Hunger

Went to training on Monday. Good to see the numbers have lifted slightly. Mike was there so he took the warm-ups. Maybe I just haven’t done it enough, but last week, being the dojo ‘steward’ kinda took my mind away from my kendo a bit. I just realised it, but Kristina was telling me about her sempai from Sweden the week before. She said that Carolina found the training in Melbourne more relaxing because she didn’t have to take the trainings. In her own dojo, she actually takes the trainings because there is no sensei. So though I still find it a bit nerve racking, I look forward to being the steward any time I can. I guess one good thing about it is that in a way, it actually gave me some confidence. It’s a bit like doing keiko (all except jigeiko) with a junior. Somehow my kendo feels ‘easier’ than normal. I’m assuming that I should bring this confidence against all opponents, no matter their level. I think I was able to achieve this to a small extent at Mondays training. We had jigeiko against motodachi. The great thing was that all motodachi were at least shodan or above. I was able to fight high level players one after the other. Anyway, back to the confidence thing, I felt this most when I went against Alvin. The last time I fought him, he completely nailed me with all his tsuki’s. When lining up to face him, I was actually looking forward to it, rather than think ‘shit, he’s going to kill me again’. I think this is a huge step forward for my kendo in the past few months, which I think was helped by the state trainings.

Anyway, as for the trainings, we just did kirikaeshi, some kihon and a little uchikomi. Then we did jigeiko against motodachi. I was able to fight Hiro, Kevin Chin, Alvin and Andrew. Can’t remember much about the actual fights themselves now. Just one thing really stuck out in my mind. Last week, I asked Hiro about doing tsuki, and he advised that I should try to practice morote tsuki rather than katate tsuki. Anyway, I was kinda practicing this whilst waiting to fight alvin, and Mike noticed it and encouraged me, hehe. Anyway, when I went to fight him, he played jodan against me. Sweet, what a golden opportunity. As we both stood up, I felt the maai was a bit close so I went for the tsuki. However, it felt like I had a bungee cord strapped around me because I couldn’t feel any power going forward. I realised I wasn’t pushing off strongly enough and it made me reach forward with my upper body. Then it struck me, ‘was I doing this with all my cuts’? Anyway, that’s on my ‘to do’ list for kendo, and its second from the top which is maintain good posture. Hopefully this is a good combination of things to work on, since trying to push forward can also cause you to lean forward, eg trying to cut from further away.

After jigeiko against motodachi, we did mawari jigeiko. Sensei instructed that we should treat each of these jigeiko as a series of ippon shobu. I also really liked this. Especially going against someone who’s better than me. Thinking this way helps me to refocus after each point and just get back into it. The only thing was towards the end of the training I was starting to feel a bit run down and my cuts became flat. I really hate when this happens. It’s a dream where you try to run but you can’t seem to move too fast. I hope this is not a psychological thing where I’m mentally giving up. I assume it might have more to do with nutrition. I think this is something that I’ve neglected when preparing for training. I always make sure I have something to eat in the morning and have a decent lunch on the days of training. However, I think more can be done. I find that having a huge bowl of rice the night before seems to give me more energy, the low GI type where I can last a bit longer. Anyway, since I restarted kendo last year, I’ve found that I am eating more than I did before. I think its time I start to eat smarter rather than just more. Those shrek toys at Macdonalds have been killing me.

Anyway, I didn’t train yesterday because I finished at uni at 6:30 so I just came to watch the second half of training. I think missing a training here and there might be good. Sensei made me keep time for jigeiko. It was a good chance for me to watch. I enjoyed watching Kenji and noticed how straight his posture was throughout his cut. I find that I ‘learn’ better when I have good examples to try and emulate. Also, standing on the sides and watching made me want to train, which is good I think. It helps to prevent me from the ‘going through the motions’ mode and makes me a bit more enthusiastic to train.

Adios muchachos

Was senor Diablo’s last training with us on Wednesday. Tried to make the most of it since he didn’t really train that often in recent times anyway.

I had to take the warm-ups cos there wasn’t anyone else. Was a small class too, less than 20 to start off with. I kinda got distracted through the warm-ups, and only did 1 set of the second exercise causing some confusion. Also got corrected by Hiro as to the order between the leg/arm stretches and the calf raises/star jumps. I decided to break from the ‘norm’ and do the calf raises/star jumps first, since that’s the way we did it way back when I first started. Don’t know why its changed since then. It was actually not even part of the warm-ups last year, so yeah.

We did the usual kiri kaeshi, kihon and uchikomi sequence, where uchikomi was just done in pairs, not against motodachi. I managed to get David in the rotations. I find that he likes to make you run towards him, actually making the distance between you and him further as you turn around, rather than coming into distance. Any, for my final cut, I did a viet style running jumping men. Was kinda fun. Good workout.

Sensei then chose motodachi for jigeiko. I tried to weasel my way out of it, which I did cos there were plenty of seniors around by that time. I quickly ran to line up to fight David first. Was the first time I ever got to fight him. Was fun. Unfortunately it only lasted 2 minutes. Afterwards, I asked him for advice. He gave me advice on my mental state when I cut, saying that at the moment, I’m still just going for the contact of my shinai on the target. He says that I should want to rip my opponents heart out. I’m sure its just a metaphor for improving my kiai and zanshin. Its kinda funny, cos I’ve commented to others in the past who had less zanshin that myself I guess, that they should want to kill me when fighting me. Maybe that’s the difference between 4th kyu and nidan, it gets more barbaric as you move up the ranks. I lament that I didn’t train regularly when he was, but at least I got to fight him before he left. He will be missed.

Keep that back straight

Trained again yesterday without my heel protector. I find that my heel is a little sore, but nothing like what it used to get. We also got a guest from Sweden. Carolina who was Kristina’s sempai.

Did the usual kirikaeshi and kihon to start. First time in a long time that sensei has trained with us in full bogu. His ankle must be much better now. Been trying to work on my posture lately. As I state in my previous post, I’m working towards a posture like Kate. Anyway, during the kihon practice, I managed to pair up with sensei for the men-do practice. Anyway, I was a bit disappointed with myself that he commented on my bad posture since its something I was working on, and hoping that I’d at least be doing it right. He said that I kinda leant forward for the do cut. So yeah, disappointed with myself that I’d lost focus so early in the training. I guess it was good in the sense that it made me refocus on what I want to improve. I made an extra effort to use good posture after that.

We then did uchikomi keiko. Was picked as the last motodachi. Again, tried to maintain my posture during that.

After the motodachi did uchikomi and kakari geiko, we did jigeiko against a motodachi. I fought Kristina and Andrew. I really liked the fight against Andrew. I remember a few months ago he’d commented on my posture. He did directly tell me that my posture was bad, but instead he told me he liked to have his posture, which was more open and upright which allowed him to look ‘down’ at his opponent. I think that’s more a mental thing, where you can go against an opponent that’s taller than you and still ‘look down’ upon them. Too hard for me to explain. Anyway, I got to practice my kote-kaeshi men on him. I was able to pick it a few times, but didn’t execute it properly. My men cuts seem to land too close and not making contact with the correct part of the shinai. I might have to practice this going backwards to get the right distance, though I loathe to cut backwards unless its from tsubazeriai.

We then separated between the motodachi and others for more jigeiko. There was a bit of a cumbersome arrangement where most of the ‘middle’ level kendoka did jigeiko with each other, with 3 at the end, being motodachi for the juniors. I was one of the motodachi to start off with. I tried to give advice where I could.

Guess I'm back

Haven’t written about kendo for a while.

AKC was a bit disappointing from my point of view. Only lasted 5 minutes all up. Lost to the eventual winner first after he’d won his first match. I knew that I couldn’t get through after that which may have affected my second match, which I also lost. I really need to learn to ‘switch on’. I asked Yakov sensei at the AKC dinner later that night, and he said well you can’t really turn in on, it involves too many factors, or something to that effect. Since then I’ve adopted a training strategy where I try to force myself to ‘think’ that every cut I do is a shiai cut. And I don’t mean physically, its all mental.

Overall, watching the AKC was great. I rarely get to see this level of kendo so I guess I’m lucky that I volunteered so that I can watch it close up. One of the standouts for me was watching Kenji fight. I was lucky enough to be keeping score for all his matches, and have to say he was on fire, fighting better than I’ve ever seen him fight before. Was great to watch him fight Brett Smith who I also got to watch. I really thought Kenji had him beat, but he equalised with something like 10s to spare. Oh well, better luck next time Kenji. An encouraging thing for me was when (before the AKC) I fought Kenji and he commented that I reminded him of himself. Woot!

As I mentioned earlier, I also got to watch Brett Smith fight. One thing that struck me was his seme. Kenji had previously mentioned to me that seme is about creating a reaction from your opponent. When watching Brett fight, I really saw this up close. And not just that, watching how he took advantage of those reactions was great! I saw him do two cuts where he’s first use seme, understand his opponents’ reaction, then moments later do the same seme but follow up with a cut. Wish I could get it on video and watch it over and over.

Another kendoka who I really admire was Kate. I’ve really liked her kendo since last years VKC. She’s got such good posture and fighting spirit. During her marathon match in the finals, her posture at the end was exactly as it was at the beginning. Very straight and relaxed. I’ve been trying to emulate it since then. Its opened my shoulders up a bit. From that I realised how ‘haunched’ I was before and how tense.

Well after that I haven’t been training regularly. Went to Cairns for a week, then came back and got my left wrist almost ripped out of its socket. Really should let it heal completely, but I don’t want to miss kendo. I get the feeling that its not fully healing because of this, so its always at about 80-90% and at risk of further injury.

After missing a couple of trainings I came back last night. Apparently I missed a tiny training of only 16 members on Monday. Damn. The training was a bit busier last night with about 50 people. I eschewed my heel protector for the first time in a long time, and didn’t hurt my heel at all. There was only 1 cut where I felt a sharp sting from landing my foot on an angle, but otherwise my heel was fine. Hoping that its due to improved fumikomi technique.

Did the basic warm-ups, then kirikaeshi and some kihon. We don’t seem to do any waza training at all these days. I want to learn more waza, or at least the basics of which so that I can practice it in jigeiko. After kihon, just did lots of uchikomi. The pace was probably just a bit too quick for me, cos I was struggling after 3-4 rounds of it. I’m blaming not training for over a week for that.

We then did jigeiko. Was really happy that sensei picked me to go with the senior group (he split the class into 3, seniors, intermediate and juniors). I got to fight the new Japanese girl. I felt like a bully knowing that she’s only 16. I wouldn’t say that I was better than her, but yeah, she’s only 16. I managed land my cuts on her. And she’s nidan. Not everyday that I land cuts on nidan players.

Also fought Josh and his two swords. I was able to pick his timing. He has a tell when he’s going to push my shinai down with the shoto. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to fully exploit it. I did manage to land a couple of men cuts, but then I tried to get more creative and tried for a kote and tsuki. Hehe, always fun, but he seemed to just overwhelm me. Something I need to work on. I find that I still flinch sometimes when I see a men cut. What a chickenshit.

Also fought Avi, Jon and Mike. They’re all shodan now, and I can see that their kendo levels are very similar, though they have different styles. Either that, or they’re just lowering their standards to suit me. Bah. Was fun fighting them all. Though I don’t think my kendo is as good as theirs, I feel I have a good chance at landing cuts and having somewhat effective seme against them, which makes the training so much more enjoyable for me. I think that’s the ideal sitting between being bored with someone with much less ability or being demoralised by someone who’s gonna kick your butt.