A Beginner's Point of View 164-165

Day 164:

Today was another day dedicated to hiki-waza. We did a few rounds of kiri-kaeshi slowly, concentrating on accuracy rather than speed. Then we did more hiki-waza drills.

We started off at tsuba-zeriai and performed hiki-men. Then after that we increased the drill to hiki-men-men. Then we switched to hiki-kote-men. This one was hard. The shifting balance on our feet kept throwing us off going from backwards to forwards. Occasionally, we would counterattack to keep our partners fresh and fluid.

At the end of class, we did kata. I love kata. My partner and I practiced the first three kata over and over, switching roles between uchidachi and shidachi. We walked through all of the steps over and over, getting better at the movements. This was another in hopefully a long series of kata practices to prepare us for our next promotional testing.

Day 165:

We kept practicing various hiki-waza. A visitor from Michigan was here. He says he’s moved to the area and wants to find a dojo to belong to. We did extra rounds of kiri-kaeshi and then moved into working up to an advanced waza.

First we would start in tsuba-zeriai and then strike hiki-men or hiki-kote. The next step to the drill is to do one-step men and then continue with hiki-kote. Finally, we would practice men-hiki-kote-men over and over. This lends itself to teaching us to keep attacking continuously rather than attack-stop-attack-stop-attack-stop.

By the end of class, my heart was pounding hard again. After a couple of keiko and drills of haya-suburi, I had to stop. I watched the others finish with more drills. I was exhausted.