Nukitsuke Experiment

Nukitsuke is where you attack by drawing the sword in one motion. Nukitsuke is most often the first action of engagement in iaido kata. When you learn the action of nukitsuke, there are many details that are stressed. Things such as:

1) The position of your hand and the motion in which you bring your hand up to the handle
2) The position of the handle
3) The way the motion is created to draw the sword
4) Grip and method of generating momentum.

That's just to name a few. However, this is what is taught in a technical way. Someone says this, so you do it like that, or you watch a video. One thing that I always find best is to do an exercise that helps you better understand what you're learning by putting yourself in a position to have to use it. This is the same for why we practice gekken or tameshigiri.

I came up with an exercise where two people go "against" each other to start from a stationary position and when a signal is called, have to draw and hit a target. The first one to make contact "wins". There are similar exercises like the really cool one that was created by Mike Femal sensei and Nihonzashi that can actually give you the time that it took to reach a target. I came up with this version so you could face someone and give a sense of "shobu". Here is a couple of videos that we took.

After reviewing the video, here are some observations: 

1) The motion of the hand to tsuka - in kata, relatively you bring your hand from the starting position to the tsuka in a very straight forward movement. But some people make a wider movement to bring the hand on the top of tsuka rather than getting it from relatively under. That extra sweeping type motion takes more time. 

2) Push vs Pull - if a wide movement is made, the hand goes past the elbow to get to the tsuka. Because of this the hand has to "pull" the sword out of the saya which makes an additional movement. If hand gets to the tsuka in a good position, the motion of the hand coming to the sword can be the same motion that helps to "push" the sword out of the saya. 

3) Relaxed vs Tense - Being tense slows down the flow to get good momentum to be cut and reach the target. Hand being too tense makes it difficult for the blade to move forward and the kissaki looks to be dragging. 

4) Tsuka positioning - If the tsuka is too far off the side, the hand has to reach further across the body. Also, the tsuka should point the relative height of where it is being aimed. 

5) Saya biki and koiguchi - The one with better of these has a faster chance of being able to get the blade in play. 

One of the most important factors also is the muscle memory of proper technique. Because you are reacting to a signal with a time that is not set, you will be inclined to rush on the fly to hit the target first. This is when the technique can get sloppy to accomplish the best result.  Even if you practice the technique many times, I think it is good to try to do the same technique in a different circumstance. 

These a few observations and there are others, but I think these factors make the biggest play. Although many of these points are made in kata, you can see the difference it makes when it is applied. Even if a person has a faster reaction time, if the technical points are stronger than the other person, the timing of the contact with the target is almost the same. So if your reaction time is strong, and your technique is efficient, then there will be a big difference in speed. 

This focus of this exercise is not to just "win" but to achieve results with good technique rather than just relying on physical advantages which I believe can help to better express technical points that are stressed in kata.