My kendo is going downhill

Got my men on first on Wednesday.

The usual routine, kiri kaeshi, kihon, uchikomi. After all this sensei separated everyone into 3 groups for jigeiko, women, males going to AUG + some high ranking kendoka to fight them, and the rest (which I was in). Before we started sensei stopped had a bit of a chat to us. He emphasised that jigeiko is not a competition to see who can score. Obviously the aim is to score a cut, but there’s no point in being defensive and blocking your opponents cuts so that you yourself don’t get scored upon, but rather you should be counter attacking. Hmm, I thought about this for a bit, and realised that I had started to block and tilt my head sideways a bit lately, to prevent being cut. Hmm, my aim now is to get cut as much as possible to understand my weaknesses and thus try to improve my kendo.

I fought Tony first up. Just like our usual fights, both trying to force openings, rather than going in blindly. I’ve noticed that I liked to stare Tony down, mainly because he’s always got his eyes fixed on mine. Out of all the kendoka in the club, I think he does this the best (apart from sensei).

I then fought Masa. Good even fight. I didn’t try to mix things up much, just tried to get a good solid men cut. I got a couple of good cuts in and so did he. At one point after a cut, I punched his mengane again, and injured the same index finger again, though not quite on the same spot. Hmm, I hope it doesn’t become like sensei’s ring finger… After training finished, he came over to thank me, and then asked me for advice! Huh? Me? I hardly know whats going on with my own kendo let alone tell him. Its not like he’s got something drastically wrong with his kihon or anything. But yeah, I couldn’t help him, and so I realised that I’m too focussed on my own kendo during jigeiko, ie. how’s my kamae, check my kensen, push from my centre etc. Don’t really have time to see what my opponents doing apart from trying to see openings.

I think I then fought a couple of the juniors. Can’t remember much about them. Just that I tried to hold them back with seme and hold centre, but they seemed to go in for cuts that just weren’t there. I really wish I can tsuki them, cos that would really teach them (just like it does me). Hmm, I think I need more sleep, cos I can’t remember much else. Plus I’m feeling really down at trainings lately, must be low blood sugar levels. Bah…


Went to training this morning. First Friday morning in a long time (3 weeks I think). Borrowed Pei’s <3 heal protector. My heal has been hurting since camp, but nothing too serious, though the past couple of weeks, its gotten a little bit worse. Since she’s not using it, I figured I’d give it a try. Don’t think it will help my fumikomi technique, but at least it should lessen the pain until I work out why I’m doing the fumi komi wrong.

Pai Mei was absent, but we had Ben sensei there. I’ve noticed this last time he was here as well, but when he comes, he doesn’t like to ‘take’ the training. He left it to Mike to call the training. He’d give advice every now and then but he didn’t tell us what waza to practice, nor did he give any instruction as to how to do it. Hmm.

After the waza practice and some mawari jigeiko. I got cut a lot. Focussed on keeping my head straight and it gave me time to work on my kamae. We split up into groups of 5 and did some shiai geiko, with 2 people fighting and 3 shimpaning. I had Pei, Jaklene, Chris P. (kremes) and Ivan in my group. Lost my one match to Ivan by a men cut. Don’t know what it is, but this has happened to me a few times recently, where I just lose concentration as I see my opponent come in to cut, and before I know it, I’m cut. Blah, need to be focussed!

Then did free jigeiko. Fought Viet first up. Wanted a rematch of our shiai match. Man, he’s all over the place. I wanted to try some jodan on him too, but was too scared too. Tried it only once after a hiki men cut, so I followed it with a one handed men cut from jodan, didn’t look too pretty. I’ll leave it to others to do. I also noticed that Viet’s got this harai like waza from tsubazeriai. He did it a few times on me and it worked a couple of the times. I tried to do different things to try and counter it. One was to anticipate when he would do the harai, so as soon as he moved his shinai off centre so that he can do the harai, I’d cut. Worked once. Cut him as his shinai went past centre, hehehe. I even tried that waza for myself at one point. The cut landed but didn’t feel that good. Anyway, it was a very long jigeiko, must have been more than 15 minutes.

I then fought P<3i (hehe, that’s kinda cute). She hit me on the arm quite a lot, intentionally no doubt. When you fight someone, you have it in good faith that they don’t hit your unprotected areas! Anyway, that went on for a while. I tried to note how her kendo was, since she complains that I don’t give her advice. I noticed that her spirit was lacking, and no zanshin. After her cuts, her kiai would die off quite suddenly.

I then had a short fight with Janice. She went for a kote cut first up, didn’t really land (I went for men which I think landed nicely). She then asked me about good kote cuts. I had noticed with Viet and Pei, that their kote cuts were angled in, and as a result, they tended to hit the tsuba rather than the kote. The idea is to cut straight, so you hit the right part of the kote. Also need to have good tenouchi to get that ‘pop’. Janice’s cut didn’t have this so I emphasised tenouchi.

I also noticed that in a lot of my fights, my men cuts were going to the right (my right). This was really frustrating. I remember Kenji told me about this a couple of months ago, and I thought I had worked it out of my kendo, but it seems to have come back. My aim now is to do a good men cut during jigeiko, ,which starts with good men cuts during all other keiko. Must maintain good posture as I think this is whats causing the shitty cuts.