Thursday, August 5, 2010

A Beginner's Point of View 188-189

Day 188:

Today was more of a normal day of class. We’re getting ready for tournament, so we’re starting to work extra hard to get ready. We started off with a few rounds of kiri-kaeshi and one-step men. I am beginning to do my kiri-kaeshi much faster now. I must concentrate on being accurate now as to not become sloppy.

We then moved into instruction to one-step kote and one-step kote-men. This time, our partners were not going to just stand there. We would ‘negotiate’ for position and not move until we had maai. It was interesting to say the least.

Since there were so many of us, Sensei had to break up the class in halves. The first half did a round of keiko while the rest watched. Then the other half of class rotated in to do keiko.

Afterwards, Sensei divided up the class into teams again. Our team won its first round 4-1. We were on fire! Even the one who lost had a score of 2-1. I was flying on the floor. I won my match 2-1 also. I went up against a shodan and he struck men right away. I was upset that I might lose, so I pushed myself to move faster and angle off to the side as to not collide so often. It worked! I was striking men and kote a lot tonight. Our second round went much like the first, except that I faced off against someone closer to my rank. I lost 2-1 by a very close margin.

Sensei broke up the shiai and we lined up for waza again. We did some more kote-men drills and then we did the ever popular men-kote-kote/men-doh-men drill. That’s an interesting one to do. You really have to pay attention to what step you’re doing to avoid getting lost.

We went back into shiai again, rotating a couple of the players. I won my next match 2-0 by striking openings in the men. My opponent was a shodan who was shorter than me. He knew that I would be tempted into striking men. Normally, he would put up lots of men defense. However, he wanted to strike my kote. So in his judgment, he would balance his men defense and maai for kote so strike quickly. Still, I saw that little window of space that was not covered, so I waited until he was in the middle of shifting the weight on his feet and then POP! I did that twice. I forget what the team score was but it was close. My last match was against a nidan. I really wanted to see how fast I could go. I flew and flew more, as much as I could. I actually lived in the moment instead of thinking too much. I would fly past him, striking kote well, and then displaying good zanshin. The shinpan disagreed, though. I’m not going to argue with them, but I was disappointed. They were some of my best kote ever. My opponent was striking men a lot, and once made the tiniest of glancing blows to my men. The shinpan gave him the point. After the match, we both agreed on our way of scoring and congratulated each other. Never make the mistake of arguing with the shinpan. Our team lost the round 2-1, but we did not care. We did one round of kiri-kaeshi afterwards in celebration.


Day 189:

Today we worked extra hard. Sensei couldn’t make it, but he left instructions as to what to work on. We started off doing many, many rounds of kiri-kaeshi. This was to build up stamina. By the end of it, I was really out of breath, but I kept going. Sensei wanted us to work on one-step men into tsuba-zeriai. This is just as valid a strike as passing by our opponent for zanshin. You use this when your opponent won’t allow you to pass by. You use this to strike and then cut off your opponent’s ability to counterattack. We did that for several rounds until we broke into a few rounds of simple keiko.

Once that was done, I was totally out of breath, ready to fall over. I stepped out to rest and recover. I drank some water and stayed standing to avoid slipping into fatigue. Once I had recovered, it was time for informal shiai-geiko. I fought a match against someone slightly higher rank than myself. I was moving slower than I was last class, but still at a good pace. I tried to concentrate more on accurate strikes than speed. I got in a few good men hits, but I still lost 2-1. I had tried to use closing distance to take away points from my opponent to frustrate him. I underestimated my opponent and lost for it.

After my match, I volunteered to be a shinpan to practice. Being a shinpan is hard. You have to keep track of accuracy, location, and zanshin of both fighters at all times. You just have to vote the way you see it. After a few matches where I was shinpan, I had a second match. It went like the first match, only with a much higher-ranked opponent. I tried to do some kote strikes to compensate, but they didn’t land squarely. My opponent learned my patterns and timing and used them to his advantage. He won 2-0. I helped shinpan a few matches and then we did one keiko afterwards. My partner was my second opponent and he was constantly trying to give me openings to strike. This was his way to get me to take advantage and strike well.

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