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Kyudo Blog #3 - The basics

Right now my biggest (though certainly not only) issues are the fundamentals. The basics. Posture, speed and form. I know form is a very broad term, but I'm talking about specific forms like my ENSOU, or even TENOUCHI.

On the posture front, I'm a software guy. I sit at a desk all day and have developed a bad posture for years. This isn't impossible to overcome. But it is far from trivial. And breaking out of a good posture mid performance can make an otherwise acceptable showing into a bad one. Correcting my posture, similarly, draws attention to its absence prior.

On the speed front, this isn't technically a fundamental, but it is an area of focus at the moment. I'm doing video shinsa this year. And apparently I need from my YU at HONZA until my HANARE on my OTOYA to be about 3 minutes. Right now... closer to 4.

My pauses between movements tend to be too long. I like to make my pauses pronounced to punctuate the division between one movement and the next. And this is a habit I've built up over almost 2 years. Hopefully it will be easier to break than a lifetime of slouching.

Lastly is form. Sometimes I fail to get into the proper or, like posture, sometimes I lose it along the way. The end result is the same. Changing or fixing it afterward highlights the problem.

These things and TENOUCHI are my concerns for shinsa.

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