All Fired Up

It’s great to feel pumped for something, to feel completely on the ball and ready for action. Today was one of those days. I’m sure it was a combination of factors, but usually, if I take a week or two off of kendo after a longer stint I come back all fired up. We just got back from our Tokyo vacation and kendo felt great today!

Before practice, however, I noticed that both my regular shinai, and my back up shinai have sustained some serious damage. Ino san helped me unwind my shinai and shave away the splinters. As a quick fix, we rotated the slats so that the slat that is usually at the top is now at the bottom. I’ll pick up a new shinai either this week or the next.

It was a bit of a small practice, just 11 of us there but I prefer the smaller practices. It feels a bit more like I’m having fun with friends, rather than going through the motions with people I don’t know.

We started with a shorter than usual warm up and then jumped right into some basic drills. Recently, we’ve been doing less basic drilling in exchange for a longer ju-geiko. Today we did a longer mawari-geiko; five rounds of 2 minutes each.

It’s rare that I can go more than 2 rounds without needing some bit of a breather, or at least, that’s how it’s felt all summer, but today I got a little bit of validation that my recent poor performance in kendo has been almost entirely because of the heat. I went the full five rounds of mawari-geiko at full strength and awareness with no difficulty. It was a well needed confidence boost.

I took a short water break before starting ju-geiko. I managed two more fights and some uchikomi-geiko. I absolutely bombed the uchikomi, because I’m not used to it anymore. I’ve become much more used to reacting to an opponent’s attack, rather than an opening. In part this is because my opponents here are so tight that openings rarely present themselves. I have to try to make them myself.

I fought Murata san’s nito technique again today and was even fired up for that. He still beat me down, but the only thing I felt was more determination. I still haven’t come up with a decent strategy to get through to hit him. He’s really fast and a very aggressive player, so I’m not left with a lot of time to plan or to even assess the situation before he’s attacking again.

I tried to keep my kensen on his left wrist (every time I keep a centered kamae, he knocks it out of the way anyway) and sweep between his two shinai when he strikes. This technique was met with a small amount of success that was stifled mostly by his speed in both blocking and striking at the same time and my inexperience with an uncentered kamae. I want to try to use some suriage techniques with him, but I’m not knowledgeable enough with them yet to attempt it with someone who does nito.

Finally I fought Ino san, who is always a lot of fun to practice with, despite that it often feels like being hit by a train. He’s a very nice guy outside of practice, but he’s one of those people who has an extremely intense ki within practice. For whatever reason, fighting people like him energize me as well, and I try to match his energy when we fight. He’s a lot taller than me, which makes me have to plant myself when we crash together. One of the unfortunate side effects of this, however, is that I get into the habit of leaving my left foot behind to ground me in an effort not to be bent backwards by his higher center of gravity.

Points of the day:

1)    Push forward from the hips. I noticed it a lot early in the practice that I was reaching for the strike with my arms instead of leaping for the hit with my hips and legs. It was pointed out after practice as well. I hope it got a bit better toward the end.

2)    Keep a strong stance in both keiko and in drill training. Shoulders squared, back straight, and strong ki. Don’t drop the zanshin after a hit has been made (or lost).