Doing 200 cuts

[rawnshah]

At the Saturday class, I tried to see how long it would take me to do about 50 cuts on air, and to my surprise, I found that I could do it in about a minute and a half. This is to perform that many cuts on air with the power it takes to actually do it right, cut the right lines (tachitsuji), and not mess up.

Basically I imagined 4 stands before me and cut 4 cuts on average, and threw in 2 more somewhere in between. That makes 50 cuts. I did only 4 cuts on a goza most of the time because 5 or more need more precision and can get sloppy, especially once you start getting tired.


I then took a 2 minute break before I started again and cut another 50. And then another break, and another 50. And finally a 5 minute break and 62 cuts.

All in all it took me about 22-25 minutes in all to do about 210 cuts.

However, cutting on air does give you the impact of a goza, which you feel in your palms and wrists each time you cut. In other words, real tameshigiri would be more painful and tiring.

I was pretty tired this time, and my fingers and palm quite sore at the end of the day. I'll try that at the next cutting practice to see how much it hurts.

-rawn sensei