Comments for How to fight an opponent who takes gedan-like kamae?

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Aug 20, 2009
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starstarstarstarstar 		Is this person higher ranked?
by: Anonymous

If your opponent is a higher ranked sempai or sensei, they may be trying to teach you something by giving you such an opening.

Kendo-Guide.Com: Thank you for the post. That is a good point. That is a possibility. Instead of just confusing others, try to teach something. Yup, that is a possibility.
Aug 19, 2009
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starstarstarstarstar 		I assume that your opponent did a gedan no kamae
by: viany cin hiong

It's interesting to have someone does a "strange" act. Yes. I say that just to refer to some techniques that are not normal strikes or kamae.

I often do it also (the gedan no kamae), so maybe I can share a few of my personal experiences and reasons why I am doing it.

1. it's easy to provoke my opponent to strike and I can execute suriage waza.

2. it's easy for me to do tsuki, when the opponent takes a step back. And continue doing nidan or sandan waza.

3. it's also very easy to harai the opponent's shinai then strike or kaeshi. I also do the gyaku do. This all depends on how the opponent reacts.

so from that reasons I strongly agree with sensei Masahiro. Strike! Strike! and strike. Then see how he'll react. You will know where the opening is then.....

But for your tips based on my private experience, these few things will do a lot to him:

1. when he starts to lower his shinai, go for otoshi waza then strike kote men.

2. tsuki is a best choice to counter it but since you are 1st kyu I don't recommend it.

3. when he starts his gedan immediately, take one small step forward and put your ki seme with your chudan then strike with nidan or sandan waza if it's possible.

But all the gedan expert also have good counterattacks to these three move hehehe....... but hey this is why we do kendo as the "kendoholic" all the time right? hahahhaha.... ok have a good kendo time. Hope my poor tips will give you some ideas.

Kendo-Guide.Com: Thank you for sharing your experiences.
For those who don't know what gedan is: Gedan is called a "stance of defence". It is particularly used to protect your legs. As mentioned above, you can imagine this stance is not to attack but counterattack.

Even though this kamae is not very common in kendo, (because it kind of slows us down to initiate attacks), we use this stance for a just moment. We call it "gedan-zeme (seme)".

From chudan, we lower our sword a little bit. How bit? It depends. But this makes your opponent very uncomfortable because your sword "disappears". When people do this to me, I feel uncomfortable and feel pressure from the underneath of my shinai.

You see this gedan-zeme a lot if you watch kodansha (high rank people) carefully.

Hope this helps.

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