My 2nd post for the evening.

Paul, the treasurer of the Kendo club sent me some links for Kendo Blogs of Andrew Tan, and Vivian Yung. They are excellent Kendoka and they train with Sydney Kendo Club. Both are very friendly people and very helpful.

So, anyway, it got me to think about just putting some Kendo content into my blog now too.

The first thing is that I received my bogu today!
Yeah!!!!!

The long awaited Chiba Bogu is here.

It's soooo nice. The 6mm stitching is very soft. It moves easily and is fairly light because of the lower stitch count. There is of course up and downs to this. The down is that supposedly it is less protective because it is not as "stiff" due to the longer stitch lengths. However, too stiff is also a bad thing because it transfers force directly. Supple materials absorb force through deformation, so a soft armour will deform from impact and help reduce force that way...

But I guess I won't know until I get wacked hahahaha.

My kendo progress is going a little slow right now. I feel that my fitness level is keeping me back a lot. I plan to return to the gym soon to build my fitness for uni games.

Oh, yeah, I'm going to Uni Games in Brisbane. As I am in Brisbane for ChemEca conference at the same time Uni Games is on, my supervisor has said I can go to Uni Games for Kendo. Woot.

So I have almost 1 month to prepare for that.

I don't really know what to say about my own form, because I haven't had much criticism yet from any of our senseis directly. I know that I have to improve on fukomiashi (stamping on the attacking strike) as I currently do not do it properly or even at all most of the time. I also know I need to work on more tenouchi (the wrist wrench that transfers force from the arms to the shinai strike. It also stops the shinai from moving past the desired strike point and wasting movement and energy). I can do it when I am practicing cuts, but not when I hit someone in armour. Other things, like landing blows and speed are just things that will come more with experience, like new waza (attack techniques/combinations).

So I have plenty of things to work ok.
When I have an opportunity to get told what to do, then I'll put it up.

Yay yay yay yay Bogu!