Good Posture is Beautiful

Keep Your Back Straight!

Your teacher yells at you during training. You have your back straight but apparently your posture is not good. What are you doing wrong? What is a good posture?

Good posture in kendo is that "we look straight and beautiful". But not only that. It's a position that
we can execute strikes anytime we need to without losing balance.

So here is what we need.

1. Keeping your body straight is one. 
2. You need strength to maintain that posture. Plus, 
3. Your body needs to be strong and solid so you won't get hurt.

The Benefits of Good Posture

With the right posture,

• You will look tall. Nothing wrong with that, right? Well, actually you will become taller. 
• You will look confident. Rolling your shoulders forward don't look very confident, don't you think? Take a look at the photo below. No facial expression but it doesn't look very confident, does it?

What's Wrong, Buddy? It looks so sad, not confident.

This may be a bit too exaggerated but you can see my point.

When you don't look confident, people trust you less. But when you look confident, people tend to be attracted to you. 

• You can get more oxygen. You roll your shoulders forward and collapse the rib cage. That will limit the lung capacity.
• You will have less problem with your back. Definitely bad postures will affect your back. The good posture will help us to have less pain in our back. Bad posture will cause pains in our neck and shoulders too.
• You will feel less depressed. According to Psychology Today, sitting upright "reduced their fatigue and increased their enthusiasm over a short time period."

Let's Start Having a Good Posture

Build The Strong Core For Good Posture

Your core must be strong. What I mean by the core is that you would need a strong column if you were a building. 

The core shouldn't be shaky. It should be very stable. It shouldn't be bent. It should be straight.

A straight, strong and stable core is what you need. And at the end, you look beautiful. 

To have a strong core, you need to train your abdominal muscles. But it take a while and please do it alone with your kendo training.

I have some training methods under "Build Your Body For Kendo" in Kendo Study Group so you can go through that.

What Can You Do During Training?

You can do many exercises to strengthen your core muscles. But we can also train our abs during kendo training.  

Here is what you can do.

1. Have a good posture. And then 
2. Tighten your abs and butt cheeks
3. Keep them tight
4. Breath using your abs not checst
5. Have the loudest kiai by squeezing your abs

You'll feel it in your abs. You feel burning in your abs. It's getting tight and hot. And you will have muscle pains in your abs. And you keep trying hard then your back muscles will feel some pain. This means you are really tightening your core muscles. 

Once your core becomes strong, it will be a lot easier to keep your posture nicely and straight.

Let's look beautiful and become healthy!

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