Long River Budo

08/09/2025

We will be doing an educational demonstration at the Riverfront Park Dragonboat Races and Asian Festival. The date is August 16 (Saturday) at 2pm. If you're coming, make sure to catch Mountain River Taiko at 1pm. We're both on the Lily stage right as you come into the park.

Celebrate Asian and Pacific Island cultures through traditional music and dance, hands-on art activities, food, and martial arts demonstrations on the upper plaza with community and club teams racing on the river. Register a team, or cheer on your favorite paddlers.

08/17/2024

We had a great time doing a demonstration at the Asian Festival atnRiverfront Park in Hartford today. This is our 4th year participating. It’s a short, one day event but it was absolutely packed. We also had some friends in the audience so if any pictures come my way, I’ll post them.

03/17/2024

Sometimes the best training sessions are the ones that look really boring in the log. This entry would say that we only worked on one set. But within that set, we worked two kata for about an hour and a half, just doing reps, first one then the other. This let the student wear in the kata, become less concerned about “performing” it right, but simply experience it, over and over. Each time, something goes differently than the previous times, and all these variations are instructive. And when the student is newish to the technique, the sheer number of reps allows corrections (and corrections to the follow-on effects from prior corrections) to be spread out and the student given a chance to discover things on their own.

Far from being boring, it’s a really good time.

08/19/2023

So glad to see our new friends Mountain River Taiko setting up for their performance just before our demonstration.

08/17/2023

We’re looking forward to this fun event on the river.

08/02/2023

https://riverfront.org/events/riverfront-asian-festival/
We'll be doing at demonstration again at this great little event on August 19. Our time is 1:00, and we're being preceded by Mountain River Taiko at noon.

Paddles up - dragon boat racing is back! Come cheer on the paddlers and celebrate Asian and Pacific Island cultures through traditional music and dance, hands-on arts activities, food, and martial arts.

04/02/2023

We're working on a few demonstration opportunities for the summer: one on the first Sunday in June, and at the Riverfront Asian Festival and Dragonboat races in Hartford on August 19.

The pressure of doing kata with an audience is a helpful part of training -- it's almost the only way to learn to deal with a surge of adrenaline. I also think that providing cultural education around the koryu is an important part of keeping them alive.

I don't expect to see new students from demonstrating, though I'm sure some of the modern arts do. But most people don't even know that these arts exist, and we've always had people hang out afterward to ask questions, so it's well worth the effort.

01/14/2023

At long last we have a regular indoor training space in Hadley, currently scheduled two Sundays a month. Owned by the nice folks at Shaolin Kung Fu of Hadley, the floor is springy and smooth, the area is ample, and the ceilings are high enough for kusarigama. All we're missing is a couple more folks to join in.