Fo' Rizzle my Nizzle with da Phizzle

We had Chris P. train with us last night. I remember standing around waiting for the warmup to begin, and was thinking, hmm, this is taking a while, then Chris walked up to me and said, ‘Son, you want to take the warmup tonight?’ I was a bit stunned as this was unexpected, so I tried to weasel my way out of it by pointing out that there were higher ranked kendoka there, but he insisted saying that I’d been at the club long enough. So yeah, off I went. Had a couple of ‘Go Son!’ –‘s from fellow kendoka to boost my confidence. It went pretty well I though, without a hitch and I think I remembered everything. By the time I got to doing suburi, Chris P. took over. Good thing too, because up to that point, I was worried about the dojo stewards calls once we were lined up.

Anyway, menstuke and I was beaten!!! By Ryo from kenshikan. Man he was fast. I was sitting next to him and yeah, I was struggling to keep up. Mind you I was being quite careful about doing everything right. Made sure my men himo knot was centered as much as possible and that the loops and loose ends were perfectly matched. He stood up just as I put my second kote on. Guess it wasn’t much, but still, I want to be the fastest dammit. Might need to practice getting those loops perfect at home. Bah, too much trouble.

Was feeling really tired last night. Don’t know why, but I was already kinda dead after the jogging warmup. Managed to do all my kirikaeshi’s but at my cruising pace. I got that feeling that I really wanted to stop, but then I realised, this is the way I’ve wanted to feel for a while now, so rather than wanting to quit, I focussed on doing as best I can, and squeeze those few drops that I left in my cup. Did some kihon cuts then moved on to uchikomi. Sensei needed 9 motodachi and he picked me! I didn’t hear him at first but then he called me again to make sure. So yeah, I tried to mix up my openings for uchikomi. Did quite a lot of taiatari for the seniors, and for the juniors, tried to focus on getting the right distancing once they’d followed through. All in all, good fun. And I must be getting immune to the pain because I didn’t really feel any of the cuts. Maybe only one cut where the kensen hit the top of my head and it stung a bit, but yeah, still it was nothing. And kote cuts weren’t too bad either, hopefully its because I’m opening it in the right way.

The motodachi then did our uchikomi. Don’t know why, but sensei took it easy on us. Only 2 sets of uchikomi, then 2 kakari. I remember watching more than that during other trainings. Anyway, afterwards, I felt tired and out of energy, but my spirit was kinda lifted, and I felt like I could have kept on going, even though I felt tired.

Then jigeiko. It was KevH’s last training, and I managed to have jigeiko with him. Kept going for men cuts against his kaeshi dou. My cuts kept getting blocked, but (not sure if it was him or someone else) I altered my timing during the actual cut (rather than the timing of going for the cut as I had been doing), where I let my shinai just hang in the air for that extra split second before my downswing, and BAM! Hit square on and felt really good. I think I’ll try this more in the future. I’d always thought that altering the timing of your cut meant changing the timing of ‘when’ you cut, and never thought of changing the timing of my actual cut. A bit of a lightbulb moment for me.

I also fought Masa. I’ve fought Masa many times, and I’m starting to feel that our fights are becoming a bit ‘repetitive’. I think one of us needs to drastically improve to change up the matches, either that or we’re improving at the same rate. I just seems that my fights with Masa don’t really change much between fights. Anyway, at one point, we both went for men at the same time, and somehow, I punched his mengane with my left hand. It almost broke my left index finger. A bit of skin peeled off from where it impacted this morning, but otherwise its fine.

I also fought Paul. I tried to do different things against Paul. I figured he needs practice against different types of players for the AUG. Anyway, I varied from being very waiting, to a kakari style fighting. It was kinda fun. Somehow I just can’t take Paul seriously during jigeiko, kinda like I do when I fight Viet (unless it’s a shiai match of course). I also tried some rhino waza, zidane waza and what I like to call ‘hump that wall’ waza. He was a bit shocked that I was pushing him so much, but I told him that he might need the practice, to which he suggested the viet-like rhino waza, hehe. A funny thing happened where at one point, I thought he kiai-ed ‘PHIZZLE’!!!! hehehe, which I promptly returned, though he didn’t realise it until I told him after training.

I then fought Yvonne last up. Before the fight, sensei stopped us, and made a point about jigeiko. That we shouldn’t be defensive, and be more attacking. If we’re always worried about being cut that we have to defend, then we can’t give everything into the cuts that we go for. With that in mind, I fought Yvonne. A lot of ai-men, and early on, there was ai-nuki dou, hehe. Always weird when that happens, cos I go for the cut, but see the opponents cut, so I kinda back off in case somebody gets-a hurt real bad… I was really spent after the fight and had to do kiri kaeshi. I felt that I did have the energy to go super fast, but I did feel really relaxed and felt that my cuts kinda felt good. Big swings, cutting from the shoulders (as opposed to the elbows). For the very last cut of the night, I felt my ki ken tai no ichi was the best it was all night. This might have something to do with the relaxed state, where I’m not worrying unnecessarily, but instead, doing things that I already know. Either that, or I was so tired that I was delusional about how good my kendo felt. Blah, until next time.