by Daniela Moroncelli
During the weekend from 17th to 19th of January Italy was honored to host a beautiful seminar
leaded by Loïc Delalande, Godan sensei from France; it was such a pleasure for me and Italy in
general to have an international sensei with a renown reputation all around the world for his
beautiful Naginata style and his merits in shiai competitions.
Actually, I am personally very thankful because this was a specific seminar for shiai and as a
Sandan practitioner, I was able to learn a lot from his experience for me and my improvement to
apply in competitions but most of all, I have a lot of good advices and suggestion of exercise to
practice at home with the students of my new dojo, and I think it is very important for everybody
who love this martial art to attend as many seminars as possible to grow up following the teaching
of good sensei all around the world.
A lot of people from Italy attended the seminar from Turin, Rome, Rimini, Fano, Naples, the always
welcome Yolanda Vanneste, Yondan from Belgium, and two people form Hungary with different
levels of practice from mukyu to Sandan.
It was a great event for Italy because there are not a lot of possibilities for us o meet each other
because of the distance of our dojos spread all around of Italy so it was also an opportunity for
Italian teams to practice together and enjoy the time.
The first day of practice was Friday evening and Loïc started the seminar talking about the specifics
of the weapon Naginata, remembering to all of us its characteristics such as length, weight, different
parts of the habu (and how to use it properly for shikake waza and oji waza) that are notions very
important when you are fighting, because everybody have to use all of the knowledge and technical
skills that are are necessary to make a good ippon.
The exercises of the first day of seminar were focused on debana waza and uke waza to develop the
speed of an attack or a counterattack and the importance of the mute communication between the
two opponents like being able to “read” the body, the face and the state of mind of the opponent (a
very small movement of the mouth, or the eyes, a micro movement of the toe or feeling the other’s
breath…) so you can understand his intention just before the movement for the attack is actually
started.
On Saturday we had 7 hours of beautiful practice and on Sunday morning other 3 hours! Loïc
started by showing a lot of good exercises for every level of experience to improve stamina, speed
and coordination; the one that I loved more was like this: make pairs on a line (better if you have a
colored one on the floor) in chudan position (without the Naginata) just touching the fingers of your
opponent’s hand to have a contact and try to move simultaneously with the same footwork as for
hasso strikes starting slow and accelerate after the middle of the line, this will improve speed,
contact and a good and elegant side position (be careful of shoulders and hips!);second step of the
exercise is with the Naginata trying to do the same thing but striking together soku men or soku
sune being careful to always have a correct distance with monouchi on monouchi.
Almost the entire part of the seminar was bogu practice with a lot of techniques very useful in
fighting, uke waza, debana waza, harai waza..mixing the well known ones like the sequence soku
men-men uke-fumikomi sune (paying attention on the importance of kurikomi-kuridashi) with other
techniques that are more uncommon like debana kote, suriage or do strikes; this attitude may sound
“new” but as Loïc said, it’s a matter of knowing as many techniques as we can and then everybody
could choose the ones that fits more, there’s no use in knowing just a few techniques just because
you thing they’re good enough, but the more I know the more I can use in matches.
During the seminar we had a lot of mawarigeiko so everybody had the opportunity to immediately
try Loïc’s teaching and everybody enjoyed it a lot!
It was an amazing seminar and everybody worked very hard so I am very proud of our spirit and
will! I hope this is an Italian first step to grow up more and more and have the possibility to have
great seminars again with international sensei and international students; the Naginata family is big
and great and everybody is always welcome here in Italy!
I really want to thank Loïc for his patience, spirit, teaching, experience and for being a good person
and a good example for everybody who wants to follow a genuine Naginata path, see you soon!
