A Beginner's Point of View 271-272

Day 271:

Before advanced class, I was stretching off to the side when one of the others offered to do kata with me. I jumped at the chance. He walked me through the first five kata. I spent this time memorizing the steps for the fourth and fifth katas.

In advanced class, it was a very tiring class. There were multiple rounds each of kiri-kaeshi, men-ouchi, kote-ouchi, and doh-ouchi. Then we worked on hiki-waza. We practiced men-hiki-men, men-hiki-kote, and men-hiki-doh. We then strung them all together for uchikomi-geiko. After that, I was totally out of breath. I had to sit out for a while.

When I recovered, I went back in for keiko. I had several keikos, including a nidan who loves to practice jodan. That’s good, I love to practice anti-jodan techniques. We had several good exchanges, including a great nuki-men done by me. Even the sandan teaching the class called it ‘perfect’.

We then broke up into kata. I did the first five kata as if testing. I received much criticism for my spacing. The first, fourth, and fifth kata especially I was pressing too far forward and not backing off enough to keep spacing. I was told I would fail if I did not correct my spacing. I need to concentrate on keeping myself in check.

Day 272:

Today, we started off with a few rounds each of kiri-kaeshi and men-ouchi. We tried doing suriage-men drills at full speed. That was hard. I kept blocking but not landing a good strike. Well, at least that was done. We moved to kote drills. I did well at kote, especially quick-kote. Small movements to just clear the shinai or circle around the tsuba. I got a compliment for my small kote strikes from a nidan. We then practiced debana waza. Men-debana-kote was the drill and we all did well at it. We then strung a drill for sanbon-kote-ouchi-sanbon-men-ouchi-gohon-men-debana-kote. That was tiring. We did a few keikos before I had to rest.

We did more kata practice. I need more kata practice before I’m ready for testing. I did the first five kata with a nidan. He liked my kata, especially seeing as I controlled my spacing.

We learned a new kata. The sixth kata. The uchidachi starts in chudan while the shidachi moves to gedan. Three steps forward. Shidachi slowly raises up, then tries to slice upwards on the kote. The uchidachi jumps backwards into jodan and then slides back into chudan. The uchidachi tries for kote. The shidachi performs suriage-kote and then moves forward diagonally to the left into jodan for zanshin. The uchidachi steps backwards and the shidachi steps sideways into line to finish. That was hard to remember, but it’s very interesting.