 Welcome to Street Smart Samurai. I'm Dana Abbott, and I will be your guide throughout this video series on Kenjitsu, how to wield a Japanese sword. Street Smart Samurai was created for those of you who want to learn the fundamentals of Kenjitsu and apply those learned techniques to everyday real life scenario. At the beginning of this series, and to simplify sword technique, I'm going to strip away some of the tradition, a fair amount of ritual, a whole bunch of the culture, and even a lot of the clothing, and step into the world of reality. And break sword fighting technique down to the bare bones, showing you how to train and fight in the shortest amount of time. In the same manner, it was taught in the Showa era by the Japanese military. Showa era, Japanese military, what's so beneficial about learning the sword in this day and age? It's all about focus and consistency. Learning the sword creates a very strong core, both mentally and physically. Plus, it increases your awareness of the surroundings while improving your timing, rhythm speed balance, but most of all, your demeanor. If you upload these ancient cutting patterns into your muscle memory, the sword will become an extension of your body and its byproducts, being able to fight and defend yourself with anything that is placed in your hand. Think about it, if someone picks up a stick, they might hold off an attacker. Use that same stick as a sword after learning all the prescribed training patterns. That person will be able to take out anything in the path and humble it. Anything that fills your hand as simple as a rolled up magazine, as common as a broomstick, can now become an aggressive tool of technique. And with practice, you will become proficient. No matter what school you have attended or what style you practiced, every system has a common link called Kihon, the basics. Therefore, whatever you do, Street Smart Samurai will work for you. Street Smart was made for those who want to learn how to wield a Japanese sword from beginning to advanced Kenjitsu, starting with the grip and then progressing to the various aspects of the sword and the fighting technique that is involved. All you have to do is observe the training materials in media, practice the prescribed tasks and techniques and then demonstrate those learned techniques with Street Smart Samurai. The sword is a tool, therefore grasped as a tool. In the same fashion, you would grasp an axe, a hammer, or even a butcher knife. Your hand fits better on the ridge of the handle. The knife is safer and offers more balance and leverage. Squeeze the handle firmly, not with a death grip, but more like you're riding with a pen. Here are a few easy to understand images on how to grip, grasp, and hold a sword. Did you know that using a riding utensil and using the sword have the same fundamental grip? That is why for centuries, many people have said a pen mightier than the sword. I want you to look at how to hold a pen. At the very beginning, when you first held one in your hand, you probably grabbed it like this and it was undoubtedly a crayon and you started drawing and writing. But over time and through school, you found out if you placed it in your hand a little differently, it just offered much more than grabbing it this way. You had all these different angles. You could write here, you could write there. You could adjust it in and that's how I want you to look at a sword's handle. You can't just grasp a sword's handle and think it's going to hit the object. You have to manipulate or articulate the tip of the sword through gripping the handle to the target. Another object I'd like you to take in consideration is a hammer. Everybody's used a hammer. Everybody understands how a hammer works. You put your hand on top of the handle, on top of the ridge and then you usually strike downward to drive a nail into wood, for example. The difficult part is if you take this basic concept of using the hammer and gripping the hammer and bring your hand over on the side, for example, or if you hold it in an incorrect manner, not only will you won't be able to hit the nail on the head, you might injure your hand or your wrist. The same physics are applied to handling and grasping a sword. Gripping a sword is not that difficult or challenging. The problem arises when you take something simple as the grip and make it more difficult than it is. Let's keep this very simple. Let me put the sword down on this table here so you can put it into a relation. I'll put it with the blade down and let go. You notice when I put it down with the blade down, let it go. It won't stay up. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the back of the blade and lay it on the table. It will stay in place. Now, watching my hands, you can see when I come down to grip the handle, my hands come on top of it, almost like I'm going to do a push-up on top of this. And the reason why I put it on the table is so you can see this. A lot of times when people pick up the sword and they hold it, they're going to hold it out here in this type of manner, which works well, not. I want you to look at it a little bit differently. I want you to bring the sword in and have your hands on top of this. So when you do swing down or at an angle, you're going to have the pressure going with gravity or vice versa when you cut up. Bringing it back on this table and turning the blade over now, I'm going to come in here, bring my hands up, and then bring them down just like this. My fingertips are touching the sides of the handle. Now as they get past the sides of the handle, now my fingertips are starting to grip around the bottom and my thumbs are coming up on top this way. You notice it isn't a grip like I'm going to grab it like this. It's more of a grip like holding a pin. So bring that down and make sure that you can give your grip the movement it needs to go from one technique to another. Let's take a closer look at the grip. When I grip the sword, I'm not really moving my hands all over the handle. I'm keeping them fairly well situated in the same place. And the reason why is if I start moving my fingers this way or this way, I'm going to telegraph and the grip on the sword won't be as secure as I want it. Therefore, when you see people moving their fingers around or lifting their hands up like this and creating air between the handle and your palm, it feels good. It creates more of a relaxed shoulders and relaxed posture. But as a general rule, you'll find out that the sword cannot get to the target area as well as it could. When you grip grasp and hold the handle correctly, the fight is halfway finished.