The purpose of this study was to reveal whether expert university level kendo players have a specific movement pattern when striking with ōji-waza (techniques which utilize the opponent’s attack to make your own attack), and whether male and female kendo players have different movement patterns.
Forty-four university kendo players (22 males; 22 females) participated in this study. For each gender, participants were classified into two groups (regular and sub-regular groups) according to their achievement in a team competition. In this study, kote-suriage-men, which is one of the ōji-waza for kote, was evaluated. All striking movements were recorded with a digital video camera. We analyzed the following 4 points that appeared: migi-ashi-richi (the moment the right foot leaves the ground), temoto-uki (the moment the right fist is raised to the position of shinai’stsubamoto), suriage (avoiding the opponent’s kote strike by deflecting it with the shinai), and furiage-saiko (the minimum speed of the shinai tip when the shinai is raised). Each time point that appeared was calculated as a percentage relative to the entire time period.
The results in this study showed that most of the male kendo players had one movement pattern in the order of migi-ashi-richi, temoto-uki, and suriage. In contrast, female participants showed that the order of their movement patterns was not consistent, and they were classified into three patterns.
The findings of this study demonstrate that most male kendo experts had a specific movement pattern when utilizing ōji-waza. On the other hand, female kendo players did not have a consistent movement pattern, even in the regular group. Therefore, our results suggest that female kendo players acquire their own individual movement pattern for ōji-waza, achieving an effective strike for each approach.
