One heck of a tsuki . . .
On occasion you’ll encounter a person in keiko who tends to hold a strong kamae. When attempting an attack, you may experience the tip of their shinai impacting your do at the chest level – or if it’s an experienced person, your throat will be the recipient of the shinai’s point.
For those of you who are wondering about whether this is a good thing, here are a few ways I look at it when I do that to training partners of various levels.
- Please try that again (Sempai to kohai)
- I’m being kind of lazy (Sempai to kohai)
- I’m pissed off with you so I will passively-aggressively stick you in the throat or chest (Sempai to kohai)
- I’m not concentrating on the match so this is all the effort I feel like putting in (Sempai to kohai)
- I feel like seeing how strong my kamae is (Sempai to kohai)
- That wasn’t a point!!!!!!! Look how you ran into my kensen!!!!!!! (Usually for ippon-shobu or shiai – with anyone regardless of rank)
- Oh cr@p – you hit me and I wasn’t ready so standing in strong kamae is all I could muster in response. (Usually when I’m playing someone faster or the same or slightly higher rank than me. Not recommended for use on hachi-dans.)
I’m sure there are more, but you get the idea.
So, in case you’re wondering why you’re running into shinai more than usual, there are a few reasons you might consider your training partner is sticking you like you’re to be roasted over an open fire.