another downward diagonal cut. Just follow along and practice. Using a wooden bow can to start your basic footprint is very, very important in learning how to use and execute a correct technique with a sword. There are many thoughts and processes, but one of the basic one is if you use a piece of wood it allows you not to think of the dangerous aspects of the sword, where if you are using a shin ken or a live blade practicing the basic katas, you'd spend more time dwelling on cutting a figure or hurting yourself, but when you practice the basic footprint with wood and then later go on to an iaito, a dull metal sword, there you can get the technique down a lot stronger and a lot better because you're not dwelling on the fear of itself, you're working on the technique. Let's begin with the basic footprint. What we want to do is be able to bring our arms up to our hips, move forward and bring our hands or feet out into our basic triangle, let go of the left hand, move forward creating a haso stance and position. From this haso stance and position, I want you to push the sword forward in a short range cut as your right leg goes forward creating the push and momentum this way. From here adjust the tip of the sword, so now it's going to cut to your right in a horizontal pattern. After you've completed this cut, you lift your sword above your head setting up for the third cut, which is a long distance cut, step forward with your left foot and then proceeding with your right foot, begin to execute the hidari kesegiri cut from the top right to the bottom left. After you've finished the cut, bring the sword at this angle here, turn your hand in, bring your hand over to your side and stand into it. Now that we've broken it down into the basic footprint, let's add some pause and numbers to this so you can see the transitions much better and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. When looking at these three cuts, I want you to take this in consideration. The first cut is a short range cut where I cut into the chest and the neck area. The second cut is a medium range cut where I come in and I try to go across the upper chest and the neck area with a right horizontal cut to my right. The third cut is a full out cast so you can get as much distance as you can like that, making sure that your shoulders are back, your hands are out. A lot of times when people cut, they have a tendency to drop their shoulders forward, which is fine unless you're fighting somebody and then they'll see the opening and put you in the difficulty. Let's go on to the next section of lesson three of your test cutting series. Here we've learned the basic footprint and how the different cutting patterns work through practice. Now what I want us to do is pull out our eaito, our dull metal sword and begin to the next stage. The next stage is drawing the sword, going through the different movements of cutting technique. Let's practice this kata at regular speed. If a wooden bouken represents the basic footprint and the eaito represents your basic subtleties and protocol, then when you proceed to the next level, which is a shin ken or what you would know as a live blade, then the possibilities of danger really increase. And the reason why is if you make a mistake with a blade like this, you will cut something off. Or you must be consistent and focused with all your cuts, movements and execution. With that understood, when you practice with a shin ken, the first thing that you're going to think about is, will I cut my fingers pulling in and out of the sheath? Second of all, and this is one of the biggest factors that keep people from cutting correctly is, will I make a mistake? Yes, you're going to make a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes. Since you learn from those mistakes, act like the Japanese. I shall make 5,000 mistakes today because tomorrow I'll make 4,999. And if you think that way, you will have a much better, stronger understanding of the sword, and moreover, you won't get injured. There are many things that take in consideration when test cutting. One of them is, don't rush, take your time. A lot of times people want to make 2 or 3 or 4 cuts very, very fast, which over time with focus and consistency will look nice. But at the very beginning, you usually have less than average cuts. So let's take our time with this. Draw the sword, set up into a hostile position, look at your target and then measure your target. The right side of the Mono Uchi is right where it should be. Pull the sword back, adjust in, look at the first band there and make sure that you focus onto it and then begin the cut moving forward like that. Now from here, we're going to turn the sword, we're going to come in for a horizontal cut, we're going to take and we're going to wring the handles and cut this way. Now from here, we're going to lift the sword up and cut down. Let me adjust this back again so you can see a better view of it. So now when I'm adjusted up here, I'm going to move forward and make another cut. And then from here, I bring in the sword this way and no toe. On behalf of Learn the Sword and TGN, we would like to thank you for participating in this video series. Until next week, be well.