Doorbitches

Came to training nice and early yesterday, though Mr Secretary was already there. I find it quite pretentious that he’s the first one there, yet he’s too good to warm up with everyone… seems a bit too bollmanator-ish to me.

Anyway, I was having trouble removing the tsuka gawa from my new shinai, so I brought it along hoping that someone else could do it for me. Gave it to Andy who happened to be there and yeah, a couple of tugs and he got it off. I’m such a pussy…

Got my men on first today… and by a long shot too! :p

Straight into a lot of kirikaeshi. I was still feeling shit from my illness and didn’t think that I was going to last through training, but I soldiered on. After quite a few, I realised that I had forgotten to bandage my stupid toe, so I stepped out to fix it. Good timing too, because sensei tells everyone to go to one side of the dojo. He split each pair into alternating groups so that we can all do kiri kaeshi across the basketball court. By the time the first group went through, I’d finished taping my toe. I managed to watch the first group and to me they seemed kinda slow, though most of them were juniors. Anyway, I managed to get one of the juniors to partner me so that I can do it too, didn’t want to miss out. I went all out, and was really struggling before I even reached the end, so on the way back I had to take another breath. A bit disappointing but fun nonetheless.

We then just did some kihon cuts then the class split up. Pai Mei took us through some waza, harai men and nuki dou, with an emphasis on getting towards kakari style cuts. I think I tried to focus too much on making the harai men into one smooth action that my harai was quite weak. Someone commented that my harai was going to the left and up, which may be diminishing its ‘slapping’ power. I might need to make it go left more than up before I do the cut. To finish off the harai waza, we did it in sets of 5 quick cuts, ie. kakari style.

We then practiced nuki dou. Now I still can’t cut a good dou cut, so I was always going to struggle with this. Anyway, at the end we did the same as we did with the harai men cuts, and did 5 nuki dou cuts continuously. At this point I really appreciated this (and kakari style) training, where you get the feeling of constantly attacking. As soon as I cut and turn around, I didn’t think about anything and just cut, and a few of them actually felt semi-decent, with a nice slapping sound, though I definitely need to work on my posture during dou (and men and kote) cuts. It was fun though, constant bang, bang, bang…

Then Jigeiko. I had Tony first up. He’s a rock. At one point, I tried to push him to try and break him at tsubaseriai but he didn’t move. Anyway, something that I developed recently is a non-jodan hiki men cut. I used to do jodan going back from doing hiki men, but somehow I’ve started to lower my kensen immediately to chudan level after a hiki cut. Anyway, my fight with Tony was quite good, and I felt the ‘tension’. I tried to use the waza we had just learnt, and got myself a bit of a light bulb moment. Up until now, I’d really focussed on just men cuts during jigeiko with a few kote cuts thrown in. But against Tony, I threw in a couple of nuki dou cuts, and found that his response to my men cuts after this were different, like he was wary of my dou cut all the time. Bing! Even though I have a shit dou cut, that never properly lands and most unlikely to score, I should use it to practice it, but more importantly to put doubt in my opponents mind.

I then fought Pei. I was too distracted to fight her properly. At one point, I think I snorted out some mucous from my nose which I snorted back in… quite disgusting, but this is only going to get worse. Another thing I remembered was that I (or I guess she did this to herself) tsuki-ed her by staying in kamae as she went in for a cut, and my kensen hit right on target! Must be improving my kamae…

Anyway, after training, whilst we were sitting around sensei, he mentioned the AUG fundraiser night, and thanked all those that were part of it, including ‘the doorbitches’!!!! I can’t believe (nor can anyone else I assume) believe that he’d said that. He was looking at Pei when he said that because of her post in the forums. Hmm, sensei is only human afterall… with a wicked sense of humour.