A Beginner's Point of View 168-169

Day 168:

Tonight, Sensei gave the class over to the most senior student. Himself, he was not in bogu. He claimed not to want to further a small injury and was content to let others strike him and he would move the shinai to block whatever target. I frankly don’t like that idea. A couple of times I would clip him and feel badly. He would just smile and laugh. He said he learned not to underestimate students again. We worked extra hard again.

We did kiri-kaeshi, one-step men, one-step kote-one step doh. Over and over and over again. I felt my breath leave me. I felt my heart pound hard. I was tired, but I kept going. I know my limits. We practiced men-hiki-men several times to build up endurance. At the end of it all, I felt as if I were going to drop to the ground.

However, as luck would have it, we switched to tsuki practice. I do not like tsuki at all, however, it was a good chance to work on something that wouldn’t push my endurance. So I worked on tsuki while I recovered my breath and calmed my heart. My first tsuki I received was too hard and I felt like I was choking. After a moment, I was all right. My partner apologized and finished the drill softly. When I did the drill, he complimented me on how accurately I did tsuki.

After recovering, we did a few rounds of keiko. I felt as if I had no energy or water in my body. However, I knew that to be an illusion. I instead commanded my body to move faster and it obeyed. There was a kind of calmness and serenity as I moved and struck. My limbs seemed numb, but fluid. I actually hit several very good debana-kote over and over as well as hiki-men during keiko. We did one last round of kiri-kaeshi to finish class.

Day 169:

No class today as I am getting ready to fly out on vacation. I need to go to bed early to wake up on time.