Kendama Fundamentals

So before we dive into the five fundamentals for kendama, let’s go over what a fundamental is. Google says a fundamental is forming a necessary base or core of central importance, and i completely agree. If we look at a sport like basketball, the best shooters have a very similar looking shot. Like clay Thompson or Steph curry, they have extremely solid fundamentals.

So if we went back to the early days of Steph Curry learning how to shoot a basketball, I’m sure his coach would be showing him tips on his form of his elbow or his wrist or his shoulders and alignment that might not have felt natural to him. When he was learning it, but because he put in the work to learn the fundamentals and get a proper base and core, that turned him into one of the best shooters in the NBA.

So a few of these things might not feel natural to you at first, but if you just put in the work, and you keep reminding yourself to do these things it’s most definitely going to pay off in the long run, you know kendama, we don’t have established Teaching system or an established course, so a lot of the pros today didn’t know about any kendama form or kendama fundamentals.

But if we looked at the best players today, we can see incredible similarities between how they play so they obviously, throughout their progression of kendama, learned a certain ability or skill that greatly benefits their play today. It is easier once you learn the top 5 fundamentals. However you’re not going to instantly learn the trick that you’ve been working on after learning fundamentals.

This is more just of a central base to keep you thinking about and reminding yourself of which over time is going to greatly increase the time it takes to learn a trick and the time it takes to get a trick consistent.

Keep Tricks Straight

So the first fundamental I want to go over is keeping everything straight. Whether you’re learning earth turns j sticks, and juggle to late quad flip. It’s evident looking at the best players like Nick Gallagher and tiblex that their ken and their body is straight as an arrow.

They don’t have any wonky juggles where the serrado’s spinning around as they’re juggling it even with one turn airplanes, which is obviously a simple trick for them. When the ken comes around it’s perfectly straight, like it’s not even a bit to the side, not even a little bit wonky. It’s perfectly straight the entire time.

Keeping The String From Tangling

There are numerous benefits to this. Some may be obvious, some might be more discreet, but one thing i know that tiblex personally told me is. If you keep this ken straight you’re gonna run into less string problems, and it’s so true. Whenever I’m going for a trick, and I’m thinking in my head to keep everything straight and aligned, the string definitely doesn’t get tangled as much as it usually would.

When you start playing kendama in this way of keeping everything straight, it’s not really like a a physical thing that you can look at, but it’s almost a feeling of playing in a pure way and playing in like a concentrated and direct way.

So I would try that out even right now, if you’re learning big cup, you can straighten out your ken, you can straighten out the tama as much as you can so. The bevel lands perfectly straight on the cup when you’re doing an earth turn when it comes around or a swing spike.

Keep The Tama To The Left

The reason you want to keep the tama to the left is solely because of the string. The string will get wrapped around the ken and it’s going to make the rest of the trick hard. When the string is already tangled, so if you play lefty, obviously invert this and if you play righty with a lefty setup, you want to invert.

But when you’re doing trades and swaps, you want to make sure that tama is on the left side and the ken is on the right side. The entire time I’ve actually personally developed a way to kind of throw it in front of the ken to avoid the string problem.

But I really really wish somebody told me to learn the habit of throwing the tama to the left when I’m doing trades, juggles, or even big cup to juggle, or lighthouse to juggle. learning that fundamental is going to help me progress, these new gen tricks so much quicker.

Bend Your Knees

So the third fundamental is use your knees, and I know most people don’t need to hear this again. But i need to put this in here because it’s incredibly important kendama to bend your knees. You get way more time doing a trick when you’re able to bend your knees a little bit.

Just using your knees is going to help you so much more when learning new tricks and progressing and going through your progression. Personally when I first discovered bending your knees in order to follow the tama and float along with it, I instantly improved my skills.

When I sesh for like an hour to a day uh when I first get out there, it’s hard for me to use my knees so I’ll do some squats. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I’ll just kind of warm up my legs so they remind me to to bend my knees. Or I’ll even practice a trick that requires a lot of knees just so during practice session, so I’ll be more apt to bend and get low.

This is a huge fundamental that you see In every pro player, especially on the freestyle stage, you know looking at all pro players getting as low to the ground as you can is just built into their heads. Bending your knees and getting low allows you to follow the tama though the air and gain more time in the air for performing tricks.

Monitor YOUR Progression

last fundamental Is to make your kendama progression your own. This is a more of a mental one, and this is probably the most difficult to grasp even for me today, but in order to play kendama consistently for a long time. You need to look at your own kendama progression and not others and do not compare yourself to others.

There’s a great quote that reads “You should compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not who somebody else is today.” When I’m going for a new gen trick, i can easily look at a pro kendama players edits and say that they can land this. In literally two seconds it’s down pat for them, they have it consistent when I’m just trying to land it once.

That thought doesn’t feel very good and that definitely doesn’t motivate me to learn the trick. But if I were to look at where I was yesterday, if I go back to my own feed and look at my past tricks, you feel a pure sense of accomplishment and progression.

Those are five fundamentals that I wish. I told myself when I first started playing kendama.

Let me know what you think in the comments below I would love to hear in the comments some true genuine reactions to this. What specifically resonated most with you, what else do you have to add, and why did it resonate with you?

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