A Beginner's Point of View 128-129

Day 128:

Today we had another Guest Sensei instead of our normal one. This Guest Sensei is a 6-Dan and came from Japan. He also brought his son, who was a 3-Dan. We asked him to teach the class and he was very honored to do so.

He took a lot of time to explain the drills he wanted us to do, including demonstrating them. We wound up doing a lot of oji-waza (advanced techniques), such as kote-suriage-men and men-kaeshi-doh. Guest Sensei seemed to be tireless as he would correct us when we did not do it right and he also was very patient as he was asking a lot of Kyu ranks to perform Dan-level waza.

One interesting drill he showed us was done a lot in Japan. A group of 4 or 5 students would form a group with one in the middle. The one in the middle would be doing the drill and each of the others would form into two lines, one on the left and one on the right. One of the students from the group on the left would step up and challenge the one in the middle, who would perform the requested drill. Then afterwards, the one in the middle turns to the line on the right and one of those would challenge the one in the middle, who performs the drill again. Over and over this is done until all students on the left and right lines have challenged the one in the middle. Then the last one would step up and the one in the middle would challenge them. The last one would perform the prescribed drill and now rotate position to be the one in the middle. This would go on over and over until all students in the group have taken a turn performing the drill on all other students in the group. We did this for many types of drills until the end of class.

Guest Sensei also had us do a few rounds of keiko and I was lucky enough to spar with him. He would push my limits by giving me smaller and smaller openings while counterattacking. I actually surprised him by taking a one-step-leap and extending my arms to their limits and striking his men before he could debana strike my kote. He was very pleased and complimented me. He also cautioned me not to lean forward too far while I did this so as to not look scared or throw myself off-balance.

Day 129:

I decided to skip this class to heal my foot. There’s a break in my skin where dead skin ripped away and exposed raw flesh to infection.