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.
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.
posted by Son at 4:36 pm
1 Comments:
you mean 'hunched'? your spelling is ATROCIOUS
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