Bleeding Toe
After reviewing some of the other posts, I think I'll try to keep future posts shorter and focus on what I need to do to improve my kendo.
I finally got my armour after Mondays' training and was able to wear it last night. Nothing like the smell of brand new armour... ie. no nasty kote smell. The kote palm is made of smoked dear skin so it has this really nice smoky bbq smell. After mensuke I was standing around sniffing it (like an idiot) and one of the girls came up to me and told me I was psycho (or something to that effect) thinking that I was sniffing the nasty club kote. The whole set still has a new feeling (obviously) which means its quite stiff and not fully comfortable yet. Still a bit hard to tie the tare obi properly, and all the himo (men and dou) are a bit hard to tie. Hopefully this initial hardness wears off soon, especially the men which is quite stiff and hurts my ears. Also makes it very hard to tie up properly because it had no 'give', ie. its hard to make it 'wrap' around the back of my head.
Wednesdays training session was pretty much the same as Monday's session with some modifications. One interesting difference was that we had to do continusous kirikaeshi for the whole width of the dojo (ie. basketball court). Kinda fun... got to practice my elongated kiai. I even did shorter steps going forwards so that I'd have to do more cuts. I'm working on being able to do a whole kirikaseshi in one continuous kiai. At the moment I can do the first set of cuts, the about 3-4 cuts of the second set, after which I need to take another breath.
Moved onto some kihon practice. Must have had my hakama a bit lower than usual because during one of my kote cuts, I kinda tripped on it. Quite embarassing, especially with two of the beginners watching. Well it started bleeding so I had to take some time out to get it taped up.
Anyway, during the practice, sensei came up to me after I did a set of kihon cuts, and mentioned that I was leaning forward too much. He emphasised the use of the left leg pushing the body forward, rather than reaching forward with my arms. This seems to be a chronic problem so I've vowed to rectify it in the next few weeks (or until I actually fix it!). This is one of the basics that really makes your kendo look good, but somehow I have neglected it. I used to pride myself in being focussed on doing the basics right, even though it meant that I'd get hit a lot because it slowed me down or whatever. In the past couple of months I have probably been focussing on seeing openings and making openings and neglected the more important aspects of kendo. Need to overcome this and go back to all the basics to get things right.
So yeah, work on pushing my 'hara' rather than reaching forward with my arms.
PS. my hands still smell smoky...
I finally got my armour after Mondays' training and was able to wear it last night. Nothing like the smell of brand new armour... ie. no nasty kote smell. The kote palm is made of smoked dear skin so it has this really nice smoky bbq smell. After mensuke I was standing around sniffing it (like an idiot) and one of the girls came up to me and told me I was psycho (or something to that effect) thinking that I was sniffing the nasty club kote. The whole set still has a new feeling (obviously) which means its quite stiff and not fully comfortable yet. Still a bit hard to tie the tare obi properly, and all the himo (men and dou) are a bit hard to tie. Hopefully this initial hardness wears off soon, especially the men which is quite stiff and hurts my ears. Also makes it very hard to tie up properly because it had no 'give', ie. its hard to make it 'wrap' around the back of my head.
Wednesdays training session was pretty much the same as Monday's session with some modifications. One interesting difference was that we had to do continusous kirikaeshi for the whole width of the dojo (ie. basketball court). Kinda fun... got to practice my elongated kiai. I even did shorter steps going forwards so that I'd have to do more cuts. I'm working on being able to do a whole kirikaseshi in one continuous kiai. At the moment I can do the first set of cuts, the about 3-4 cuts of the second set, after which I need to take another breath.
Moved onto some kihon practice. Must have had my hakama a bit lower than usual because during one of my kote cuts, I kinda tripped on it. Quite embarassing, especially with two of the beginners watching. Well it started bleeding so I had to take some time out to get it taped up.
Anyway, during the practice, sensei came up to me after I did a set of kihon cuts, and mentioned that I was leaning forward too much. He emphasised the use of the left leg pushing the body forward, rather than reaching forward with my arms. This seems to be a chronic problem so I've vowed to rectify it in the next few weeks (or until I actually fix it!). This is one of the basics that really makes your kendo look good, but somehow I have neglected it. I used to pride myself in being focussed on doing the basics right, even though it meant that I'd get hit a lot because it slowed me down or whatever. In the past couple of months I have probably been focussing on seeing openings and making openings and neglected the more important aspects of kendo. Need to overcome this and go back to all the basics to get things right.
So yeah, work on pushing my 'hara' rather than reaching forward with my arms.
PS. my hands still smell smoky...
posted by Son at 4:34 pm
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