First practice of the year that I could actually attend! It felt good to be back, though a little stiff at first. There weren't all that many people today; Yuko was absent because the Women's practice is tomorrow, and she wants to be fresh for that. Youko was at practice though, so there was at least another woman to practice with.
Satou Sensei was leading practice today, so we had a good warm up, though he shortened the drill practice and increased the ju-geiko. A couple things were really disappointing about today:
First of all, my brand-new shinai succumbed to the dry cold of winter and produced several dangerous looking splinters, forcing me to use my old shinai until I can get my new one shaved and re-oiled. Fukao-san suggests to mist shinai periodically during the winter to keep them somewhat moist, after they've been oiled. I should also get some candles to wax the edges like I did in Canada. My shinai always lasted a decent length of time after doing that.
Secondly, I was disappointed to find that my lower back still became stiff half way during practice after I specifically worked on increasing its strength with hours long walks every day during the break. It seems that it's yet another weight related issue I'll need to deal with. At least the pain wasn't as bad as it had been before the break.
Aside from that, it was the usual getting back into things routine. I was a little slower than I would have liked, but I was happy to get some instruction for hiki-waza. A lot of the time when I have attempted hiki-waza or we have done the rare hiki-waza drill, my opponent does not complete a fixed tai-atari. It confused me that instead of colliding and using the body to ground oneself and jostle the opponent, those I practiced with would sort of, shove with their arms at a distance. I rationalized that perhaps it was a more advanced technique, or perhaps a different method of doing it, so I stopped colliding strongly with my opponents (when I tried, they would often take a step back and push only gently with their arms for an opening). Today, though, during mawari-geiko (and several hiki-dou attempts) I was re-instructed to collide firmly, ground myself with my feet and push from the stomach to attempt to maneuver and jostle an opening. It was nice to have that reassurance, and the correction. I like hiki-waza for a lot of reasons; the timing feels good, the physical contact with the opponent allows for more of a feeling of control than shinai alone do, and I tend to get hits with a more satisfying 'pop' from hiki-waza than any other waza.
I did a bit more dou practice with Koyama-san as well. He showed me how to snap effectively with my wrists, downward from just about chest height, so my dou now has a bit more of a snap to it, which is one of the many things I needed to fix about it. Mostly, I need to work on proper distance and footwork for dou though.
After practice, Fukao-san enlightened me as to why my kote keeps being tapped. He said that when I raise my arms for a men-uchi I pull back my right elbow such that it leaves my wrist completely exposed. He demonstrated for me what it looks like from aitei's point of view and I could see exactly what he meant. He cautioned to try not to bend the right elbow so much, and so I'll work on that over the next two days of practices.
All in all, it was a good practice. I got some good, solid instruction that I feel good about, and some things to continue to work on. Satou Sensei signed my paperwork after practice for immigration, so that's one less thing I have to worry about. There's kendo for the next three days as well, so I'll be massively testing my stamina for the first week back at kendo.
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