Kendo is Hard

The reality for me is that Kendo is hard.

Not in the way where I’m complaining or looking for a way out. I’m still here, still showing up to keiko (practice), but I want to be honest about it. I think sometimes the narrative around martial arts can feel very triumphant and heroic, and honestly I want that for myself too. But sometimes there are factors in our lives that make us realize that that narrative may not fit our “ordinary” lives.

I’ve always had a lot of moments where I would think about not showing up. Kendo is not something that I do primarily to have a healthy body anyway, I have the gym for that. At this point, it’s a totally optional activity.

I am a casual kendoka

And I mean that without apology.

I don’t have dreams of competing internationally. I’m not chasing a championship. I don’t think I have the same fire as someone who wants to be the best at competing. I practice because I genuinely love kendo: the discipline of it, the meditative focus that comes with it, the community, but I’m not an athlete. I never have been.

That distinction matters because it shapes a different kind of struggle. The challenge isn’t about pushing to be the best. It’s about pushing at all.

The specific difficulty of “just because I want to”

When you’re training for something: a shiai (competition), shinsa (exam), a goal, you have a clear reason to push through the hard sessions. When you’re a casual practitioner, you have to find that reason yourself, every single time. There was a point in my journey that I thought maybe I should aim for being an athlete to force myself to greatness.

Some days keiko is exhausting and I’m gasping for air halfway through jigeiko (free practice), and the voice in my head says: why are you doing this to yourself? And I don’t have the easy answer of “because nationals is in a few months.” I just have a less exciting one: because I want to grow, even if slowly. Because this is something I’ve chosen.

Because I like the person that I am when I show up.

Greatness is a complicated word

I don’t think I’ll ever be great at kendo by any conventional measure. I don’t have the physical build, the time, or the ambition of someone who does a minimum of 4 days a week of practice and films it for analysis. And for a long time, that felt somewhat like a failure. Like there was a version of me that should be doing more and caring more intensely.

But I’ve started to wonder if greatness for a casual kendoka just looks different. Maybe it’s showing up when it’s inconvenient. Maybe it’s doing one more round of jigeiko when my lungs are giving up. Maybe it’s still bowing in after a long week when every other priority tried to crowd this one out.

Maybe it’s not as small as I think. It’s just not as loud as one would expect.

Still doing it anyway

The title of this isn’t Kendo is Hard and I Quit. I’m still here.

I still get something out of every session, even the ones where I feel terrible. There’s a specific exhaustion after keiko that feels earned. There’s the occasional moment where something clicks: a strike lands clean, a kamae shift actually works, the sensei nods. Those moments don’t come often, but they come.

Maybe I don’t fully realize it: that the difficulty is part of why I stay. Easy things don’t ask much of you. Kendo asks a lot, and somewhere in that asking, I find out what I’m actually made of.

A week ago, I passed my nidan exam. After passing, all I can think about is how the bar of expectations may nudge up. I don’t know how high or how little, but I know that the only next step is to show up.

I’m a casual kendoka. I find this hard. I’m still going to do it anyway.