A Beginner's Point of View 184-185

Day 184:

Today was hot again, very humid. We did many rounds of kiri-kaeshi, over and over. After all of that, I was completely out of breath. I could not get it back at all. We did ten times men strike a couple of times, and I was ready to fall over. I bowed out and took off men and kote. One of the higher-ranking people also bowed out because of the heat. I stayed out for many minutes, trying to get my heart rate down. I took an informal 6-second test on my neck pulse and got 130-140 beats per minute. I didn’t feel bad, but I couldn’t catch my breath. I drank some water and rested on my feet.

When I felt better, I drank some more water and then put on men. I ran back into line and did a five times kote-men drill. Then Sensei called for a water break. What timing, huh? After that, the rest of class was shiai practice. We split the class up into two teams and would take turns while Sensei would shinpan. I fought against a shodan and did well. I scored a good men strike, but he got two points off my kote.

The second round of shiai I found against a nidan who was ready to take his sandan exam. He was fast, but I flew just as fast as he did. The match went on for what seemed like a couple of full minutes. I even scored a strike against his men. He was hard pressed to keep up and outmaneuver me. Class ran longer than usual and I got home late, but happy.

Day 185:

Today we all remembered that we’re getting closer to our tournament. We need to pick up the pace and train, but we also need to teach our newer members about tournaments. We did several round of kiri-kaeshi. I had to pace my breathing to avoid getting so tired that I would have to sit down.

We also did a few rounds of one-step men before Sensei noticed that a lot of us were hitting each other in the body as we passed by. He gave us a few drills to sharpen our ability to pass through without bumping into our opponent. We also did a nice little drill where we would strike targets in sequence while passing by and not bumping. Our opponent would stand perfectly still and not move out of our way. We would strike, men, kote, kote-men, doh, and men. The end of class was something new.

Since we had exactly ten students doing drills, Sensei and a helper would tie ribbons on us. Half the class was red while the other was white. Sensei and a couple of helpers would be shinpan. We had an impromptu team match.

We used a standard configuration of weakest to strongest for first through fifth position. I was chosen to be third. In my match, I came across someone as skilled as me. Our team was down by two matches, so there was pressure riding on my shoulders. I decided to play a crisp match to get ahead and run out the clock. It worked! I scored a good kote and then made my opponent chase me around the court until time ran out. We wound up losing the match after the fifth fight resulted in a third win for the other team.

Suddenly, Sensei declared that we had a short break and then to start again. We had the option to re-arrange our configuration of fighters. Our team was pondering all the different possibilities and trying to guess the other team’s ideas. I proposed the idea that we keep the same configuration while the other team would change to outguess us. That would make them not match up the same way. It worked! By the time my match came up, we had one win and one loss. I fight against a weaker student who did not yet have a rank. I scored two sharp men strikes and won the match by two points. That put us in the lead. We kept the lead until the end when we won the last match. Sensei wanted us to experience a sudden-death overtime match, so one of us fought in a match against a much higher-ranked person. The fight actually lasted for a couple of minutes before the other person scored a clean hit.