Thursday, August 19, 2010

A Beginner's Point of View 191.5-193

Day 191.5:

I got up early this morning to be there when the doors opened. I’m part of the club putting on the tournament, so I have to be present. Many of our students were either here for their first or second tournament. I just told them to relax and know when and where they were fighting. The rest should fall into place. They took it to heart. When I was not fighting, I was at the second court (where I would spend all of my matches), being the timekeeper and occasional caller. Our unranked students gave a good show of effort in their mudansha brackets. They got eliminated, but they had a lot of fun.

When it was time for my bracket, I got lucky drawing an unranked person and a yan-kyu. I brought forth my best Kendo and won both of my matches 2-0. It’s not the first time I’ve ever advanced to the second round, but this is better than I’ve ever done. I went to the next match and it was single elimination against someone who was my equal in skill. The two of us chased each other around the court, striking and blocking furiously. Each of us was trying desperately to strike anything to break the stalemate. I’m not sure what his rank was, but he and I were equal today. When time expired, the shinpan gave a hantei. The result was 2-1 against me. Darn it. Still, I have no bad feelings about losing to someone clearly my equal. I think that if I had advanced one more time, I would have been in the semi-finals and qualified for a medal. Oh well.

After a good lunch, we came back to witness a demonstration of german longsword fighting. It reminded me of my days as a foil fencer. Coming back to the tournament, I helped to run our table for sandan and above. Our head Sensei was fighting in that bracket. He was his usual confident self, constantly getting an opponent to attack while he would parry and counter-attack. Then it was time for teams. Our team consisted of 2 unranked, a yan-kyu, myself, and Sensei who is sandan. We went up against a powerhouse team for 3 sandans, a yandan, and a godan. Needless to say, we lost. The results were 4-0 against us. That was the shortest match of my life. Still, I’m not upset, just amazed at how fast my opponent could move. After my match, my opponent came to compliment me. He said that I have all of the basics down well. I just need more practice. After the tournament finished, our A team took second place in the finals. Head Sensei even got the award for best spirit in sandan and above division. It was a good tournament.

After the tournament was over, I helped clean up and take down some of the preparations. I did get a break in to do some godo-geiko. I stood in the shortest line since everyone was in huge lines for high-ranking sensei. Suddenly, one of the sensei had an open line and no one was stepping in. after a couple of minutes of waiting, my line was not moving. So, I stepped into the open line. This was a ni-to sensei. I wanted to practice finding the openings on a ni-to player. It was easy to see the openings, but hard to hit them. Curving the shinai around a shinai to hit the kote or slide it between for men strike is harder than it looks. I did get a good men strike in on him. He complimented me on a good men.

After that match, I was out of breath from exerting myself so much. I went back to packing up supplies from the tournament. Next door we had the plethora of drinks. I took a large stack of green tea drinks with citrus flavors as a favor to Sensei. Otherwise, he would have to haul it back himself. I think I’ll drink them all one bottle per day for a long time.

Day 192:

Today Guest Sensei showed up again. This is his last time to practice before returning to Japan. We started off by performing a drill that was being done in the beginner class. We would form two lines and then separate into two groups. The first group would spread out to take space and then perform a certain drill. They would do five good men strikes, taking their time to line up and strike properly. Then the opposite side would attack. The second group would take the space and do the same drill. The first group would return to the space and then do a different drill. They would strike a single men and then strike a single doh. They would repeat this set four more times. Then the second group would take the space and do the drill. We did all of this without men or kote to be able to see perfectly to judge distance. We also did it because of how hot it was. The point of the drill was to semin well and practice good footwork.

At this point, we put on men and kote. We did several rounds of kiri-kaeshi. When I did kiri-kaeshi with Guest Sensei, we stopped me and told me to stop swinging so wildly. He showed me that my left fist was being tugged along with my right fist, making the shinai unwieldly. After I kept my right fist under control and kept my left fist steady, my strikes were more crisp.

We then did men strikes, including the men-kote-kote/men-doh-men drill. I was doing what Sensei told us to do. I was using a beat to open the way before starting the drill. Guest Sensei said that was a ‘habit’ of mine. He said it was excellent for shiai, but in class it was not necessary. So, I stopped doing it and focused on keeping a strong center. We did a few one-step kote drills and then there were several lectures about good from Guest Sensei, especially about itto-no-maai. We all enjoyed having him over to our dojo. Hopefully next year he can visit again.

Day 193:

Today was a very good day in the dojo for me. I was well-rested, hydrated, and eager.

We started off by doing several rounds of kiri-kaeshi. I used the technique that Guest Sensei suggested and it made my kiri-kaeshi look much better. I could go even faster than when I was trying to be flashy. Guest Sensei really knew what he was talking about. We also did several standard drills of one-step men, one-step kote, and a couple of rounds of one-step doh. Sensei had the high-ranking people on one side of the dojo giving retaliation occasionally during drills. They would use suriage and debana on us to try to beat us, so we had to line up and be faster.

Then we had a few rounds of keiko. Today I was really fast! Remember I was telling about seemingly jumping out of my body to become faster? It nearly happened again, except that instead of going ahead of my body, my body actually kept up with my spirit. I was sweating more than usual, but I did not take off men even once today. Instead, I was lucky enough that I had several small breaks in between. Still, I was striking faster than shodans, nidans, and even Sensei all night. There were the occasional strikes when I lost the rhythm and they beat me, but overall, I was quicker and more accurate than usual. I was even very tired! I keep trying to figure out what I was doing that was so good to myself for health but I keep coming up blank. I’ll have to figure it out later.

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