Bruised, battered and left hobbling

You guessed it, Kendo training!

Today's training was a little more unusual than normal for the fact that we have Founders Cup coming soon and our instructor wanted more jigeiko and shiai practice for everyone as next Saturday is the last session for trials to get onto the two teams.

We did warmup as usual and footwork, then kirikaeshi, kihon men, kihon kote, kihon doh, kote men and then kote men doh. Then onto the jigeiko. The setup was that some of the Dan players were split to one side, the three best besides our instructor. Two of them would be shimpan, one would be a shiai player. The remainder formed two lines with our instructor on the end closest to the shiai practice end. On each rotation, one person from the two lines, who played our instructor last, would rotate into the shiai group and play a practice match. Once that was over, they would rotate out back into the two lines format while the next person rotated in after playing our instructor. The three in the shiai group would also rotate so they would all play and shimpan. Sounds confusing? Let me draw a diagram for you.

So the blue dots are us ordinary pleb kendokas, the red is the instructor, the green is the three better players. So, blue guys rotate around until you play off against instructor, then you shift into shiai practice. The green guys rotate around themselves and two are shimpan. After the match is done, the blue guy goes all the way around and ends up next to the instructor, and thus the loop continues. It's effective and very tiring.

I got to play my shiai fairly early on, and I played against this guy who is a Jodan player. He's very strong, very fast, and has one of the katana style shinais (where the bamboo is actually curved instead of being straight). I didn't score any points on him, and he didn't score any men or kote cuts. He did score a yaku-doh cut on me and I knew it was a point as soon as I had lifted to block his one hand men cut because I was on the backfoot and couldn't move. Sure enough, the men cut turned into the doh cut and there went the point. It was a really good experience though, I had never really played against a serious jodan player before and it was fantastic. He didn't really posses a seme that scared me which was a little dissapointing LOL but good for me because it meant I wasn't intimidated, but his height and reach advantage was huge making it extremely difficult to get into the distance to cut. I attempted tsuki but obviously wasn't good enough to pull off any hits. It would have been nice if I could get video footage of me playing so I could see if my form went to crap or not against something 'new' in terms of style or not.

Post shiai, I just played a lot of jigeiko rounds against most people in the club. I got bashed quite a bit on my arms and wrist/hands today, just seemed that kote was the target to go for today, though I don't believe most of them were valid or good points for one or another reason. Myself, I didn't play that well after the shiai either, no excuses really but when I said that this jodan player was strong and fast, he was. My left hand was extremely tired and sore and lacking strength after the shiai from gripping so tightly and strongly to stop his cuts when blocking, and to not let it go flying. Talking to one of the girls after training, she said that in her shiai, she also played him and he knocked her shinai out of her hands, and two of the other girls also lose their shinais... in a match, that's a han-soku (half point penalty, get two of them, your opponent gets a free point!)... Anyway, my left hand and arm was very tired... When I played my match before the shiai practice though, against our instructor, I managed one good cut where he actually said 'good'. You know you're a masochist when you're involved in an activity where one lone word in the middle of a intense practice match makes you feel great, because the rest of the time there is no positive praise or feedback LOL....

I accidentally tsuki'd one person by keeping seme. He came in, didn't break my seme and had his head tilted up slightly. My shinai got under his tsuki guard and he ran his bare throat onto the kensen of my shinai. As soon as it happened (because it happened so fast) I pulled my shinai back but he had already hit himself on it and was coughing pretty badly. He was ok and we continued on but it was a bit scary... Just as well we both moved fast enough so he didn't get more hurt. Note to self, keep head straight or down, not up. Some of the other things today, which are more iteration of previous comments is in relation to styles of play, and zanshin. I played two people whose style of play still annoy me in that they just hit and hit and hit with what seems to be nothing but sheer number of attacks and strength. Most of their hits lack proper zanshin (to me anyway, if I was shimpan, I wouldn't award any points for it) but they just keep hitting away..... ~sigh~.

On the aspect of zanshin, I played some other people who had good cuts, solid cuts, but their zanshin was messed up. Either they didn't have it, or it wasn't strong enough, or just too slow. For example, if you step in and cut, your zanshin should (to me, in my opinion) mean that you continue fowards into/through the opponent, who by technicality is dead because of your awesome cut. I can't help it but go "Bwuh?" (Lucas style from Ctrl-Alt-Del) when they step in, cut, and then break their forward momentum by then going BACKWARDS!???? I mean, come on, that certainly does not show confidence that your cut killed your opponent if you're retreating! If you were in tsubazeriai (where you are tsuba to tsuba) and doing hiki-waza then of course you should be going backwards, but not when you move forwards to cut. If you move forwards to cut, cut and taiatari (bodycheck, where you crash bodily into your opponent) and bounce backwards while still kiai/zanshin, then that too is appropriate.... But going backwards from forwards attacking is not right at all... Neither is cutting and not moving, so doing a cut with kiai, but your feet doing nothing..... That is also lack of zanshin.

Well, it was good, tiring, but solid training. My eyes are sore actually from concentrating on peering at my opponent through my megane. I've been focussing on watching their eyes if I can, instead of watching their shinai, or watching where I want to cut. I've also been working on keeping my back straighter if I can, and that is why my back is a little sore too. My elbow hurts, my left wrist is a little sore, my right wrist is sore from blocking wild cuts to my men. My left foot kills (thus the hobbling) because my calluses are coming off and new ones are going to be needed... My body is protesting greatly LOL. One thing I have learnt and is slowly getting better is the better way to block, so instead of using the tsuka(grip) of the shinai to block, to change the lifting height and angle so it is more on the blade of the shinai, that way my hands don't get mashed as much. I noticed that today that many people I played with block with their tsuka and as a result get hit on their fingers and hands a lot. For me I only got hit once and it was on the flat tip of my thumb (not on the nail, but like on the point of my thumb cross-sectionally). But the problem with any blocking is you can't control your opponent and their cuts so they will hit you where-ever regardless of your best attempts LOL. Oh well.

So, that is how training went today. I look forward to another two hours of pain next week ^^.