A Beginner's Point of View 130-131

Tonight, Sensei could not teach the class. Also, two of the usual sempai had to leave early, leaving us without any Dans. So, the last sempai ordered that one of us be in charge. He chose someone I had trained with almost from the start. He’s higher ranking by one rank, so it makes sense. Instead of doing a drill a couple of times and then switching up, he decided that we do a full rotation of a drill through every station of the rotation (sometimes twice) before moving on to the next drill.

We did a lot of kiri-kaeshi, two rotations of it. Then we did two rotations of one-step men, two rotations of one-step kote, and then two rotations of kote-men. After that, I had to stop and rest. I was tired and out of breath. After some water and rest, I was back in. We repeated some of the men strikes and some doh strikes. I had to rest again afterwards. It makes me wonder if I put on some weight over the holidays. I should keep coming to class as long as my foot stays healthy.

We had a guest today. He is a Kumdo expert who sometimes comes to train. He was very nice and he carried himself with a lot of dignity. He did a few things differently than we did. When receiving kiri-kaeshi, he does not try to keep his shinai straight up and down, instead, he swaps between different angles, as if rotating around a point in the middle of the sword. He also passes on the opposite side when he strikes kote. Overall, he was very good at the art.

At the end, we did some keiko. I sparred with most everybody, including our visitor. I need to keep exercising to keep up my stamina for tournament. Still, keiko was a lot of fun.