[ggandibazz]

Thanks Neil,

I'm new to kendo, so my observation/thoughts were based on a very short term exposure. I can see that it is hard to separate those who quit early on from the switch to bogu vs those who would not continue for some other reason(s). For me, kendo training in bogu is very different from without (no surprise there of course), so I wondered if trying to ease that transition might benefit some newcomers. Obviously, those of you with much more experience have seen that it likely won't help so my question is answered.

Steve

[kavaTeexy]

What Neil Sensei said rings true even for our small club (it's possible that our small size makes us less intimidating as seniors -either that or our incredible suckiness ha ha). We tried to let our beginners put on bogu a few times when they were considering buying their own, to make sure they would be alright with dropping 400-ish bucks. Since we are such a small club (and only get allocated about $100 even if we ask really nicely and thus have no club bogu ) we had to let them borrow ours. Since buying their own sets, one of the beginners is still consistently coming to practice, but the other one rarely if ever comes, and we often wonder if he's quit or not (and then for some reason he comes back again after a few weeks). In any case, letting them try bogu didn't seem to have too much of an effect. We've tried lending out our own bogu several times, and this is the only time someone has, after trying it out, actually stayed upon buying their own set. I would imagine it has nothing to do with the fact that they got to try it out; rather, it was just that Kendo was more appealing to them.

[jesyflowers]

It's true that Kendo has an high attrition rate, before my beginner group joined, my Senpai's are the last members of their "beginner groups". My own group we started out with about 15 of us, throughout the 12 weeks in our beginners course we lost almost half of that so only about 6-7 of us remain. Our sister club lost more, they started with about 12-15 beginners but only 4 have stayed on.

Our sister club just started a new beginners course few weeks ago, they started with the same number of beginners like us, about 15 or so but numbers have started to drop, I believe there is about 9-10 or so now, in that group 2 girls started, but only one has stayed and I'm hoping she will stay since we have no female members. My group started with a girl as well, an Korean who did Kendo back in Korea but she left somewhere between the 8th+ week of our beginners course.

Currently I feel we have good number of members, in the sense our club has three levels of members, fresh beginners (few weeks), my group (about 7 months) and our advanced group (many years) who are our Senpai's, I feel we have a nice balance.

My Sensei believes that putting Bogu is a turning point for people, some people just don't like getting hit as he keeps telling us a story about this women who joined a beginners course a long time ago, who was a natural at Kendo, was very good, but soon as she wore the Men, she hated it and left.

Personally speaking, I fell in love with Kendo after the 6th episode of watching Bamboo Blade, one month later, I signed up to my club beginners course, brought my armour few weeks later and a little later on, brought my Hakama and Keikogi, I started to wear that in the second week of training. Now here I am, 7 months later on I had my first Taiki the last weekend and thinking of going for my Ikkyu grading in May.

[caseferter]

What are you looking for in an ADULT beginner before you deem them ready for bogu? Is it mostly a time requirement (i.e. three months to bogu)

..not by design, but it's par for the course. For us, it's typically no less than 3 months and, on average, maybe around 5 months. some have progressed very quickly and gone into bogu sooner (like after 2 or months)... (very athletic, have good rhythm, grasp concepts quickly, practice 3x week and NEVER miss practice)..

..sometimes, though, it's a matter of whether or not we have any club bogu we can let them wear (errr.... rent).

or are you looking for certain benchmarks (i.e. basic understanding of ki-ken-tai)? yes.. more than anything, it's proper footwork and proper swing... and yeah, I think that goes fairly hand-in-hand with "basic understanding" of ki-ken-tai-ichi...

If two beginners start around the same time and show up at practice about the same frequency, but one progresses significantly faster than the other, do you graduate the two into bogu at the same time? Nope. Whoever is ready (in our estimation) is ready, and whoever ain't, ain't.

Getting the basics down is of course important. But I also feel there has to be a balance in terms of keep a beginner engaged, and not letting them languish in non-bogu classes for too long. What say ye? I agree!
We take our complete newbies off to the side for one-on-one for a little while (instructors rotate this), but even before we think they are 'ready' for bogu, we eventually move them into class rotation for very basics (footwork, no waza, straight XXXX-uchi, run throughs, turn-arounds, kirikaeshi... that's it). Then they're free to go to the side and work on their own (together) or watch/learn while we do the last 20ish mins of class in jigeiko. Sometimes, we let them rotate through kikarigeiko as well.

I think this approach has worked fairly well for us...