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Kyudo - Summary though to Sept 10th

Trying to keep up on these posts. Not doing great, but also not failing spectacularly either.

Saturday was no practice due to the holiday, but a group of us did meet up and talk Kyudo over coffee. This time was more about how we integrate with the various communities (our own dojo, public, KAC, etc...). Was great to get a lot of different perspectives on how others describe Kyudo to others.

Tuesday was lots of video shinsa practice. Worked on getting timing down to 3 minutes. My better runs come in at 2:54 and 2:58. Apparently the 3 minute thing is not a hard time limit. But complacency is bad because I was able to find at least one reference online from another dojo talking about video shinsa and mentioning 3 minutes as a target and 3:30 as where things really start to get penalized. Official confirmation I cannot find one way or another. But I can blow past 4 minutes if I'm not trying to up my pace.

We had a number of the runs recorded. Problems I see:

  • YATSUGAE - YUNDE drops considerably. Better than it has been though.
  • End of YATSGUSAE - a bit of shifting of the bow. Ideally, don't need to adjust.
  • ASHIBUMI - Only easy to overshoot on church floors. But, from camera looks like it could pass as my draw length.
  • YUGAMAE - TENOUCHI seems too high, but when finger rotates out of way arrow droops low. Not even sure if this is a problem or not.
  • Generally, feet seem too far apart when not separated for ASHIBUMI.
  • Half steps back may be a bit more than half a foot length. 
  • TAIJOU -  Arms not rotated forward enough.

I think I can probably fix my elbows in YASTUGAE if I remember to focus on that. 

Also, I think that the arrow initially appearing too high is a symptom of not keeping my wrist aligned at the height of UCHIOKOSHI. 

One of the things I've changed in recent months is how high I'm ending my UCHIOKOSHI. If the top of my hand where the arrow rests angles up then, especially if it is rest on my index finger, the arrow will aim up quite a bit more than it should and then subsequently drop/droop MUCH more dramatically as the index finger detaches from the arrow during DAISAN. And then all of the angle problems get resolved during the remainder of the draw since the angle becomes much more flat with the rest of the arm.

Video will be recorded on Saturday and I don't like to shoot the night before a class to give my body time to recover, so I have tonight only to practice shooting related things. But I can work on some of the other TAIHAI related things tomorrow as long as I don't push too hard. 

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