Well you can tell by the way I walk, I'm a womans man....

Wednesday.

Relatively small class. Sensei started with some basic etiquette stuffs. Like as you walk into the dojo, you should bow without carrying anything on your shoulders, and take your shoes off before you step in, etc. I was quite glad that I make an effort to do all those things he mentioned.

Menstuke. I was feeling quite thirsty so I decided to have a bit of a drink before I put my men/kote on, so I figured I’d wouldn’t come up first… but hey, I still came up first!!! Damn I’m fast, hehe… Only one thing to do at a time like this… and that’s strut. I think Masa has joined in the race, cos he’s noted that I’m very fast the past few trainings, and on Wednesday, he jumped up as soon as he finished hoping to be first, but he saw me standing already, hehe. I also made sure that I didn’t tie the men himo too tight so that I don’t get more headaches. It felt slightly looser than I’d like, but it stayed on nicely for the whole training.

Just the usual warmup kirikaeshi, though this time, we did one long continuous set across the width of the basketball court. I was up against a junior, so I tried to take big-ish steps when I saw that he was struggling. Then it came to my turn, and I swear, he must have done this on purpose, but on the way back, he was taking tiny steps. I must have literally done 3 times more cuts going back then when I went forward. Still fun, and I think I maintained my pace quite nicely, whilst working on the ‘snap’ of each cut.

Then class split, and Pai Mei made us do some seme cuts, followed with some harai cuts to counter the seme, then cuts at the same time, the point being that no cut is better than the other (ie. not like rock beats scissors), but its how well you do it that will land you the ippon.

Then jigeiko. I had Christina first up. I started off with a couple of cuts that landed, so I thought I’d make some openings for her to cut, but she insisted that I just go all out. Erm ok… I was quite surprised how easily I was cutting her after that. Even when I tried to increase the size of my cuts. They just seemed to land. Afterwards, she mentioned that she wants people to kick her ass so that she’ll somehow learn to maintain center, then I realised that yeah, she really wasn’t centered and her kensen was ‘weak’.

I then fought Vinci. I’d made a note to not go easy on her (or any other AUG rep) to hopefully make them better ‘fighters’ at the AUG. This all came to an end though, when I tried to go for a men cut as she was following through. I had tried this during the waza practice, where we did kote-men, and if my opponent didn’t move to the side, I’d bounce off them and do another men. So yeah, that seemed to work because my opponents would continually face me so that I hit them straight on. However, with Vinci, she was following through, and when I landed my cut, it landed on the side of her head. I could feel the pain as soon as it landed… ouch! She made me feel worse with her ‘yelp’. I felt like such as ass… I apologised profusely and asked if she wanted to stop, but being the trooper that she is, she decided to continue. I couldn’t really go all out after that though. For ippon shobu, I wasn’t looking to cut, but just practiced my seme. She ended up getting a men cut on me.

I then had a short ippon shobu with Masa. Kinda funny, cos we both don’t like the quality of our cuts. It was something like this…Me-Cut… Masa-ippon..me-nah, that was shit. Masa-Cut… me-ippon… Masa-nah, no zanshin… hehe. I think he ended getting a hiki men on me which was blantantly obvious that he coundn’t deny it.


Friday Morning.

I was almost on time! Actually started my warmup before half the others.

Did some waza to start off. Then Pai Mei says that we’ll be doing some shiai. Groups of 3, with 2 fighting and 1 shimpan. My first time being shimpan. Didn’t really know what to do. So just focussed on watching the cuts. I tried to be overly critical, which I think is good in this situation, because there’s no point giving easy points that may not have been scored in a real competition.

Anyway, Pai Mei’s advice was that during a comp, you should forget about the distractions such as wanting to look good in front of high grade shimpans, forget that your peers are watching, etc. Just enjoy the moment, and the fight. Focus on your opponent. Don’t think I was able to do that too well today. I kinda still treated it like a normal jigeiko. I fought Andy first up, and he said to me, yeah, this is not jigeiko… saying that I tended to relax in between the action, that I should maintain my focus, and zanshin, etc. It was really good advice, because I tried to maintain that in my following fights.

I then fought Walden for a bit before Pai Mei called a stop.

Then jigeiko.

I continued my fight with Walden. I think we were quite evenly matched. No one having a real big advantage over the other. During ippon, it was like my ippon shobu with Masa, hehe. I think at one point he seemed a bit agitated that I was giving him points so easily. We finally stopped because his Dou was coming off. He’s right hand is broken, and still heavily bandaged so he couldn’t tie it tightly. We stopped and I helped a brother out…

I then fought Chris P. WOOT! He’s like a rock. The first few cuts I tried on him, he’d just stand his ground and I’d tsuki myself. Chris noticed that when I go for a kote cut, my feet kinda spread apart, very similar to the way Pai Mei shows us… when he’s showing us the WRONG thing to do! Doh. I’ve noticed that this is bad, because as soon as I get into that stance, I kinda stop and lose my momentum. Chris also helped me with something that I’ve been having trouble with. Sometimes, I like to go for cuts when I feel a bit too much sideways pressure from my opponents shinai. I figured that if I go for a cut, their shinai would go to the side leaving them open. The thing with this is that I wasn’t raising my own shinai high enough for their shinai to go away. Chris pointed this out to me, telling me to either go over or under their shinai. I tried both and it seemed much better. I was really glad to spar with Chris today because it’s the first time I have fought him in a very long time, and I really value his advice.

I then fought Chris C. I noticed he liked going for my kote, so I tried to do some kote nuki men cuts on him. Afterwards, he noted that my men cuts were fast! Wow, that’s the first time anyone said that to me. But I guess they weren’t fast enough because a few times, he landed the kote. There was one in particular that ‘popped’ quite nicely. I still noted to him that he left hand isn’t exactly centred, but its better than what it was before. I told him to just relax it a bit more.

I then fought KevH. He mentioned that my kamae was a bit obscure, that my hands were a bit too low and my kensen a bit too high. This is very similar to what Mike told me last week. I hate to say this, but my kamae feels quite comfortable. I tried to correct the angle of the shinai and from what I can see, it does look much better, but it felt a whole lot worse. Perhaps I’m just used to my wrong kamae, a bit like how Chris C. is ‘comfortable’ with his left hand slightly off center. I’m going to take steps to correct this. I ended up getting ippon on Kev to finish. I did a hiki men I think, don’t know if he agreed or not, but I showed good zanshin, to indicate to him that I felt I got the cut, and he asked me if I think I got it, and I said it felt like I got it, so yeah, he gave it to me.

Then fought Pei. Again, he kiai was a little weak. I noticed that she does weird footwork whilst she was fighting KevH, but I forgot to mention to her. Best not to mess with women anyway. She might go all Bollmanator on me and just leave.