Ippon Blade Workshop August 2025

Trying something new

Aug 27, 2025

Background

People who follow my blog will know that I do a lot of sprinting on the beach. I find that running barefoot on the beach is a great way to improve your running posture and reduce your reliance on the elasticity of modern running shoes. This kind of training was introduced to me by a very high level marathon runner (and former Hakone Ekiden runner) and I have been taking part almost every week for just over a year now.

Many people take part in this beach sprinting session from a variety of different sports including boxing, volleyball, and tennis, but there are also a lot of different kinds of runners who turn up, from sprinters to ultra distance runners. We also get some quite interesting runners of a different kind.

During one of the beach runs I was introduced to runner who wears 一本歯下駄 (single toothed geta). He has fantastic running from and has completed several ultramarathons (up to 200 km) wearing these unusual shoes.

tetsu_ipponblade_rider

A post shared by @tetsu_ipponblade_rider

I’ve been interested in this kind of running for a while now because of how it benefits your posture and form, and would be quite transferable to other things like the karate and iaidō I practice.

I mentioned to my geta runner friend that I was interested in learning more, so he brought some shoes for me to try on after a sprint session and invited me to a workshop he would be teaching at. Never being one to turn down a gift of strength like this, I decided to go along and see what I could learn.

Workshop at 幸の木 (Sachinoki) in Hachioji

On a hot day near the end of August, I made my way to a cafe in Hachioji called 幸の木 (Sachinoki). The owner of the cafe is a very outgoing lady who is very enthusiastic about these single toothed geta made by Ippon Blade.

The instructors for this workshop were my friend Tetsu (tetsu_ipponblade_rider) and Yamapon (zeroplus_seitai). There was a morning session for people who are new to this kind of movement concept, lunch, then a more focused afternoon session for people who have some specific things they want to work on. I was taking part in the afternoon session.

I turned up a little early and was very kindly let in from the heat so I didn’t die of exposure to the sun. I watched the morning session, paying attention especially to how people were able to stop moving by placing their feet in a certain position, and then had lunch.

The afternoon session started at 1 pm and I was given a set of 369 Miroku geta to train with that day. These geta are quite tall, but I was told that if running is the aim then these would work better than the shorter 1000 Zen geta.

The first part of the seminar was heavily focused on tying to create good posture and balance. It’s very important to have flexible Achilles tendons for this, so a lot of work was done on rocking back and forth on the geta to get a good stretch along that tendon and on the calf muscles.

As the workshop went on there was more emphasis on slow walking form. It is much easier to move quicker wearing these shoes than it is to move slowly and with proper form, but foundation movements are very important no matter what you do.

We eventually got to the point where we were doing slow, deliberate walking with leg raises.

Balance training (raising your arms above you helps move your center of gravity)

Some of the key takeaways I got from this workshop were that the supporting leg being straight is very important for maintaining balance. This is very transferable to the kind of karate I do because I am often told off for having a bent supporting leg when I kick. (This kind of training will hopefully help with this issue). I also leaned a lot about your body naturally moving to counterbalance certain kinds of movement. Raising your leg uses less muscle strength if you drop the heel of your other foot. This kind of effect is much more pronounced when you are wearing geta.

I feel like I will be able to improve my form a lot more with further geta training.

Final thoughts

All in all, I had a fantastic time (and only fell over a few times, resulting in no injury). I’d like to thank Tetsu, Yamapon, Sachinoki, and Ippon Blade for the fantastic experience.

The day following the workshop I had some muscle pain in locations I expected (like my calves) but I also had some unexpected muscle pain in my shoulders. The soreness in my shoulders was likely causes by posture correction…which is probably a sign that it will be good for fixing issues I might not have realized I had.

I ordered a set of 369 Miroku geta, which I hope to use to improve my running, iaidō and karate form. I most certainly won’t be racing in these geta any time soon. But who knows that the future holds.