Jukendo: Kamae and Naorei (銃剣道: 基本)

If you have done any of the more common weapons based martial arts you will have been told how important bowing is. Generally speaking you can usually tell how good someone you have never met is just by watching them bow before they fight you.
Jukendo is a little different. Bowing and showing respect is still important of course. But taking kamae is way more important, respect is shown through being ready to kill your opponent.

Kamae

• From the attention stance, feet at 45 degrees, back straight, eyes on the opponent
• Mokuju butt is about 45 degrees from your right foot middle toe and maybe  5cm away
• Mokuju is parallel to your body's core, no leaning it towards you etc.
• Left foot goes forward and at the the same time the right hand swings the mokuju up to the left hand which has moved forward to where it will remain
• Hands should be touching or close to touching.
• Mentally yell Ichi while doing this
• Your jikutei (power hand) changes from the right hand to the left hand (i.e. hold the damn gun still)
• Your right hand now slides back to your right hip bone and one finger on the trigger.
• Mentally yell Ni while doing this
• Jikutei switches back to the right hand

Naorei

• Jikutei switches to left hand
• Right hand slides up to touch the left.
• Body doesn't move (much)
• Mokuju doesn't move (at all)
• Mentally yell ichi (or have a sensei yell it at you)
• Right foot comes forward
• Right hand becomes jikutei
• Mokuju butt returns to the ground 45 degrees and 4 cm from where your foot is.

Important Thoughts

• Ich! Ni! are the two movements. This is not a graceful slow dance. You are taking your fighting stance.
• No wobbles, once the kensen is pointed at the opponent's eyes it stays there (otherwise she might get ideas about running over and poking you)
• To go into kamae think of swinging the mokuju into the baseball glove of your left hand
• Don't step backwards. Ever I think. Military don't retreat is the way I remember.
• Usually we will do this for 5 minutes every training session. I assume this means we suck and it is important.
• If you have to yell kamae or naorei you better bloody well yell it. The intonation is down: KAMae! NAORei! this is taken quite seriously as well. We take turns yelling it for each other and hoping the person yelling sucks so bad with intonation that our crappy kamae won't be noticed.
• If you are yelling then you may as well yell ich and ni as well.

What I Did Wrong

• My hanmi is shit, Shoulders are almost okay, hips are open and head is not facing forward.
• My front elbow is shit, my heart is completely open. Partly because my hanmei is shit but also to compensate for that I am doing weird stuff with my left elbow and ending up leaving my heart completely open.
• The mokuju wobbles like crazy when I got to kamae the first time
• My naorei looked like the most casual half arsed person ever
• Side on I actually think I looked okay... this will go to my head and I will get over confident and then I will be embarrassed later.
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