Autumn the Kendo Season

Yet another 2 week break on a Sat. This time it was tonsilitis, so serious that after 6 days of antibiotics from my GP I am still only at 90%. But since I can finally swallow food and water without experiencing any pain, I'm back at the dojo, doing my kihon.

It's a rather good turn-up with 14 people I think. 5 of us girls in a separate rotation.

Here we do quite a lot of men-uchi kihon stuff using suri-ashi only (like your bokutoniyorukihonwazakeiko....). Initially I thought it's quite retarded and doesn't help in full-speed kendo, but now I am getting used to it, and in fact, much better. I do notice how much the power of my left thigh is forcing myself to go forward when we progress to fumikomi men-uchi. Somehow I think the 1000 rope jumps I do every other day contributed to this leg-muscle strengthening too.

Yeah, I am jumping more ropes than going for kendo at the moment. Besides the unexpected illnesses in the past few weeks, my evenings are quite booked up with courses right now. I quite tempted to go back to the squad on a Tue after my Nihongo Kurasu, but usually I am just too hungry at that hour. Argh.

After mawari-keiko, we spent some time in ippon-shobu shiai and then more jikeiko (Eda-sensei shoved me to the motodachi side...). I am working on kote-men, kote-do and hiki-waza at the moment, mainly because I want more variation from the amount of tobikomi-kote I can get from juniors. At this stage I am still not sure why sometimes the waza works and sometimes it doesn't - and I'll try to figure that out...

There were only 4 of us girls (Jane, Jasqyna [sp?!], Noroi-san) left when we do the Ippon-shobu (winner stays) shiai keiko. Not surprisingly I lasted until I faced Noroi-san for the second time. I mainly scored tobikomi-men, and I realized how my kote sucks and gets bendy now (lack of practice).... That Ippon I lost was a men-nuki-do.

Noroi-san is one of the smarter ones who so obviously keeps on smacking people's do - mine or the taller guys. So I guess it's right to keep working on a tokui waza (or a few).

At jikeiko I fought Alex and Jiman (both 3 Dan). Well, they aren't the brilliant type, but I think I am lacking that bit of aggression that does not really exist in the girls group. Of course you get the usual hard hitters. But I am not complaining about that inch of red bruise near my right pelvis bone. Juniors (especially girls) tends to loose that keiko tension more easily, and you'll rarely see them in kakari-keiko mode. I felt nasty going 5-renzuku-waza (back and forth) to Jane, but when I fenced Jiman it was like a cool demo to the beginners who were just learning suburi at the remaining 1/3 of the dojo.

So not aggressive enough = too boring; too much agression (like the training at the squad... oh and also adding the frustration...) = too hard for me. Seems like a little bit too extreme at both ends. Much of a dilemma to choose from, if I can only attend a limited amount of keiko right now.

Finally Autumn has cometh and this week is probably the last week I'll be wearing vests. I'd really need to gear up my muscles and body fat for the kendo events at the end of this year. Tho I am not too sure about the squad now. No doubt they are going to welcome me back, but whether I can survive and catch up is another question...

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