Hanbo Striking Drills


Hi, this is Mark Roemke with 
Ninja Training TV, Pathways Dojo, and Ninjas in Nature with another blog for you. This blog is about hanbo striking drills. This training video below was filmed at our beautiful training spot in the redwoods of Santa Cruz, California. In the video we are gathered at our central fire pit area that we made in the forest where we practice our fire by friction and other survival skills. On this day we had just finished making our own hanbos from wood gathered in this forest. There is a lot of tan oak that is competing for sunlight in this area, which creates strong growth rings. It's also an area where sudden oak death is hitting a lot of the tan oaks, so these two elements combined offered us an opportunity to "tend the wild" by selecting small trees that were effected by sudden oak death and to help open up the forest for other trees to grow bigger. After we gathered the wood, we carved them with knives then fire-hardened them.

The hanbo is the "half staff" in ninjutsu. There are lots of objects that can serve as a hanbo. You are basically looking for a three foot piece of wood or a length that measures hip height. This video shows a lot of basic strikes, but also show angling, distancing, and timing. These drills are best for you to figure out on your own how they work. You can do these drills with or without a partner. Make sure you have plenty of room for swinging your hanbo. First start in shizen, or "natural" stance. Practice falling off in all sorts of different directions when doing these strikes. Practice "cane stance" or munen muso, much like you are walking with a cane. The second stance is called kata yaburi where you hold the hanbo with two hands horizontally in front of you. In the third stance called otonashi, you hold the hanbo behind you with both hands horizontally. 

In this video you will see a variety of drills to flow through to practice these stances and angling, distancing, and timing. I hope you enjoy this video because it will give you a lot of drills to practice. If you can, take your training outside. You can practice striking dead branches and trees and moving over uneven terrain with these drills.








If you like these techniques for hanbo, we have many more techniques in our white to black belt series at ninjatrainingtv.com for adults and advanced hanbo training videos. 

If you are new to the hanbo and want to learn more about making your own hanbo, we have a hanbo training membership at ninjasinnature.com that you can check out. This series is good for adults and youth that want to make their own hanbo and train in nature.

Good luck with your hanbo training drills!

In gratitude,

Sensei Mark Roemke

Ukemi


Hi, this is Mark Roemke with 
Ninja Training TV, Pathways Dojo, and Ninjas in Nature. In today's blog I will discuss ukemi. Ukemi is the art of falling. It's about taking things in life and "rolling with the punches." This saying is a really good analogy for this technique. When you are doing ukemi, you are on the receiving end of training techniques, or many times you are being thrown. The person who receives ukemi is known as the uke. The role of this person is to pay attention the whole time and to be fully alert. If you just "shut off" and relax when you are receiving a technique, you aren't truly connected to your partner and you won't train properly. Plus, you may find that you won't have many people who want to train with you if you aren't practicing good ukemi. When you are training and taking ukemi from your partner, that is when you are going to learn a lot, just by paying attention. The thing I like about it too is that when I am taking ukemi, I am watching my partner and feeling for where I can have an opening to do a counter move. I love this aspect. 

Ukemi is a really good skill to know for everyday life as well. One of the most common ways people in this modern world are injured is by falling. I have had several occasions where I have tripped over something like a curb or a branch and have caught myself by using ukemi techniques and thus avoided smashing my teeth or breaking my nose. Several times I have been hit from the side by objects I and because I learned to twist and roll with the energy of the blow, I avoided serious injury, in other words, I knew how to take ukemi.

Ukemi is a really big subject. In this video below, Kyle from Pathways Dojo demonstrates two types of ukemi: zenpo ukemi, which is forward breakfall, and koho ukemi, backward breakfall. In most falls, you are either going to be going forward or backward. These are the two ways we move the most so we picked these two skills to start with for ukemi. 




If you like these techniques for ukemi, we have many more ukemi techniques in our white to black belt series at ninjatrainingtv.com for adults or our white to black belt series for youth at pathwaysdojo.com. 

Good luck with your ukemi training drills!

In gratitude,
Sensei Mark Roemke