A Beginner's Point of View 9

Day 9:

Today sensei was busy with other things, so I arrived to see the Iaido class being taught by one of the Iaido sempai. I had received my uniform in the mail today from the vendor at the tournament. They promptly shipped it by FedEx, who decided to throw the box into the bushes next to my garage. Perhaps they thought no one would notice it there and want to steal it. Sheesh.

The uniform seemed of a darker color than I expected. I suppose since it's a practice uniform that it's all right. I may have to try a different vendor in the future for extra uniforms. I haven't had a chance to open up the plastic bundles and try on the uniform yet, but I intend to this weekend. I want to practice wearing the uniform and tying the strings before I show up for practice in one.

My foot is getting better, but my knee is still stiff. I think that day of endless footwork drills in front of the mirror has really worked the muscles and tendons very hard. I'm not in pain, but it is annoying. I think I'll need to massage it this weekend also.

Today was a very informal day. After a very haphazard method of stretching, we did a few footwork and striking drills, called suburi. After that, we learned about how to properly line up and how to properly rotate through the lines for drills. That may not seem very important at first, but when you have a class with dozens of students all training at once, proper rotations ensure that everyone gets the chance to drill and not be skipped. After that, we practiced striking against a senior Kendoka in bogu. I did only men strikes, but the others were practicing more advanced strikes, such as Kote, Kote-Men, and the Men, Kote-Men, Kote-Men, Kote, Kote, Men combo. Apparently, Kendo takes a lot of time to master, as evident by my subtle but continuous improvement in my footwork.

One thing I did learn was the distance one needs to swing for a men strike. The proper distance away from your opponent is to just barely have the saki-gawa of the shinais crossing. That's the starting distance. Take one Kendo step forward and swing. You are forced to extend your arms to the proper form in order to hit the men. Now I think I'm getting better at the men strike. Before, I had to imagine my opponent, now I had a real one to show me where to really hit. That was useful.