Monday, September 04, 2006

Sumi Sensei

Sumi sensei was in HK for a local referee seminar last weekend. I spared my Sat evening to take a lesson from him. Knowing his teaching style since Ikkyu, I hope that by coming to the dojo, he will inspire me in some ways people here can't.

Saturday's class has a focus on tenouchi. We had different exercises to understand what the correct tenouchi should be like. I think those ones with both hands holding the shinai near the tsuba really helps using the left hand to cut.

There's also men-uchi from to-mai, with a step advancing and then immediately cut. There's a funny exercise that "show your sole of your feet to your opponent" before fumikomi to remind us of using the hips more.

Finally there's some kirikaeshi, uchikomi-keiko and jikeiko to end the session with. Managed a keiko with Wong-san and Takase (kohei) which went alright. After that it was standing-in-the-queue time at Sumi-sensei's line. Briefly chatted with Yip and got and updated on who's in the official men's team.

Kishikawa-sensei wasn't there.

There's always emailing coming in about visiting sensei and upcoming events. Now that I don't have the obligation to get to these "all squad member should attend" activities, I'm getting to the trainings when I feel like. May need a longer period of time to build up very strong motivation, but I'm in no hurry. At least I can tell people "I love my job" now.