Thursday, January 23, 2014

A Beginner's Point of View 543-544

Day 543:

In Iaido class, I finished two sets of kata before the practice test. I also found that I’ve lost my ability to do big chiburi, meaning the one from jodan. I asked Sensei who told me to stop trying to rotate the sword and just twist my wrist. Then you just drop your arm in the plane of the sword. That’s so much easier. Also, the shodan gave me the advice of not ‘breaking’ my wrist. It means not allowing the sword to flex my wrist beyond straight arm. I do it on several cuts.

Doing the practice test, I got a 5:45, which is perfect in my opinion. However, when putting my saya into my obi at the beginning of the rei-hou, it felt really restricted. I think I messed that up. It prevented me from doing saya-biki. Sensei also mentioned that I need to show more saya-biki.

In Kendo, we had a small class. Just myself, the instructor, and two students. While putting on my tare and doh, the instructor had to correct the youngest student for not shouting responses during suburi. After jumping in, we immediately put on men and lined up. We practiced kiri-kaeshi, men-ouchi, kote-ouchi, doh-ouchi, and kote-men-ouchi.

For the final kote-men I did, I tried harder to raise my arms and finished with a loud POP. That was so satisfying. The instructor reminded me about not pushing with my arms after trying to crash into my opponent after a strike. Letting my arms go limp and crashing with my abdomen.

Then we had ji-geiko, but with the new student it was kakari-geiko. I’m liking my smoothness and speed with ji-geiko.

Day 544:

No class today because of the weather.

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