"Reise, reise"

"From now on we will focus on developing the following things: stamina, techique, discipline... For stamina, everyone should keep on doing exercise at home because we simply don't have enough time to do that in the dojo. If you don't work on your physical capacity, you cannot build up your techniques."

This is the advice to the squad from Kishigawa-sensei yesterday and somehow I think it is directed to me. I obviously lack some stamina, as it shows when things go intense.

Before dinner tonight while stuck at some freelance work, I fancy doing some exercise for 1/2 hour. The ceiling is low at home and therefore I pick up 2 kodachi for some haya-suburi (no idea if weight distribution is different but the weight is similar to one whole bokuto anyway).

To make it more "entertaining" I put on the new Rammstein CD "Reise, reise" on the Hi-Fi. My goal is to do 100 haya-suburi on every song played. A song is around 4 minutes so I can take a short break before doing another set again.

I have to stop at my 270th cut because I am going too fast, have no ki-ken-tai-icchi and out of breath. Then I think of a better plan. There is a minute-second counter on the Hi-Fi and I should watch it and cut once a second. Also I start taking one breath for every 10 cuts.

So for 100 haya-suburi the counter was going from 0:00 to 1:40 (that's 1 min 40 sec, i.e. 100 seconds, i.e. 100 cuts) ... then I can take a rest and have another go. In the end I finished my last 30 haya-suburi at the 6th song, "Amerika"... Totalling 500 haya-suburi under 30 minutes.