Not a lot happened today, pretty much just stuff from Kendo training so far.
I arrived a little early, and had a nice chat with the head groundskeeper and the president of the university sporting body while watching the cricket happening on number one oval. They were talking about tree trimming since the winds from yesterday as I had mentioned brought some big branches down around the field, and so the university contracted trimmers were out chainsaw-ing the trees to remove dead wood etc.
Training was once again a little different today due to the small amount of people present. Our instructor decided to devote the first hour to the beginners, with the bogu players being motodachi for them, and the worked on kihon cuts, focusing upon making sure they had correct maai, and also attempting to gain confidence by starting at further distance. Other points that were raised and corrected was how to rei before and after each rotation, and aspects of making kihon cuts.
Once we split into the bogu players only, with the beginners either self training or going home, the bogu group did a few rotations of kirikaeshi before jigeiko/shiai. One of the seniors had a digital video camera, and so the shiai component was being recorded. We did jigeiko rotation while two people shiai practiced with the two senior/instructor people. I had three rounds in shiai practice, and five rounds of jigeiko, and I was pretty buggered.
I didn't score any points, and I thought I had given it pretty much all I had, and I was nearly disarmed in my final shiai practice, the tips of my thumb and fingers are still sore from gripping so hard. I thought I was being reasonably aggressive since I am normally not, but I was told afterwards that I needed to change my 'attitude' for playing shiai. I'm not sure if attitude was the right word they intended to use though.... since I don't think my attitude towards Kendo in general is bad or anything... He said that, the progression of playing style is a long one, and you should not start off playing the ippon style (one cut, one point/kill) but if you see people who have played Kendo for a long time, they always start with the fast and spam cuts (or machinegun style) until university level, and then after university level, they change to ippon style. So much so, that someone's nickname at highschool/uni level was 'storm' because of the ferocity of their cuts, but then he turned into 'cloud' after university because it became a serene kind of style. Further explanation of this is that, from playing the machinegun style of rapid cut spamming, you will develop strength and muscles that are vital for Kendo, and this does make sense. You need them to make very fast and powerful cuts, for both machinegun or ippon style. As much as I dislike this, I fear it to be truth and thus, I will have to try to do more machinegun style training during training.
On an interesting note though, from watching the others playing, while it is too far a stretch to say I am better than them (I'm not), it seemed that the way I played, while also not too different either to the others, drew more from the two people we shiai'd against. What I mean by that is, the intensity and aggressiveness of how they played against me, compared to how they played against the others was quite different, so I thought. I am not sure if that means I was more of a threat to them? Or they saw it as an opportunity to be more aggressive because my style allowed them to?.... But, I was acknowledged briefly, every so briefly LOL that my cuts were a little better than the others (as part of an offhand comment about how much we still had to go in our Kendo haha), though there were two others who had been playing for the same amount of time as me.....
I will try to remember my portable hard drive next week on Friday, and get a copy of the video, so I can crop it for my matches, and either youtube it or take still frames out for my picasa/flickr ^_^
The aftermath though, I am really tired and sore all over, even though I didn't seem to expend that much energy in amount of playing time, when we were waiting our turn for rotating through shiai practice, I was once again dripping sweat today even though the weather was a good ten degrees cooler... Hmm. I hope I can recover enough for Monday training.
I arrived a little early, and had a nice chat with the head groundskeeper and the president of the university sporting body while watching the cricket happening on number one oval. They were talking about tree trimming since the winds from yesterday as I had mentioned brought some big branches down around the field, and so the university contracted trimmers were out chainsaw-ing the trees to remove dead wood etc.
Training was once again a little different today due to the small amount of people present. Our instructor decided to devote the first hour to the beginners, with the bogu players being motodachi for them, and the worked on kihon cuts, focusing upon making sure they had correct maai, and also attempting to gain confidence by starting at further distance. Other points that were raised and corrected was how to rei before and after each rotation, and aspects of making kihon cuts.
Once we split into the bogu players only, with the beginners either self training or going home, the bogu group did a few rotations of kirikaeshi before jigeiko/shiai. One of the seniors had a digital video camera, and so the shiai component was being recorded. We did jigeiko rotation while two people shiai practiced with the two senior/instructor people. I had three rounds in shiai practice, and five rounds of jigeiko, and I was pretty buggered.
I didn't score any points, and I thought I had given it pretty much all I had, and I was nearly disarmed in my final shiai practice, the tips of my thumb and fingers are still sore from gripping so hard. I thought I was being reasonably aggressive since I am normally not, but I was told afterwards that I needed to change my 'attitude' for playing shiai. I'm not sure if attitude was the right word they intended to use though.... since I don't think my attitude towards Kendo in general is bad or anything... He said that, the progression of playing style is a long one, and you should not start off playing the ippon style (one cut, one point/kill) but if you see people who have played Kendo for a long time, they always start with the fast and spam cuts (or machinegun style) until university level, and then after university level, they change to ippon style. So much so, that someone's nickname at highschool/uni level was 'storm' because of the ferocity of their cuts, but then he turned into 'cloud' after university because it became a serene kind of style. Further explanation of this is that, from playing the machinegun style of rapid cut spamming, you will develop strength and muscles that are vital for Kendo, and this does make sense. You need them to make very fast and powerful cuts, for both machinegun or ippon style. As much as I dislike this, I fear it to be truth and thus, I will have to try to do more machinegun style training during training.
On an interesting note though, from watching the others playing, while it is too far a stretch to say I am better than them (I'm not), it seemed that the way I played, while also not too different either to the others, drew more from the two people we shiai'd against. What I mean by that is, the intensity and aggressiveness of how they played against me, compared to how they played against the others was quite different, so I thought. I am not sure if that means I was more of a threat to them? Or they saw it as an opportunity to be more aggressive because my style allowed them to?.... But, I was acknowledged briefly, every so briefly LOL that my cuts were a little better than the others (as part of an offhand comment about how much we still had to go in our Kendo haha), though there were two others who had been playing for the same amount of time as me.....
I will try to remember my portable hard drive next week on Friday, and get a copy of the video, so I can crop it for my matches, and either youtube it or take still frames out for my picasa/flickr ^_^
The aftermath though, I am really tired and sore all over, even though I didn't seem to expend that much energy in amount of playing time, when we were waiting our turn for rotating through shiai practice, I was once again dripping sweat today even though the weather was a good ten degrees cooler... Hmm. I hope I can recover enough for Monday training.
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