Ow

Holy hell am I sore today!

After a few months of gathering my life together and seeding a few career changes I'm finally back in the game and all I can say is 'ow'. Not that it's unexpected and if anything, it just makes me all the more determined to pull myself back up to where I was when I left off.

Like riding a bicycle, however the body never really forgets the motions. The brain can get confused or frustrated, but muscle memory can always be counted on. It took a lot longer to warm up that it usually does. I couldn't hit kote to save my life yesterday, and it took some real hard concentration to hit a large men, but by the time we started jugeiko I was able to strike at least decent pops on men and coaxed my reflexes into keeping up with most of the strikes against me. I even got a compliment on one of my hits which is always encouraging after a lengthy absence.

Monday will be the real trial though, Monday practices are always much more thorough and rigorous. I'm going to be feeling it on Tuesday for sure. The only thing I can really do now is draw myself a hot bath and paper myself with shippu.

Just Warming Up

After an exceptionally long winter, the weather has decided to just skip that whole spring business and get right on to summer. It's really starting to heat up again, which means kendo is starting to get challenging once more.

We had a small group today, as usual. Koyama Sensei lead us through the warm up and did some new exercises with us to strengthen our shoulders and build muscle memory. He had us link our fingers together and stretch up, at first. Then, pulling our arms back with our shoulders, we were to push our chests out. This, he explained, is to become familiar with the back muscles used in lifting our shinai to prevent tightness n the shoulders and arms. It's a great little stretch.

We did a bit of practical suburi with it.Breaking down the steps into lift-strike we practiced using our back muscles to lift our arms. When we combined it into one motion, he asked us to step forward with our backs straight, our chests out and our knee first. It was difficult at first, as it always is, coordinating  body parts while you're hyper aware of what each is doing but it's a good exercise to keep in mind.

We did our usual drills from there: men, kote, kote-men, ai-men and so on.With the back muscles already warmed up, my torso was a lot more cooperative in staying straight and perpendicular with the ground.

We did four rounds of 1.5 minute mawari-geiko after that. I'm trying to use kote a lot more recently with mixed results. Murata-san came today as well, which meant some hard hitting against a nito player. It's the ultimate game of strategy with him and he's always just a little too close for comfort, but it's so hard to judge distance without two shinai!

For a first practice in the heat, it went all right. I definitely need to remember to keep drinking water though!

The Inevitability of Destruction

The leather loop in my dou for the himo has been frayed for several months. David was kind enough to buy me a replacement strap for it last summer but seeing as no one knew how to actually take apart and repair that part of the dou it's been left sitting in my bag until today, when the thing snapped for good.

Fortunately, Koyama-san was there to give me a quick patch up, but he suggested that it would only be good for one day. Since I don't have a bike anymore after the mysterious theft of it from outside my house, and no money until I get paid again, it'll have to wait until Golden Week.

I did a bit of kata practice today with Koyama-san. He really drilled me on ippon-me today, which is nice. It's good to make sure I have the early forms down to perfection. (Note: this has not yet happened). In particular, he reminded me that shidachi needs to give uchidachi a 'push' when they come together in the center. Seme is important.

I got to experience the new 60 suburi drill today and nearly died for it, but it certainly woke all my muscles up. I just hope this drill isn't going to etend into summer. I'll shrivel up like a little raisin before I even put my men on!

My body was much more cooperative today in terms of correct striking and footwork. I got a couple nice pops that I was very pleased with. Itou Sensei corrected me again on taking my zanshin way too far after a strike. At least, I think he's corrected me on that before. Different teachers give different advice on this subject I've found. Some have told me that I need to get as far away from my opponent as possible after a strike, and some have told me that if I feel I've earned the hit, to run away with it. Others advise a strict  'three step and then turn' rule. I think, like most things, it depends on the circumstance. I know that in many cases I'm guilty of putting my kendo on auto-pilot and just doing everything my habit. Need to start making myself more aware of the fights I'm in.

A Few Good Men

Another Friday practice and only 9 of us there. It's always a good group on Fridays, and the small size makes it feel more intimate. It's nice.

Ino-san worked with me doing some kata today which is good. I don't get to do kata with Ino-san very often. I messed up my footwork on sanbon-me and I forgot the last step into jodan for roppon-me but I think t was a successful venture, nonetheless. I had fun.

The warm up drills went well too. Much better from how they were on Monday, actually, which was very nice. I hit with some nice, solid pops and my arms and legs seemed much more in agreement to work together today, as opposed to Monday where they just wanted to flail around and pretend like they never had any motor skills to begin with.

We did some more complicated waza today too, the hardest being suriage-kote. I tried, and managed it clumsily, but at least it was included in practice.

I fought Ino-san and Tanaka-san during mawari-geiko and managed to get a few hits in, possibly because they're both tired from extra training for the up coming exam. In any case, remembering to go straight always helps me get the best men hits and I even managed a few kote. At the end, everyone had good things to say about my men accomplishments. I was told that even if my opponent is fast, a good, solid men is better, so that's something.

I still want to be faster, though.

The Next Round

Everyone at practice was feeling pretty beat up today, it seemed. Except Koyama-san, who Yuko pointed out is always genki. It's testing season again for the higher dan and the rush to squeeze out every last practice before the exams can definitely wear out the body. Coupled with just the stress of testing, it leads to a pretty rapid onset of exhaustion. Sometimes I wonder if it's better to just skip a week of practice before an exam and center one's self, but I too am always over anxious to get in those last few precious practices the month before exams. Cramming for any sort of test is just too ingrained in our minds, I guess.

Today was my first practice back after a break to go to Taiwan. In short, my body was not impressed to be mack at swinging and leaping and shouting, but it's going to have to deal with it. Itou Seinsei wasn't at practice today which may have been for the better. Yuko says that he has upped warm up suburi from 50 to 60 each and I don't know if I would have been able to handle that today. I've made a note to at least 50 each at home every day to condition myself.

The practice (for me at least) was fairly relaxed. Fifteen minutes were devoted to mock test shiai for the higher dan, after we did some preliminary kihon. Ju-geiko followed that and Sugaya Sensei grabbed me for my first match which was all right in relation to how terrible my kihon practice had been. It was mostly a feeling my way back into my comfort zone of kendo. It's like squeezing into an old pair of pants. You know they're comfortable, you just have to break them in again.

My final fight was with Koyama-san who told me that I have to chase my opponent when he backs up out of my reach; more than twice if necessary. So I chased him around in a circle the next time. It was only after the match that I realized after the third strike he was probably just trying to step out of my way. Oh well, over achievement for the win.

In other news, my bike was stolen while I was in Taiwan so I had to leave my gear at Fuchou. I'll be taking Ari's bike too and from kendo until I save up enough money to buy a new one.

A Nice Success

So after a precautionary time out after a bout with a fever last week, I jumped back into it again yesterday. Sometimes it takes a reset of the mind to return to normalcy in kendo. There's a build up of fears and anxieties over time that comes from an inability to do a certain thing, or frustrations at constant correction that can be wiped clean by taking one's mind momentarily off kendo and returning to practice with the same feeling of not thinking. Letting ones body do the acting without interference of the brain. I hope one day that I'll be able to pt myself in that state without having to dangle a carrot of distraction in front of my mind first.

In any case, practice went well tonight. It felt good all around (my back didn't even hurt which I counted as a huge success!) I focused more on correcting posture and forcing myself to move straight than on anything else, and my strikes felt cleaner for it. I didn't let myself get distracted by who I was fighting and their relative ability, and just did as I could. Such simple ideas that seem, at times, to be so far from reach.

I practiced more basic men and kote with Fukao Sensei again. He's willing to teach me and I'm more than willing to learn, so the opportunities to fight him are appreciated. He corrected me on bouncing my shinai too high up after strikes. It should remain at chest level for kote and head level for men. It's a bad habit I've picked up in the attempt to clear my opponents after a strike, and something I'll try to keep in mind in the future. It should save me some arm strain in my kendo, too. Also, from my previous observations of Fukao Sensei's kendo, his arms very rarely rise above his chest, and his strikes are always very crisp and clean for it.

We did five rounds of mawari-geiko, which was exhausting, but less exhausting than I felt it should have been. At the third round I thought we were finishing, so I gave it my all. The subsequent two rounds therefore were a bit more cautious on energy reserves, but it reminded me that the goal is to always fight with full energy, and that doing so doesn't necessarily mean that I'll be completely depleted for the next round.

The could rains have been hitting Kyoto recently, which makes it more difficult for me to navigate to practice on my bicycle. 40 minutes in the freezing rain is tempting fate, but I've stepped up my indoor training to compensate and have been working on muscle training, particularity in my arms, shoulders and legs to give myself a bit of a boost come spring.

Bucking Up

My recent struggle on the plateau and the stresses it breeds notwithstanding, slogging through practice is the only help for it and so finding a way to endure and become enthusiastic again becomes the only viable path. I've felt uncomfortably bored with my ability for the past few weeks, and I think it's largely due to a drop in confidence in my ability. I've been falling back on simple kihon techniques that are neither very effective against high ranked players nor very elegant, especially considering that I've been trying to focus on both guarding my right wrist and pushing off with my left leg more. The split concentration has caused a great deal of collapse in my usual ability.

In any case, it was necessary to convince my mind today that I both wanted to be at practice and was excited to be there. Sometimes, if you tell yourself something enough, you start to believe it. It worked today, thankfully and despite feeling uninspired upon arriving, by the end, I was feeling much better, though it could be largely because the other members all did their part to not make me feel like the complete disaster I've been feeling in myself recently.

I'm over extending my arms too much. I can feel it in my shoulders sometimes. It's a product, again, of trying to guard my right wrist by not bending my elbows. And for whatever reason, when I'm actually trying to close a distance with a lunge alone, I fall horribly short on it. Fortunately though, after a few warm up drills I was feeling a little more like myself.

Practice seemed to go by quite fast, actually. It didn't seem that we did many men and kote-men drills before we moved right onto mawari-geiko for three rounds of two minutes, and when that was finished, there was only 20 minutes left for ju-geiko.

I got to fight Fukao Sensei again, since he's been nice enough to give me the hard instruction I hate, but still need. Practicing with him always reminds me to keep myself straight, but he's so solid and together in normal practice that it's really difficult to get a hit on him, to the point that when he does open to give me a 'freebie' it really throws me off.

After our match was over, I spent some time watching how he fights and I observed that he really doesn't move his arms very much, His motions all come from the wrists. Of course he raises his arms to get the necessary height to hit men, but the height never seems to be higher than chest level. The way he can manipulate his shinai with very quick, pivots of his wrist has given me much to think about.

My final fight was with Koyama-san who gave me a much needed confidence booster. He let me tap him on the men a few times which was enough to get me relaxed enough to stop thinking how horrible everything has felt recently, and just do it. Somehow, he knows just what needs to be done.