The UGLY Truth About Teaching Basics in Kendo (And How to Fix It)

Are Big Strikes Holding Your Students Back?

It starts innocently enough. You’ve got a fresh group of beginners, and like most of us, you start with what feels foundational: lots of suburi, countless laps of okuri-ashi, big movements, loud kiai. Repeat.

And for months, that’s the groove. Cut big, shout louder, follow through. We tell them this is the bedrock of good kendo.

Then they get into bogu.

Suddenly, everything starts to fall apart. Strikes go wild. Timing disappears. Some students freeze, others swing like they’re splitting firewood. Motodachi start bracing for impact.

And that big, tidy men-uchi you’ve drilled for weeks? It’s completely telegraphed—announced with a long, loud “yaaahhh” before the cut even begins. Ineffectual, overcooked, and easy to read. 

The kicker: now we start asking for small cuts!

But, why?! We’ve just spent six months hardwiring big, deliberate movements. Then, the moment sparring starts, we tell them to sharpen everything up—move quicker, hit smaller, tidy the tenouchi. It’s a hard pivot with no real transition.

And it’s no wonder they struggle.

We do this a lot, actually. (Well, I know I have 🫡.) We tell our students to relax, but also to kiai louder. To cut cleanly, but also with more power. Then, once they're mixing it up on the floor, we watch their breathing shorten, their shoulders rise, and their movements tighten. It’s not that they aren’t trying. It’s that what we’ve been training doesn’t match what they're required to do when actually in the fray. 

In simple terms, we spend months reinforcing big movements, only to demand compact, controlled strikes the moment they step into keiko. It’s like teaching someone to paint with a roller, then handing them a calligraphy brush and expecting fine detail.

So if small, clean, adaptable cuts—with sharp tenouchi and crisp timing—are the bread and butter of real kendo, why don’t we start there?

Like, on day 1.

Why Small Cuts Make Better Kendoka (and Why We Might Be Teaching in Reverse)

I totally get it, big cuts are tempting. They look impressive, give us something clear to correct, and they’ve been a staple in kendo pedagogy for, well, forever. We started there, so we start them there, too.

Big open swings, loud kiai, full follow-through. The logic seems sound.

But those movements demand everything at once: tenouchi, fumikomi, kikentai-itchi, zanshin—all synced and stable, inside a body that’s still figuring out which foot is forward. It’s a heavy load for someone who hasn’t yet learned to breathe properly through a cut.

So let me offer this thought (not as gospel, but as a nudge from someone who’s made this mistake more than a few times). Big cuts aren’t wrong. They’re just advanced. They assume a level of coordination that beginners don’t yet have. And when we start there, we’re asking them to build the roof before laying the foundation.

What’s the fix? IMHO we should start with small cuts. Tighter, more controlled movements that give students something they can actually own early.

And here's why this works from my perspective:

• It sharpens the real fundamentals. With less wind-up and fewer moving parts, beginners can zero in on the key elements: hand speed, tenouchi, centre-line control, stable fumikomi. These are the real building blocks of effective kendo, not the arc of the sword, but the clarity of the contact.

• It mirrors actual kendo. Most valid ippon in shiai (and jigeiko, for that matter) are quick, subtle, and compact. Think of any match-up you've watched lately. The winning cut probably looked more like a whisper than a roar. One you almost didn’t see coming: sharp, minimal, impeccably timed.

Starting small means students learn how to land a clean strike without having to coordinate everything at once. They adapt sooner, stay safer, and stop bludgeoning their motodachi into early retirement.

So no, this isn’t an argument against big cuts. It’s an argument for sequencing.

Coach small cuts first. Build the coordination, the feel, the timing. Then bring in big cuts once the foundation can actually support them.

Start small. Then grow big.

How I’ve Been Teaching Small Cuts (and Where the Big Stuff Comes Back In)

If we can agree that small cuts are a better starting point (and in my experience, they really are), the next step is figuring out how to coach them in a way that actually sticks.

This isn’t a grand system. But here’s what’s been working for me in recent years.

Step 1: Tenouchi & Grip

This is where it all starts. Most beginners grip the shinai like it’s trying to escape. That death-clamp crushes their control and wrecks their tenouchi before they’ve even started the cut.

So first, fix the grip:

• Keep the kensen steady and push forward with the left hand.
• Pull the left hand back slightly before impact to add power.
• Extend the wrists. And to get that snappy tenouchi, cue them with something tactile, like: “flick water off your pointer fingers.” Analogies like this might sound weird. But they stick.

Step 2: Fumikomi 

Many of us still treat fumikomi as a sound competition. “Louder equals better.” But the real job of fumikomi isn’t theatre, it’s acceleration and stability post-strike. This is a tough habit to break. Even now, I still catch myself spending time on the volume of fumikomi rather than the function.

But when I reframe it—less “stomp to impress,” more “accelerate and stabilise”—things start to click.

Key cues:

• Land with “heavy toes,” not your heel.
• Keep the core engaged.
• Think of fumikomi like an accelerator, not a brake.

You’ll get less noise, maybe—but more speed, balance, and recovery. And fewer bruised heels.

Step 3: Controlled Keiko Situations

Once they’ve got some reps under their belt, I move into controlled keiko conditions...not full-blown sparring, but enough to add a bit of chaos (AKA context):

• Start with passive blocking drills to force students to adjust their timing.
• Then add distance games: have motodachi step in or lean back.
• Finally, introduce simple ai-uchi or delay drills (safely)—stuff that forces reaction, not rote execution.

This is where the function of small cuts start to become clear because students are applying their small cuts under pressure, not just in drills with a predetermined outcome. This is the stuff that makes learning sticky.

So... Where Do Big Cuts Fit In?

They still matter. A lot. Just maybe not where we’ve been putting them.

Big cuts can be great for switching on the posterior chain—hips, glutes, hamstrings—in a way that builds whole-body power without over-relying on the arms. But like eating BBQ elephant, emphasising these parts of a strike is best taken one bite at a time. That is to say, there’s plenty of time to work on all these elements—and for beginners, early wins are the magic sauce that keeps them engaged and turning up week after week.

I tend to think of big cuts like power tools: valuable, but best used once the basics—tenouchi, timing, balance—are in place. Hand them to beginners too early, and they swing hard, miss the timing, and start chiselling down your forearm one overzealous kote at a time.

So lately, I’ve been treating big movements as extensions of control, not the starting point for it.

Where do they fit for me?

• In advanced waza: Big actions make sense in techniques like men-nuki-men or kote-nuki-men, where the exaggerated motion is actually the crux of the waza.

• In suburi variations: Use them to set up transitions like moving from a full swing into uchi-otoshi techniques (#Kihon9).

This keeps the physical benefits of big cuts (range, rhythm, kinetic coordination) without baking them into the wrong phase of development.

Since shifting to this approach—small first, big later—I’ve noticed students settle into keiko quicker. Their cuts are more precise, their bodies less tense, and they stop trying to murder each other with every swing.

And at least now, I'm not undoing six months of habits the moment they put their men on.

Bonus Coaching Tip: Rethink Kiai (Hassei)

One of the more persistent contradictions in beginner coaching? Telling them to relax...then immediately following it with “MORE KIAI!” 

You can almost see the confusion ripple through the class. Shoulders rise, jaws tighten, and the next cut comes out like a power move from Street Fighter. It’s tense, noisy, and painful to receive.

What’s happening here is that most beginners yell from the throat. The head dips, breath shortens, and their body tightens right at the moment they need freedom and fluidity. The sound might be impressive, but everything else suffers.

So these days, I try to reframe it. Instead of volume, I coach breath. Specifically, exhaling while pushing down through the hara—imagine pressing out against the obi. The kiai becomes a stable, energetic release, not a shout-for-shout’s sake. The noise? That’ll come in time.

For younger or newer students, the language needs to land simply: breathe out as you cut, not up and out through your throat. And maybe save the volume drills for karaoke (though, preferably not with Brian, unless you’re into enka and heartbreak).

Rethinking Basics for Long-Term Success

By starting with small cuts, refining fumikomi, and treating big strikes as something to grow into—not start from—we give students a better shot at real progress. Not just louder reps, but cleaner cuts they can actually use in keiko. After all, 99% of their time in bogu will be spent throwing compact, timed strikes—not slow-motion baseball swings.

If any of this feels uncomfortably familiar (as it did for me), you might get something out of the Kendo Fundamentals Session Plan. It’s something I put together after too many nights trying to coach around the same recurring issues: clunky fumikomi, shouty kiai, shoulder tension that just won’t die.

It’s simple, beginner-friendly, and designed to help you actually teach the things we tend to just rehearse. And yes—it's free 👍

Next Up: Simple Kendo Coaching Strategies for Faster Progress

Fixing the technical stuff—footwork, kiai, tenouchi—is important. But sometimes, the real issue isn’t what you’re coaching. It’s how you’re coaching it. 

If the message isn’t landing, students won’t improve. They won’t stay motivated. And they definitely won’t stick around.

In the next post, I'll dig into the delivery side of coaching—how to tailor feedback, build tension into kihon, and turn drills into decisions that actually teach. Think of it as a tune-up for your teaching toolkit. Read it here.