Better Kendo Teaching

Hello everyone,

Thank you for reading the following blog post!
I'm Kota Suzuki from Japan. I've been practicing kendo since I was seven years old in Japan－I am currently 3rd Dan. Right now, I am studying abroad in the United States and regularly practice at the university kendo club here.

Today’s topic: Teaching Kendo. Teaching is a good way to learn kendo because you are able to figure out what you understand and what you don’t understand through teaching. Especially, if you are experienced kendoka, you often have a opportunity to advise others. You should teach some points clearly so that people can understand clearly and improve quickly. Today, I’m going to introduce three points that makes your kendo advice more easy to understand.

1. Give only one advice 

First, you should give only one advice when you teach someone else. This is important because an advice should be as clear as possible. Some people don’t identify what they should advise, so they give too many points at one time that makes confusion.

Teachers need to understand what advise is the most helpful. There might be many points that he/she need to fix, but people cannot work on many things at the same time. Therefore, you should advise only one thing that is helpful. 

2. Use comparison 

When you give someone an advice, you should use comparison to let he/she understand what should be fixed. Especially for kendo, movement is the most important part, meaning you cannot get improved even if you understand.

Therefore, I recommend you show both an wrong thing and correct one. Visual is the easiest to be understood. Through showing visual tips, people will get improved more easily than without them. 

3. Fix right away 

Finally, you should fix someone’s wrong thing right away as much as you can. Some people just advise and don’t focus on fixing. Even if you give a good advice, it doesn’t work without actual corrections.

After giving an advice, you should give a comment on what he/she did by your advice. If it’s still not correct, you will give another advise that is more helpful to fix. Also, it is corrected, you should say this is correct. People can improve kendo in this way.

Thanks for reading this blog post! If you have any questions, please ask me. I’m happy to answer them! And, please let me know if you have any requests of the blog posts.

#kendo #剣道 #頑張れ剣道