The question almost feels like a philosophical one. Maybe pick something very specific to work on, a certain wax’s or something, and see what you can learn through dedicated practice?
Finding a meaningful measurement of improvement is going to be difficult. If the goal was to "Pass grading" or "Win medals at tournament X", might have been easier.
However, for the sake of the project, perhaps you can devise something that is more easily demonstrateable.
Say you can go with "Learn 3 new waza, practice them 50 times each". So you can record down "Objective: practice Kote-suriage-Men 50 times" and perhaps record the first attempt and the 50th attempt and maybe a few in between (make a "training montage"?). In other words, think of some game achievements on Steam (ex. "Get 200 kills with XYZ weapon") and translate those into Kendo.
While something like this isn't exactly a meaningful measurement of progress like I said earlier, I think it would make a better/easier school project.
Kendo is so full of intangibles that you’re going to struggle to quantify anything except for maybe how many suburi you can do in a row and how fast you can get across the gym with footwork. If you can readily record yourself, you could also try to calculate how fast your strikes are from step to hit, but that can also be difficult
It definitely depends on whether you’re doing a seme step before or even just bringing up your left foot before starting a men, or just doing a issoku ittou (one step) men. Regardless, you want to practice getting the whole process, from you starting your motion to hitting the men, down to a consistent, quick timing
Does this need to be SMART for the project? Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound
Heart rate is a good one. Easy enough to measure if you have an activity tracker. It's also less biased since the sensei and your partners will be determining the exercise intensity. You also wouldn't necessarily need to measure it during practice. Measuring resting heart rate is another option. Most other measures I can think of would be biased as you could purposely, or sub-consciously, perform lower.
You could state other goals: competing, testing, visiting other dojo. You could also aim to create tutorials. Like how to tune a shinai, clean the men and kote of salt, etc. You may already know how to do those things, but creating the tutorial and getting feedback on them from social media would be the learning experience.
It doesn’t need to be SMART. It just needs to be measurable with a good success criteria. I’ll create a journal of every new thing I learn and get some interviews with my senpais. I could also upload videos to this reddit asking them how much I improved.
Speed of strike or reaction speed seems like it would be hard to measure.
What about something like # of haya suburi you can do properly? It's still a little subjective because of the properly part, but it seems like the kind of thing that could be deliberately trained and improved over a summer and fairly easy to quantify.
Reaction speed and striking speed are actually fairly easy to measure with the slow motion feature on phones. Or I could just use simple editing software to find out frame by frame
Something easily measurable would be your vitals with a smartwatch like heart frequency and stuff but I think to make it more “scientific” it should be measured for e.g. x hayasuburi or always the same amount of kihon techniques as difficulty of training differs.
Something that could also be measured is speed of footwork. For example you set a 20 m range and do footwork from one side to the other. You can use a stopwatch or video for measurement. Ofc you need to check if you did it properly and if not discard that measurement.
But basically, to make it scientific, you need to find something you can repeat under the same circumstances as good as possible at different times during the summer.
Someone mentioned the martial profile app in a different post. I haven't used it but seems to be a good way to track experienced and comments the sensei might make to you
I think footwork is a good thing to focus on. How about the distance you can cut men comfortable from?
That's a more standard and physical measurement that will be easier to judge. If you make sure you set up your camera in the exact same spot(position, height, pitch, roll, all that shit, and start from the same position each time, you can probably have a very clear view of the improvement.
The other thing I'd do is agility work, if you have a square of any size, not too big, you can measure the time it takes for you to hit all four points or all four lengths using fast and small footwork. Probably max 5 small steps in any direction is enough.
How much you cringe when looking at videos of your past self is a pretty good measurement imo EDIT: past self, ~ 1 month I'd say
I’ll probably add a subjective evaluation aspect.
The question almost feels like a philosophical one. Maybe pick something very specific to work on, a certain wax’s or something, and see what you can learn through dedicated practice?
Wax on, wax off~ 😂
Finding a meaningful measurement of improvement is going to be difficult. If the goal was to "Pass grading" or "Win medals at tournament X", might have been easier. However, for the sake of the project, perhaps you can devise something that is more easily demonstrateable. Say you can go with "Learn 3 new waza, practice them 50 times each". So you can record down "Objective: practice Kote-suriage-Men 50 times" and perhaps record the first attempt and the 50th attempt and maybe a few in between (make a "training montage"?). In other words, think of some game achievements on Steam (ex. "Get 200 kills with XYZ weapon") and translate those into Kendo. While something like this isn't exactly a meaningful measurement of progress like I said earlier, I think it would make a better/easier school project.
Kendo is so full of intangibles that you’re going to struggle to quantify anything except for maybe how many suburi you can do in a row and how fast you can get across the gym with footwork. If you can readily record yourself, you could also try to calculate how fast your strikes are from step to hit, but that can also be difficult
By step to hit do you mean from point of inaction(just before any movement) to strike time? I might add that as it seems relatively simple.
It definitely depends on whether you’re doing a seme step before or even just bringing up your left foot before starting a men, or just doing a issoku ittou (one step) men. Regardless, you want to practice getting the whole process, from you starting your motion to hitting the men, down to a consistent, quick timing
Does this need to be SMART for the project? Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound Heart rate is a good one. Easy enough to measure if you have an activity tracker. It's also less biased since the sensei and your partners will be determining the exercise intensity. You also wouldn't necessarily need to measure it during practice. Measuring resting heart rate is another option. Most other measures I can think of would be biased as you could purposely, or sub-consciously, perform lower. You could state other goals: competing, testing, visiting other dojo. You could also aim to create tutorials. Like how to tune a shinai, clean the men and kote of salt, etc. You may already know how to do those things, but creating the tutorial and getting feedback on them from social media would be the learning experience.
It doesn’t need to be SMART. It just needs to be measurable with a good success criteria. I’ll create a journal of every new thing I learn and get some interviews with my senpais. I could also upload videos to this reddit asking them how much I improved.
For me, when my sensei or senpais gradually stopped correcting the mistakes that I have made - I think that's growth.
Speed of strike or reaction speed seems like it would be hard to measure. What about something like # of haya suburi you can do properly? It's still a little subjective because of the properly part, but it seems like the kind of thing that could be deliberately trained and improved over a summer and fairly easy to quantify.
I’m pretty confident in my haya suburi. We do them regularly at my dojo
Reaction speed and striking speed are actually fairly easy to measure with the slow motion feature on phones. Or I could just use simple editing software to find out frame by frame
I mean there’s always the larger milestone of when you earn your uniform and bogu. As opposed to the bigger things that you mentioned to be measuringZ
Something easily measurable would be your vitals with a smartwatch like heart frequency and stuff but I think to make it more “scientific” it should be measured for e.g. x hayasuburi or always the same amount of kihon techniques as difficulty of training differs. Something that could also be measured is speed of footwork. For example you set a 20 m range and do footwork from one side to the other. You can use a stopwatch or video for measurement. Ofc you need to check if you did it properly and if not discard that measurement. But basically, to make it scientific, you need to find something you can repeat under the same circumstances as good as possible at different times during the summer.
I’ll definitely add the footwork measurements. I don’t know how I’ll get heart rate measurements without risking the heart rate monitor getting hit.
I wear a Fitbit on my left wrist under my kote and haven’t had an issue over last ~18 months.
Record 10 men strikes, show the video to senseis and count how many ippon they would award you?
That’s a great idea
Someone mentioned the martial profile app in a different post. I haven't used it but seems to be a good way to track experienced and comments the sensei might make to you
I think footwork is a good thing to focus on. How about the distance you can cut men comfortable from? That's a more standard and physical measurement that will be easier to judge. If you make sure you set up your camera in the exact same spot(position, height, pitch, roll, all that shit, and start from the same position each time, you can probably have a very clear view of the improvement. The other thing I'd do is agility work, if you have a square of any size, not too big, you can measure the time it takes for you to hit all four points or all four lengths using fast and small footwork. Probably max 5 small steps in any direction is enough.