A Beginner's Point of View 136-137

Day 136:

Today was a more structured day rather than a hard day. We spent most of the class “building up”. We would pair off and one side would strike men a couple of times. Then that side would strike men while the other side would do some kind of suriage. Then we would rotate. Once we got to do that on a full rotation, we would move to kote and then doh.

We culminated it into a new drill. We would line up from highest-ranking to lowest ranking. The lowest would move to the second-lowest and do 3 kote-men. The second-lowest would do 3 kote-men. The lowest would move to the third-lowest and repeat. The lowest would move to the fourth-lowest and repeat. The second-lowest would move to the third-lowest and do the same drill. Over and over we did that drill until we all finished by drilling with sensei. Each time we drilled with the next rank up, we would step up our skill level to get better and better.

We finished with a couple of round of keiko. I noticed my keiko was a little better than usual. Also, at the beginning of class there was an odd number of people so I had a chance to be the odd person out and rest.

Day 137:

Today was a day for oji-waza. We practiced a lot of kote-men and then all the ways to open up kote. We practiced kote-suriage-men and harai-men a lot. Sensei was sharpening our skills for being able to receive strikes, parry them, and then step in for a strike of our own.