How to do basic Fumi-komi footwork in Kendo

Stand with both of your knees slightly bent.

Push your right kneecap with your right leg while the balance shft forward (with the upright posture maintained), only when your posture no longer can sustain your forward-shifted balance, your right foot should 'take off' forward and quickly land on the floor again, immediately followed by your old friend the left foot. The 'flight duration' of the right foot should be kept minimum.

Nice Fumi-komi noise happens when you learn to subtly adjust the angle of your ankle on landing. You should feel that the front-half of the right-foot sole captures a packet of air and squash it without putting any pressure on the heel.

Never kick up the right foot like French can-can. Not only the landing noise will be dull but also you are risking to injure your heel bone by landing on it in high velocity with your full weight. Bad idea.

The sole of your right foot and the floor should be as parallel as possible all the time. Even if you can adjust the angle before landing, adjusting a wide angle takes more effort and time than keep the angle always optimum.

If the arch of your right foot can be seen by the people around you, the angle of your sole is too open. To get the optimum angle, the adjustment has to happen in your ankle.

Under any circumstance, including Fumi-komi, you should never land with your heel. Take your heels as  the 'little resting stools' to place your weight from time to time, but not something you can land with it at full power.

Compared to the discipline of swordsmanship itself, fumi-komi is a relatively young technique, apparently. And this is one of the reason why there's no effective, fool-proof way to teach fumi-komi - so I was told.

Said that, it is an effective technique and was developed in order to achieve sharper and quicker footwork with the minimum impact on the body at landing.

To my understanding, fumi-komi should work as a shock absorber with minimum interference to the overall body movement necessary.

Importantly, never forget your old friend the left foot. Fumi-komi is complete only when your old friend catches up with you. Don't leave it alone. I could get very lonely and spoil your kendo.

This article is just for basic technique. Once you become able to make the noise consistently, there are a lot more subtleties to work on to make the sound surprisingly loud. But people who can do fumi-komi consistently should know what to work on, so I won't talk about it now.