The three candidates took their Battojutsu examination for 4th Kyu (orange belt) last Thursday at the Bürbacher Spielvereinigung in Siegen. At the beginning, the participants had 30 minutes to prepare for their exam on their own. Then trainer and examiner Jens Uwe asked each individual to take the exam.
The 4th Kyu exam is the second exam to be taken with the sharp sword and the first exam in which a series of kata forms must be performed.
At the beginning, examiner Jens wanted to see the following techniques / kata, among others:
- Kamae no Kata (repetition) where different sword stances are presented and named
- Foot stances - Zenkutsu Dachi - a forward leaning stance / Kokutsu Dachi - a backward leaning stance
- Kata Ju-Giri (repetition) a kata in which 10 different basic cuts are performed one after the other.
The main part of the course then began with the kata Shodan. Here 5 shorter kata are shown, each with 2-3 cuts + jiburi (blood cutting).
The examiner was very satisfied with the overall performance. The three examinees (Akib, Nina & Jéssica) successfully passed their exam and are now allowed to wear the orange belt. A novelty at this examination was that in addition to the IAF certificates, there were now also official Shobukan Inyo-Ryu certificates directly from the Grandmaster!
Congratulations to the new graduations!