04/28/2025
Years pass, and it’s interesting to see how things have changed—as well, your own perception changes as you’ve grown over the years. What I’ve taken away from this, as I paid homage was—We optimize so much for real fighting, it’s a different experience when the goals change. Here I reidentified this art, where the stances, and cuts are optimized for cutting objects in Tameshigiri. Here the goal is to make your cuts exactly the same, to make each cut as close as you can to the last. Making neat cuts that match the rest. Sometimes the stances are purely about generating power, not how you should stand in reactive combat. Where as in real fighting, a fight is adrenalized savage moments where you don’t have time to think about your perfect strike or block, but all you have is the second nature training you’ve engrained as your natural response to such. Your ability to adapt to the randomization of striking/grappling, read your opponent many steps ahead, and search for the quickest end to the engagement. In a real engagement, if you throw the same strike twice or in the same general fashion, height or depth it can make you easy to read. Makes your openings more apparent. These are just good reminders that, the strongest strikes or even the cleanest strikes you can throw—aren’t always the best way to defeat an opponent, and they aren’t always an option. But a well rounded martial artist should be able to do all of these things. It’s good to see another Son filling his father shoes, and carrying out the art. I’ve had a lot of good martial experiences in my years training father to son, and I’m just the same.
