You will find many traditional forms of martial arts and among the favorite ones are those that involve the use of classical weapons. Shinkendo, a Japanese style of martial art, is one traditional martial art that preserves the methods of ancient sword fighting.

The traditional sword methods of the samurai is the major focus of Shinkendo. The samurai warriors' art of combat has been preserved though these warriors have for ages been gone. Although sword techniques are not meant to be used for self-defense, training in the art of Shinkendo has a lot of benefits to its practitioners. Mostly, as those who practice the art become proficient, their concentration skills and personal discipline are boosted.

Toshishiro Obata is the founder of Shinkendo. He studied various martial art style and from these, he learned ancient Japanese swordsmanship. What is fascinating is that Obata was mainly an Aikido practitioner. Because many Aikido moves can trace their origin to sword tactics, it would seem Obata widened his knowledge of Aikido through learning the art of the sword. Eventually, Obata perfected several more sword arts. Eventually, he became an expert in the art of sword fighting.

Because of his evident skill in the art of sword fighting, Obata was able to develop his own martial art system. The system he developed is Shinkendo, whose translation is "Way of the Real Sword". The translation's symbolic meaning may have several interpretations. One interpretation could be that it is the "real" method of practicing the art. One other way to interpret it is that it's putting in a genuine effort toward mastering swordsmanship.

Shinkendo follows a number of ancient learning approaches. These methods include forms training and one- and two-step sparring. Sword exercises are also taught, including movements, drawing, and cutting physical objects. When the time comes to carrying out cutting exercises, an actual sword is used. For the other exercises, they work with a wooden sword. The wooden sword is to stop injuries from occurring while students are training.

Coordination and accuracy are required in order to skillfully handle a sword. In general, rookies must start slow and work on mastering the basic moves before moving on the more difficult moves. You will probably find it tiresome to do the basic swinging and drawing sword moves, but mastering them is important since they are the foundation for the moves you'll be doing as you progress in your Shinkendo training. If you commit and practice regularly, the basic movements will become ingrained and you're going to be able to do them automatically.

Becoming an experienced swordsman will not happen overnight. However, you can expect to reap several benefits if you are devoted, dedicated, and practice consistently. Not the least of which will be your ability to take pride in your accomplishments of learning a unique martial art style of historical and cultural roots.

Japanese sword education is something of a lifelong journey. Even the masters consider themselves to become humble students, consistently striving for perfection and constantly feeling that they can execute a cut cleaner, faster and with much more precision.

As such, even the fundamentals are topic to continual refinement, and it is most absolutely a journey finest started with correct instruction beneath the watchful eye of a certified teacher.

But for all those who are curious as to what to anticipate inside a JSA (Japanese Sword Art) dojo, or other individuals with a purely academic interest, this report is at the extremely least, a tentative introduction for the mindsets and training methodologies in the arts as a whole.

Partially this really is accomplished for safety causes (immediately after all, its stands to reason that a dojo filled with sword wielding students could be a dangerous place to be!) and partially it truly is done to cultivate the best spirit of respect and reverence for the art and also the sword itself.