Newsletter June 2017

NEWSLETTER – June 2017

Words from President

Dear Naginata friends, life is short but the best way to reach an objective is to work on it one step after another. No need to rush, everybody will reach his objective as long as he work on it regularly and seriously. I have been practicing naginata since 1993 and it was time for me to try my Renshi examination, not only for myself but also for all of you as you all see that everybody can reach an objective some day.

Technical Tips

Technical detail: even if we are always talking about the same thing. When I recently train in Japan, I was asked to focus on my front hand which was to strong when I was doing a strike. The problem here is much more complex than that. Let me take an exemple: when you do hasso men. In the hasso position the strong hand is the lower one (the front at that moment) and you will use it as a pivot while raising it up to your plexus. At the end of the movement this hand will be the back hand and the strong one with a solid teno uchi. The front one is there to guide your weapon firmly. I would like to open a discussion here as, to me, in terms of muscles the back part of the arm should be relax and of course the shoulder as well. The more you will rely on your arm muscles the less you will rely on the rotation of your body, which for me is a technical mistake. Of course we all know that the strength of many people change this way of practice, but I believe that you should try to avoid as much as possible to rely on your arm muscles in order to use your entire body in your movement. Let’s focus on this in a future discussion.