Training Session on Tuesday, 21 August, 2007

Yet another session I fail to follow up with (so much for zanshin...), but I should post it anyway.

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Schedule for session on Tuesday, 21 August 2007

Ah, quite a bit happened today. It turned out to be one of my better sessions (as in, I’m somewhat satisfied in my performance today), and was quite fun. In addition, we had the company of the youngest ikkyu rank holder that I've seen so far, a 13-year old boy from Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan. But before that, on to the training schedule!

Beginner’s Class

• Learned formal position for standing

oFeet planted firmly, with heels touching together, pointing out at a 45 degree angle.

• Reviewed footwork

• Reviewed big swing in suburi

• Reviewed men suburi

• Reviewed jumping suburi

• Note to self, I noticed that I’m starting to use a bit less power when doing suburi...but struggling to use only the left hand’s power when doing big swings. It’s definitely true that the higher you go, the more you need to go over the basics (and considering that I haven’t gotten very high, it’s all the more important :D). Otherwise, I’m a bit more able to relax, although keeping my stomach tight seems a bit harder these days.

Senior’s Class

• Normal warm-up exercise

• Korean-style jumping suburi

• A new exercise, courtesy of Do-Hun-senpai and done directly after warm-up when everybody’s still in a big circle. One person starts jumping suburi with kiai, while everybody else does it in silence. Once the person who started has done 20, the next person continues and does another twenty, while the person who did it before does the jumping suburi silently as everybody else does. The process goes on until the last person is reached. Intense? Yes. The point of this is to strengthen both body and mind, as not only will your arms lose some feeling after a while and your feet feel like lead blocks, your thoughts will be tormented by the temptation to just stop and quit. Which, unfortunately, I gave into. Er, several times. Yup. Still, we’ll probably be doing it again in the near future, so it’ll be good to be prepared for that.

• It’s definitely best to keep a steady swinging and breathing rhythm. I used up most of my energy doing my kiai bit at the start and began to falter after the first 80 or so. Also, relaxing the shoulders and having a balanced jump would probably help a lot in the long run. Kudos to Clement and Kevin, the only guys in our generation that could go through all the way. Extreme.

• Kirikaeshi, with and without blocking

• Men strikes

• Men-kote strikes

• Small men-kote strikes

• Something new for me. Still haven’t quite gotten the hang of distance and timing for small cuts, as I’m used to making a single cut per long stamp. Need more practice, but otherwise ok.

• Small men strikes with harai

• Another new technique. Harai is done by warding off the opponent’s shinai, so that it’s not aiming at the centre and gives the opportunity for a small men strike. Not sure exactly how much off-centre the opponent’s kensen should be, but I found that the ikkyu boy only needed to tap my shinai slightly off-centre to get in with a small men strike.

Watching the ikkyu senpai (ech...I should've really written names down) practice was quite interesting. His style is different to ours, though still using the same chudan stance. Kind of like Do-Hun-senpai's style, but less fierce. Interestingly, I see his movements as short bursts of speed; he seems to bounce slightly forwards on the balls of his feet when in chudan and suddenly spring to deliver a blow. I also had the honor of being his motodachi for the harai-waza. Compared to the way he delivered his strikes, I'd look extremely clumsy and wasteful in terms of energy. He doesn't knock the shinai away; rather, he taps it aside for a split second and goes in on the same step. Perhaps that's what I'm supposed to be doing? Still, I'm certainly in no position to say whether it's right or wrong...it was just different to what I'm used to seeing.

That’s about all we did for this session, which doesn’t seem as rigorous as last Tuesday’s (which, incidentally, I haven’t written down yet) but still pretty challenging. Had a jigeiko with Leo-senpai, which ended prematurely with me tripping unceremoniously on my own hakama. Funnily enough, I still had plenty of energy left over (or maybe I was hyper at that time) to goof around with Joyce. However, despite me still having enough energy (whereas I should’ve been downright exhausted if I gave it my all during keiko), I felt pretty satisfied with my own performance. I think I’ve been able to relax my shoulders a bit better, and also stop thinking too much doing a jigeiko. All in all, quite a few lessons learned.