Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Squad #15: heat

After weeks of the rainy season, it's July and we are getting a lot of the Sun... Maybe a little bit too much. Although recently the work-out style warm-ups were dropped, things are not any second easier then before, as the same amount of time is spent doing rounds of katate-hayasuburi. Like today, we got 50 joge-buri (2 shinai), then 150 katate haya-suburi (men/waist/floor height, 50 each) , and a final 50 regular hayasuburi with both hands...

Last week I only attended Thursday's keiko so I am trying to make up the Sunday today. They had monthly-shiai day but I just don't feel like going (I didn't even sign up the week before)...

One of the other entertainment (or should I say torturing method) includes motodachi squatting down initially, with shinai holding horizontally, and when he/she pops up, from issoku-itto-no-maai, attack men... (*think* rubber hammer!!) It's really hard and I only got 4/10 :(

I was pairing up with Agnes (height consideration) for this without-men session lasting 30 mins. But when we finally got our Men on, Kishikawa-sensei said "same pair" so I was stuck with her... The worst thing is, there is an odd-person out so Eda-sensei joined our group too. Generally if you are in a 3-person group, you can relax a little bit more. But with these 2 (one 6Dan, one to-be-5Dan...) things just get to do double because no one wants to rest..!! In return, of course, the quality of training is much higher, and I have to focus more to keep up with them.

Today's kihon and waza keiko was rather "short" (but intense) as they happened to pull up a few more shinsa keiko for some (Yip, Jay, Agnes)...

At jikeiko time I had Yu-sensei first. Not particularly enjoys it - He seems to "not like it" when I block his men cuts and counter, or when he misses kote-uchi and I went nuki-men... Anyway...

A week without squad made me think about a lot of things at the side. I still feel "not-entertained" when Kishikawa practiced with Yamada-sensei... Things went better watching Agnes and Angus against K-sensei though. Somehow all I can think of is to cut kote, or kote-combos. Just at kihon session, K-sensei is still nagging me about the "body stable" thing. So my stategy is to avoid going tobikomi-Men, which is the cause of my unstable-ness.

Yeah, I know. I am only avoiding my problem without dealing with it.

...But gotta think about it. I rarely need to cut men in jikeiko. And my kote-uchi is smashing good today.

In the end I don't know how many times K-sensei hit on me. But I did block an abnormal amount of men-uchi, AND popped 3 Ippon (kote, men, do!)... He'd probably wasn't 80% concentrating though. He's got this piece of injury underneath his left elbow I can spot - so I think he must have a hard time in Japan in the previous week.

K-sensei is not an idiot so by the time we move onto the last Ippon, he's also picking on my kote kote kote too...! Gosh.

**********
I rushed home and on the bus I wonder why I felt that I had a slight improvement today, but in fact I have been slacking off for weeks (only trained 1-2 times a week, etc.) I still go for rope-jumping (now increase to 750+ in a single session), but its also about twice a week...

Been to *that* interview already last week. Will follow up later this week... (since I haven't heard from them since - I am not feeling too positive about it)

3 comments:

Occasional Blogger said...

1 week's not too long of a wait following an interview. Look at it this way, they might be typing up that offer letter as you blog!

Don't forget that, as they are interviewing you for suitability, you are also interviewing them to see whether you'll be happy working for them. It's far easier to remain relaxed when you keep that in mind.

Good luck!

Anonymous said...

Keep on keiko'ing! And good luck with the job.

Mingshi said...

Just sent a follow-up note. The interview was actually on last Thurs (where I went kendo afterwards - soaking wet...) It lasted 2 hours and involved talking to 3 people...

Might only ended up getting freelance work tho.. Am not getting enough last month ..argh!!!

I have been "relaxing" too much. Like what, 10 months?!?!