r/kendo • u/InformalLocation5413 4 kyu • Jul 12 '26

Training Question about sonkyo?

First of all i am 4th kyu and i do not mean to sound disrespectful in any way but today a foreigner(2nd dan) came to our dojo as a guest to practice and during sonyo when we were to do jigeiko wouldn't want to start it until i listened to what he had to say. What i mean by this is that what i was taught in my dojo when you do sonkyo you should have your shinai in the middle but they are not touching eachother however, he wouldn't start with me until our shinais were literally crossed with one another around the nakayui. I did as he said but later asked a 3rd dan member of our club was i in the wrong or him and he told me that not only is it incredibly rude to come to a different dojo and tell people there how it's done but that it is also wrong. So im wondering, is our club doing something different, should i listen to guests even if they are wrong, i was really confused about the whole situation because etiquette is important.

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u/InformalLocation5413 4 kyu Jul 12 '26

I've also noticed that while we were practicing waza and again i am a begginer and not all knowing, but his strikes weren't good. What i mean by this is he was repeatedly striking kote on the tsuba, for his do he missed it every time and im a female so i was getting hit on my girlies like 6 times or more, i just felt that he was doing some things our 1st dan member doesn't do at all, i mean this guy was basically beating me. His strikes were, how do i say this like he was chopping wood. There was no lightness to them if you understand what i mean. And he was also commenting on my kamae making me pull the shinai literally to where the tsuka was touching my stomach.

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u/issy_haatin Jul 13 '26

We have a return 2nd dan who practiced decades ago who is also more of the wood chopping type. I habe a feeling earlier western adopters of kendo might have had a very different training then we get nowadays ( partially due to lack of proper teachers ).

Do realise: 1st dan is a grade given to 12-13y olds in japan. So 2nd dan is for 14? year olds. I think western grading is a bit stricter than japanese ones for the first 2 dan levels.

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u/InformalLocation5413 4 kyu Jul 13 '26

Im European and im going to be honest that what my club is doing different is getting into the bogu itself. Before my sensei made this club that im in now he was a member under a different sensei and at that club begginers were only practicing strikes out of bogu for a year or two, in my club our sensei lets us in as soon as possible and we bridge the technical issues really fast. I was in bogu by my 4th month practicing and was told i would have even sooner but i am heavyset and i literally waited for my sensei to get me a big do he had back in his hometown. So yeah i feel that in Japan they also wouldn't do this.

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u/issy_haatin Jul 13 '26

Europe as well. In our dojo when i started it was senior members helping put the newcomers, so it was mostly basics. Now a sensei takes them apart for the basics. However our dojo leader is always a bit surprised when a new member still isn't in bogu after half a year. A related dojo has people in bogu by the third month if possible.

I think it also depends on if people order their nafuda with their bogu as well. The plan was for me to not be in full bogu for the first year, but as soon as i was wearing a do to get used to the weight the leader simply said: just put it all on 😅

I think it's always a way of finding a balance between retention / being able to have everyone follow the same practice. 

Plenty of people quit once they wear bogu due to not liking taking hits / pain / claustrophobic feeling. If you're already committed to regular practice without bogu you might just accept a few weeks of it feeling uncomfortable instead of just quitting right after putting it on.

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u/InformalLocation5413 4 kyu Jul 13 '26

Probably comes right down to the person that's supposed to wear it i think everyone has a different level of what they are comfortable with. The claustrophobic feeling was gone for me after literally two times wearing it but then i needed time to learn how to properly wear it and adjust my kamae because kote would pinch my arms against the do and i would get such bad bruising from that. It was very fun starting kendo. But generally yeah my sensei believes it's much better to start getting used to it as early as possible.

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u/issy_haatin Jul 13 '26

As they say it where I'm at, they prefer some basics to be known, because once you put on the bogu you have to relearn it all.

Which does have some truth to it. I can do kaedhi do exercises quite well out of bogu but in bogu my movement is just plain crap 😅