A Beginner's Point of View 257-258

Day 257:

In Iaido, I practiced 1-2-4-6-7-9-12 again. The first few times I did them, I did well. My body was flowing smoothly. After that, I started to become sluggish and miss steps. I think it was the heat and humidity. They were very high today. When I was doing the fourth kata, the instructor told me to bring my toes up for the movements. I can’t see where to bring them up smoothly, so I think I need to watch the DVD again. I should look at the twelfth kata again also. Do I pull my right leg back for chiburi or should it already be back there in preparation? I was sweating and my heart was beating hard by the end of class. I should pace myself for Kendo class.

In Kendo, our instructor was late so we did a normal set of suburi today. When he did show up, we did a continuation of the last class. We worked on all of the components of the perfect men strike. We started with suri-ashi, both solo and with partners. We went all the way down and back with big kiai and not stopping for extra breath. Our breath is our endurance. We did not put on men or kote, we would just block with the shinai. We received with a partner for all of the pieces of the perfect men strike. Proper distance, stab the ceiling, not pausing between motions, over and over. At the end we were doing eight haya-suburi with a single breath. My partner was doing wrong footwork the entire time. I tried to gently point it out. He wasn’t even aware he was doing it. I also tried to check my own footwork to do it right. Closing remarks form the instructor said that we should be doing kiri-kaeshi with two breaths and maybe a third one for the final oh-men. That’s a tall order, but it is in the direction I should push myself. I guess I should do it that way when I get the chance.

Day 258:

In Iaido, I started doing my normal 1-2-4-6-7-9-12. I tried to remember to insert moving my toes up in prep for the fourth kata and sliding my right leg back for the twelfth kata. However, one of the instructors came over to correct me. Apparently, you are not supposed to slide your left foot backwards to sit in iai-heza. You are supposed to come down like you are going to seiza and then modify it, with your toes still flat at the start. You rise up and bring your toes up. This was logical as it helps with the forward motion of striking with the tsuka. However, when finishing you must keep your toes up and slide back onto your left knee and slide your right leg back during noto. That was painful. I’ll have to ask Sensei what he thinks. He did not teach it to me that way, but apparently a high-ranking sensei taught the instructor like her way. I’ll have to try to do both until I get a clear answer. Later in the day, I got an e-mail from Sensei saying that he supports the high-ranking Sensei’s way of doing it. He taught me the other way as a beginner’s way to start learning the kata and because his Sensei started teaching him that way.

In Kendo, we had a different instructor. He wanted to spread out the lessons to cover much of everything we could rather than focus exclusively on one thing. We did suburi and then put on men right away. Class started earlier than usual so I was late coming in. I missed the stretches but arrived for suburi, so I was not on the dan side of the dojo for waza. We did kiri-kaeshi, men strikes, kote strikes, doh strikes, kote-men strikes, and more kiri-kaeshi. We worked up with advanced waza such as seme to make the opponent flinch and then strike their kote. We then lined up for keiko and sparred with a partner for a few minutes. I had two opponents who were lower-ranking than myself, so I had to fight with them but leave openings for them to strike. I tried hard not to show off but to encourage. Afterwards, we were separated into six-person teams. I had a team match against someone who was unranked. I tried to win, but leave room for counterattacks. It went well. I won 2-1, and felt like the other person was encouraged by their attacks. I also learned that I need to focus on sharpening my form and distance even if I’m leaving openings.