A Beginner's Point of View 156-157

Day 156:

No class today since I am working at my job.

Day 157:

Today I came to the beginner class to get some practice in. My schedule at work has been chaotic and I need to keep practicing my Kendo. I showed up for the beginner class so I could be on time for work later.

When I showed up, Sensei asked me to lead the class in warm-ups. He especially wanted the class to perform the squat cuts. I led the class through some basic stretches and then some suburi. It was okii-suburi, shomen suburi, and haya-suburi. Sensei was giving some instruction to a student who would be taking his test for ni-dan this coming weekend. They were practicing a lot of kata while we were warming up.

After a short set of breathing, the students lined up and knelt in seiza. Then Sensei called for attention so that he and the student could demonstrate kata for the class. It was enjoyable to watch the kata done. Even though the student made a big, obvious mistake on the fourth kata, he kept going and finished. Then Sensei put on bogu so the class could hit him. During that, I lead the class in lots of sets of squat cuts. We did ten of them for practice, then rested for a moment. Then we did another ten and then I told them a tip about tenouchi at the end of the cut. Then as Sensei finished, we did a set of twenty fast squat cuts. Sensei joked that I was too soft with not going fast enough and too many breaks.

Then we separated into two lines and rotated through both Sensei and the student to be tested. We practiced our one-step men, one-step kote, and then kote-men.

We had a new student who had never been to a Kendo class before. I would have preferred to take him aside to teach him suri-ashi first, but Sensei wanted him in with the other students. I think that eventually someone should take him off to the side and teach him from the start soon so he can learn proper kamae right away.