The Match-Winning Skill You’re Not Training (YET)

Glasgow, 2000. My first World Kendo Championships.

I was seventeen, standing in a warm-up hall filled with big names and big reputations. Every corner I looked to, there were famous shiai-sha moving with a sharpness I couldn’t yet touch, coaches speaking in a dozen languages, and the echo of fumikomi and kiai bouncing off the walls. 

Honestly, it was all a bit intimidating. My footwork warm-ups felt like I was wearing a pair of gumboots. 

The energy in the hall was unlike anything I’d experienced before, and every glance reminded me I was deep in unfamiliar territory. I was a little overwhelmed, yes, but also stubborn enough to believe I could still prove myself. What I didn’t realise was that this high-stakes event had a lesson waiting for me. 

One I’d have to learn the hard way... 

My opponent that day was close to my age, also at the start of his WKC journey. In that way, we were parallel: two young players with something to prove. The difference was: he was technically sharper; more seasoned; and, as it would turn out, destined to go much further in his career. Still, I told myself I could make it a fight. We bowed in, and the match began.

The first exchanges were tight. I wasn’t dominating, but I wasn’t drowning either. My nerves buzzed in my chest, but my feet were still under me, my mind still tethered to what was happening. 

And then it happened. 

As we moved around in tsubazeria-ai, I noticed his men-himo had wrapped itself around my shinai. Back home, the etiquette was simple: raise your hand, stop the fight, fix it. So I did.

The head shimpan - a tall, older European man whose presence could probably stop traffic - walked over. He looked down at me, and I explained. Then, in a voice that cut right through the noise of five other shiai, he said:

“If you stop the fight like that again, I will give you hansoku.”

It landed like a slap. I was mortified. It felt as if I’d just been told off in front of the whole world. He stepped back, called “hajime,” and before I’d even processed what had happened, my opponent was on me. First point. I was still replaying the warning in my head when the second point came. And just like that, it was over.

The Lesson I Took Home

Once the disappointment had worn off (some time later, I must say), I started to see the match in a different light. That moment in Glasgow had shown me something I hadn’t fully appreciated before: focus will break. It doesn’t matter how prepared you are — something unexpected will happen. A mistake, a bad call, an equipment issue, a warning. And when it does, it’ll jolt you out of the fight.

The trick I have learned since then isn’t in avoiding those moments entirely. That’s impossible. Instead, its in how quickly and effectively you can come back from them. That was the piece I realised I could build into my own kendo, and eventually into the way I coach.

In simple terms, the real skill isn’t in preventing distraction mid-fight. It’s in how fast you can come back. In Glasgow, I didn’t come back at all. Once my attention was fixed on what the shimpan had said, it never returned to my opponent, and the match was lost before I’d even had the chance to fight it out.

Sports psychology backs this up, too. Studies have shown that attentional strength isn’t built by endless, uninterrupted focus...it’s built in the return. The act of noticing you’ve drifted, then bringing yourself back, again and again. One lapse doesn’t kill performance. Staying gone does.

I would say that most coaches have seen this. The student who loses a point, gets rattled, and never really returns to the match. Their body is there, but their head is somewhere else. If we don’t train them to recover, they’ll keep losing matches they should be capable of winning - not because of skill gaps, but because they never found their way back into the moment.

How Coaches Can Train the Return

Before Glasgow, I’d never once trained the skill of “returning.” I just assumed I’d stay locked in when it mattered. And I still see this assumption everywhere: the belief that if we just do enough kirikaeshi, kakarigeiko, and a few mock-shiai, the focus will take care of itself. The technical and physical prep gets all the attention, but the mental prep for setbacks is often left to chance (...which is crazy when you think about how much we prepare everything else).

These days, I build it in on purpose. If I want my students ready for their own 'men-himo moment,' and they will have one, I don’t just tell them to focus. I create scenarios where their focus will break, and then make the recovery part of the drill.

Here’s what works:

Simulate pressure – Run jigeiko with the rest of the dojo watching. Create the “all eyes on you” tension they’ll face in gradings and comps.

Add chaos – Background noise or complete silence (especially for grading prep), weird or unexpected movements from the opponent, or even getting onlookers in the dojo to cheer for 'the other side'.

Break their script – Change the cues mid-drill so autopilot isn’t an option. Calls from the coach about the scoreboard, countdowns, or aggressive/defensive opponents all work.

The point isn’t to make training cruel, it’s to give students the tools to recover without hesitation. You want their first thought after a mental stumble to be, “reset and go”, not, “what just happened?” That kind of response only comes from experience, and the safest place to build it is in training.

One of the simplest, most effective ways I’ve found to train that habit is what I call the Re-Focus Reset.

The Re-Focus Reset Drill

This one came straight out of that memory from Glasgow. I needed a way to train the “come back right now” skill: no pausing, no wallowing. And it had to be simple enough to use mid-fight without giving the game away.

Setup:

Two students in bogu: one attacks, one defends. I’m just outside the shiai space, ready to drop in changes that force them to think and adapt. It might be a quick call that there’s only 20 seconds left on the clock, or an instruction that the crowd is now cheering for one fighter only. Sometimes I’ll change the scoring — “double points for kote-men” — or restrict target areas mid-match. The shift doesn’t have to be big, but it must be meaningful enough to break autopilot and demand a mental reset on the fly.

The Rule:

The moment a player realises they’ve drifted, they run their personal reset cue. For some, it’s a breath into kamae. Others shift their stance. One mutters “centre” under his breath. [Here’s a simple way to create your own custom reset cue].

Why it Works:
In a real match, you won’t get a time-out to fix your head. This drill builds the habit of resetting in motion. Players learn to clear the mental static, re-anchor in the moment, and keep moving, all without signalling to their opponent that something just went wrong.

How to Make it Even Better:

• Layer the pressure – Start with small, simple changes, then combine them: crowd support for one fighter + 20 seconds left on the clock + target restriction + “opponent is attacking continuously.”

• Make the reset invisible – Encourage players to keep their cue so subtle you couldn’t spot it from the sidelines.

• Debrief after – Ask, “When did you notice the drift?” and “What got you back the fastest?” This reflection turns a single drill into a long-term skill.

That’s the habit you want, so that when the pressure is on, whether it’s in front of grading panels, tournament flags, or a packed dojo, they can reset instantly and stay in the fight.

Reflection Matters Too

After keiko, I’ll ask my students when they were most focused, what knocked them off, and how they brought themselves back. The answers aren’t about scoring points in my book, they’re about building that self-awareness. Because once they start noticing the drift, they can start beating it.

Focus will wander. That’s not weakness, its human. But in a real-life shiai or grading, there’s no pause button while you sort yourself out. There’s only the next moment. And if we can train our students to own that moment (i.e. the reset and the return) they’ll fight better, last longer, and stay in battles they would otherwise have drifted out of.

If you want plug-and-play ways to bring this kind of mental skills work into your dojo, grab this free reset tool so you and your students can start practising recovery under pressure...without you rewriting your whole session plan.