A Beginner's Point of View 728-729

Day 728:

Today I completed 2.75 sets of Iaido. It’s slow going remembering all the steps to cut correctly.

In Kendo, we had a guest sensei to help sensei train for his promotion exam. Today was better than I’ve been having. The beginners now stay with us full time. We did suburi and kihon. We did a lot of repetitions of complicated waza. Kote-men, men-kote-kote-men-men, men-kote-kote-doh-men, and kiri-kaeshi multiple times. It was tiring. We finished with the beginners watching us others in ji-geiko.

This time I was feeling better when guest sensei was here. I had much better energy to move fast and strike fast. He was the tired one this time. It’s sometimes weird how the tables turn.

Day 729:

Today I completed 2.75 sets of Iaido.

In Kendo, we had a lot of kenshi show up. We went back to rotating motodachi lines, which is how I like it. I remembered to push my left shoulder forward and it made my strikes better. After several repetitions of kihon, sensei and I stepped out for kata.

We then went through all 10 kata on both uchidachi and shidachi. I made sure to exaggerate the 5th kata for suriage. We did well. Our 9th kata the swords did not clack. That’s bad but the advice is to just continue doing it and finish well. I did forget the rei-hou for uchidachi. I was messed up because I learned a new rule about the cutting edge relative to shomen. I need to practice more and remember the rules.