There goes my immunity to bruising

Straight into menstuke to start off training. Viet beat me last night, but he was later disqualified (by me) because his him was all wrong! There was a twist on his left side and the bow at the back were of all sorts of different lengths. Chris P. actually came and told him off! hehe, thats what you get for trying to cheat Viet. Very bad form indeed. So yeah, I guess I still beat everyone else which makes me officially first.

Did some kirikaeshi and kihon cuts just to warm up.

We then did this keiko where sensei would bang the drum, and you'd have to cut straight away. The point being that in a shiai situation, you should cut as soon as you see the opening. So what was needed was a constant attacking spirit, so that you can cut instantaneously. We did this for several different waza. First it was just men, kote, dou... we then did some ouji waza, men kaeshi dou and kote nuki men. I love the kote nuki men cuts. I didn't feel like I landed anything good though, especially the kaeshi dou, and especially when I went up against shorter people, somehow when I go for the cut, my whole posture just twists on itself and looks totally shit.

To follow that, we did it simultaneously, ie, not motadachi, but both players going for a cut... any cut. I just remembered that I had Andrew first up and for the very first cut I think I scored on him! I did a harai men and I think that surprised him and he lost centre. But after that he kicked my ass. I remember at one point we both went for nuki dou, hehe, kinda funny.

We then went straight to jigeiko. I wasn't feeling as good as on monday. I really need to find out why I feel like this, so that I can fix it up. I just felt a bit flat. First up I fought Janice. She's not smiling as much as she used to, so I assume she's getting more serious, perhaps for uni games. Good for her. Can't remember much about the fight, but she did miss a men cut and it ended up tsuki-ing me. Then I fought 'spongebob'. He doesn't have much tenouchi, so a few of his cuts landed on my shoulders when he missed men. I have a very nice purple patch on my left shoulder now... I also fought Jaklene. Her cuts are quite slow, so I slowed down my timing to match hers for most of the fight. Every now and then I'd do a debana kote. It seemed quite easy because she had a bit of a pause before she lifted up her shinai, hard to explain, but I didn't get a chance to tell her afterwards.

I then fought against sensei. I really like fighting sensei. For the most part, I think he was trying to sucker me into cutting his men for him to do ouji waza. I kinda took it upon myself to try a good enough men cut to 'beat' his ouji waza. He'd mixed it up going for kaeshi dou, nuki kote, debana men, etc. I remember landing two men cuts on him. The first, he said was a bit iffy because it didn't hit him hard enough. Hmm, can tenouchi me too good? When I do suburi, I really whip the shinai so I don't think its that. I'm probably just aiming a tad too high. On monday, Pai Mei also said that my cuts were too soft, though that was for a dou cut. Hmm, need to work on that. My second men cut on sensei was a bit better, though only marginally. I think this may be coming from the fact that I hate it when people hit too hard, ie, tenouchi for my nose rather than the top of my men. Anyway, something else I now have to work on.